oceania_edu

EDUCATION IN OCEANIA

SOLOMON ISLANDS FRAMEWORK

PICS = ??? MDG = Millennium Development Goals

The measurements to be made, and questions to be raised by the pilot, will concern the following:
 * 1) Implementation: what is the best way to distribute the laptops to children?
 * 2) What usage patterns develop in the user group?
 * 3) Do the laptops impact on literacy, numeracy, and information literacy in the students and their families, and communities, and if so, how?
 * 4) What are the most effective ways of delivering educational content using the XOs, and how effective are they for this purpose?
 * 5) How can the educational usage be directed towards meaningful ends, such as livelihoods, employment and further education?
 * 6) How can the laptops best be made to assist teachers in the classroom in the delivery of the curriculum?
 * 7) How can teaching practices be adapted to make best use of the laptops in the classroom?
 * 8) What are the most practicable method that PICs can adopt for creating local content linked to the needs of their educational systems?
 * 9) What recommendations can be made in terms of national collaboration to achieve optimum impacts from the distribution of the laptops, including towards the MDGs?
 * 10) What national policy recommendations can be made to create an enabling environment for this purpose?
 * 11) At the end of the pilot period, are there any measurable differences in attitudes to learning in the laptop owners group as opposed to a control non-owners group?
 * 12) Are there any changes in the attendance rate of school students participating in the pilot?
 * 13) What impacts/changes are observed within the village society as a result of the distribution of laptops,?
 * 14) What risks can be avoided and advantages encouraged?
 * 15) How well do the laptops perform in technical terms: networking, accessing content, power requirements, response to harsh environment?
 * 16) What are the main technical challenges and risks for a larger regional roll out and what strategies can recommended to meet them?

The pilot will also measure the actual total costs in terms of finance and of time of participants, and identify key indicators for future rollouts. A fuller, detailed set of measurements and research questions will be agreed in consultation with the stakeholder groups. Questions will then be grouped into sections on planning/analysis, project design, implementation, and evaluation. The research methods, which may include focus groups, data collection, interviews, survey, observation and other methods will also be clarified at that time, and will refer to the literature for frameworks on measuring impacts of ICT in education. http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_Solomon_Islands#Objective_measurements_and_research_questions

Educational: 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 11, 12, 13 Transformational: 7, 13 Organisational: 1, 8, 9, 10, 14, 16 Technical: 15, 16 Local: 8 Cost-Benefit: 14
 * ANALYSIS OF QUESTIONS**:

Teacher training? How long? Nature of? Updates? What are the predominant current teaching method(s) before introduction of XO? What XO activities are more used, less used and the reasons why? What things are just as well taught without using the laptops? eg. some people now argue that calculators should not be used in primary school because they harm student ability to estimate
 * What questions haven't been asked that could or should be asked?**

3 needs spelling out more 4, 6 are open to subjective interpretation - what you get depends on what you know 12 newness factor may account for this and not last
 * What questions are too vague or general or could be quite subjectively interpreted?**

2 elaborate - gender? what else? 3 not just numeracy but maths which is much more than numeracy, also add science to the list (tends to be neglected in primary school)

OCEANIA FRAMEWORK http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_Oceania/Evaluation

//This framework looks more comprehensive than the Solomon Islands framework//

APPROPRIATION
 * Children
 * How often are they using the laptops, using which activities, on their own and with others
 * What skills can they demonstrate, individually and in groups (measured non-obtrusively) Measurement: Hold a session at school where the children are free to use the laptops on their own or in groups, as they wish, and observe the group dynamics and note which activities are being used. Observe how groups are interacting – for instance, are all the participants involved in the learning and sharing? Allow them to explain what they are doing in an informal setting, without asking specific questions. Some problem solving tasks can be set. The session can be recorded with digital camera, video, and a survey form or template report for the observer to use.
 * Teachers
 * Are they learning to use the laptops in their class-work, and if so how, how much, what ideas have they developed regarding integrating the laptops into their teaching. Measurement: (see “educational impacts” below)
 * Families
 * What are the parent’s attitudes to the children using the laptops
 * Are other family members using the laptops Measurement: Hold a parents evening and hold open discussion. Follow up with simple questionnaire that the parents can take home. The community rep can follow up and help each family complete the forms. Committee can arrange for observers to visit homes, with permission of the families.
 * Community
 * What are the community’s attitudes to the laptops
 * Is the community finding the laptops useful, not only in education?
 * Is there any change in the way the community regards the school Measurement: Community meeting

