Aleutia Case Study Ethiopia ConnectED
CASE STUDY | Education
Aleutia: What was your aim with this project?
Atwood: Ethiopia ConnectED is an initiative born from my doctoral research about learning theories and my interest in international education. At the heart of the project is a desire to address a policy and planning question: How do we create meaningful educational opportunities for children and adults who live in resource-insecure parts of the world? One of the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals is Universal Primary Education. By 2015, the UN wants to ensure that every boy and girl in every society completes a full course of primary schooling. A host of political, geographic, climate, cultural, and logistical factors continue to frustrate this effort. One of the more significant barriers to universal primary education is a phenomenon known as the global teacher shortage. Simply, there aren't enough educators or instructors who are trained to meet the demands of school-aged children — current estimates put the global shortage at 18 million teachers.
Educational ICT4Dev projects offer a hopeful solution to these infrastructural challenges. Dr. Sugatra Mitra, for example, is the founding director of an India-based venture called Hole-in-the-Wall Education, which builds computer learning centers loaded with educational software for out-of-school children who live in impoverished rural and urban communities. Over the past 10 years, he has installed hundreds of these "minimally invasive educational" kiosks throughout India. The children who access them are typically illiterate, do no attend school, and have rarely (if ever) interacted with a computer before. There's no adult to teach or supervise how boys or girls use the computers. And yet, its been found that within nine months of self-directed discovery and autonomous learning, these children often acquire the equivalent of a primary education, "achieving the proficiency level equivalent to the skills of most modern office workers" (source). Further, peer-reviewed studies of the Hole-in-the-Wall project found that children who access their unstructured computer learning centers pass government board exams at rates comparable to or exceeding those of their peers who attend traditional schools. Dr. Mitra notes, "In situations where we cannot [provide human intervention] very frequently, you can multiply the effectiveness of 10 teachers by 100 or 1,000 fold" if children have access to these types of autonomous learning environments.
Ethiopia ConnectED is an expansion of Dr. Mitra's work, and seeks to untether students from a classroom-dependent learning environment. Aleutia was and remains an ideal partner for this venture. They are design pioneers who build the most robust and reliable solar-powered, energy efficient computers on the market. They have a deep commitment to international development and an extensive network of partners throughout Africa. They advance the ideals of the free and open source educational software movement. And they custom-engineered a "school in the box" computer solution that satisfied all the challenging technological needs associated with our work.
In an offline environment how did the Edubuntu applications help engage students and what applications did they use most?
As an educator, I think the gaming design of many Edubuntu applications is a model for meaningful student engagement. I've never seen a group of students so fully immersed in learning. The programs are interactive and provide immediate feedback about one's performance. This allows students to learn about concepts and content that are appropriate considering their levels of ability and ambition.
For me, I was most fascinated by the way students organized themselves in the computer learning center and how they co-directed learning. Often, one or two children would sit in front of the computer as its "driver," controlling the mouse and keyboard. They were surrounded by an inner circle of four to six peers who offer directions or commands about what to do. These "computer navigators" were surrounded by an outer ring of five to 20 students, tightly packed, who absorbed the lessons and anxiously awaited a turn to play. Regulating procedures organically sprouted at our project site, such that all students were given fair use and opportunities to serve as a driver and navigator. I would often arrive at the site to see older kids mentoring younger students about how to find, open, and play various computer programs. Among the younger set of elementary school students, the Tux4Kids Edutainment Suite and KDE Education Project were the most popular programs. The older high school students tended to prefer Open Office and the Desktop Publishing suites.
Aleutia: ICT Education projects can be difficult as students learn so quickly and teachers may feel sidelined. How did you include teachers in this project and what was their experience like?
Atwood: This is a concern that deserves more attention by developers, practitioners, and researchers who work on educational ICT4Dev projects: How do we empower students while also leveraging the knowledge and experience of teachers?
With Ethiopia ConnectED, we worked directly with teachers in the community to build a computer learning center for students and neighborhood children. We organized information sessions with local educators to share our hope with this project, to demonstrate the capabilities of the computers and software programs, and to solicit their concerns, questions, and comments about how students might respond to this initiative. We considered the computer learning center to be an extension of school — a place where students could gather, play, explore, and learn before and after the formal school day, over the weekends, and during the summer months. Additionally, it attracted students who were unable or did not want to attend the community schools, and engaged them in meaningful learning opportunities. We also set aside time for teachers to interact with the computers, and encouraged them to utilize the software programs on them before we opened the center to students.
Some teachers did not care to take advantage of these opportunities, but many did. A few even asked if we could secure an Aleutia/Edubuntu computer for teachers and parents, so they could learn new skills and be more familiar with the ways their children and students might harness the technology. This request highlights a great opportunity with educational ICT4Dev initiatives — along with projects that advance the open education movement, we should develop opportunities to improve traditional classroom instruction.
Primary School Students Using Open Source Education Software
Rugged Waterproof Keyboards Ideal for Hundreds of Students Sharing
Typically 3-4 Students Will Share One Computer At Once
Aleutia T1 Solar PC with 12V Portable Monitor and Waterproof Keyboards.