EDUCATIONAL IMPACT


 * Have the teachers adapted to more discovery learning / constructivist methods
 * Have the laptops helped the teachers directly in their teaching (i.e. access to resources, collaboration / communication, subject knowledge, pedagogical knowledge especially regarding constructionist learning....)
 * Is there a change to more child-centred approach in the classroom Measurement: With the teachers’ permission and preferably led by the teacher, observe lessons in practice, non-obtrusively. Follow up with interviews using prepared questionnaires. The teachers can also keep log books of how they have used, the laptops, what ideas they have and other feedback.

INFORMATION LITERACY


 * How many children, teachers and families are accessing information on the Internet, and are communicating via email (compared with before) Measurement: Can be included in the questionnaire (see “Appropriation: families”) plus observers can record their observations. Also via tasks set for the group session of children, as described above.

LAPTOPS TECHNICAL


 * Technical problems with the laptops and how they were dealt with
 * Charging issues
 * Connectivity issues
 * Keyboard issues
 * Language issues (some feedback for the localisation program)

EVALUATION BY TEACHERS AND DISTRICT OFFICIALS

At Dreikikir (see PNG page) the teachers came up with their own suggestions. The following approaches were decided by teachers, and agreed with the education officials present:
 * Teachers would keep a log book / diary and update it with any feedback on how the laptops are being used, new ideas on classroom integration as they develop, and feedback on student’s uses. Also feedback of problems and issues.
 * Every morning, the first lesson is an “oral session” where teachers can discuss the laptops with the children. This session will be used to get daily feedback.
 * Parents evenings and staff meetings will also be used to get feedback and share ideas.
 * The district school standards officer and education advisor have been trained and fully participated in the deployment. This is very important, as they are available “on the ground” to make evaluations and carry reports from the school to the Province and Department.
 * A volunteer to be based at Dreikikir for 2 weeks will provide additional evaluations on behalf of OLPC Oceania. Guidance on this from SPC will be crucial.

...

EDUCATION APPROACHES OF AN OLPC PROJECT

A core element of the OLPC program, as opposed to the tool of the laptop, is “Learning learning”.

The OLPC program is based on the Constructionalist Education theory, or learning by doing. It is also has a strong collaboration learning approach, encouraging students to share their experiences and learn together.

Some Education ministries are reforming their system to a more student centric approach to replace the teacher centric or instructional approach.

Generally there is a strong belief that the education system needs to change and with today’s affordable technology, especially the OLPC Laptop and Internet, the tools are available. The status quo for education in developed and developing countries is not acceptable.

Several OLPC projects are driven by the need to reform the education system. For example, Peru had tried many times to make incremental changes to their under performing system with no success. Today, they find the Laptop and Internet are transforming the system very effectively.

The degree to which **Learning by Doing** is being incorporated in the classroom might be the basis of an evaluation framework. For instance, in the Solomons, Learning by Doing is a theme that is being introduced into the primary school curriculum. Such an indicator would be directly linked to policy, as well as to the design characteristics of the XO laptop.

It is up to each country to design such a framework for evaluation, according to their own priorities and policies.

LIST OF POSSIBLE OUTCOMES

Here are some things that have been mentioned as positive outcomes from an OLPC project. Many of these observations come very early in the project. This list could also be considered reasons for launching a project.
 * 1) Reduced absenteeism
 * 2) Greater engagement by children
 * 3) Empowerment of teachers
 * 4) Increased esteem of teachers
 * 5) Reduced need of discipline
 * 6) Less disruption by students
 * 7) Increase in self esteem by students
 * 8) Increased “connection” with the world (other cultures, languages, ideas)
 * 9) Increased involvement by parents
 * 10) School becomes the centre of the community
 * 11) Development of a sharing culture (child to child, school to community, teacher to parent)
 * 12) Much better results than with Computer Labs


 * ANALYSIS**

I think this sort of approach is a good one - "What skills can they demonstrate, individually and in groups (measured non-obtrusively) Measurement: Hold a session at school where the children are free to use the laptops on their own or in groups, as they wish, and observe the group dynamics and note which activities are being used. Observe how groups are interacting – for instance, are all the participants involved in the learning and sharing? Allow them to explain what they are doing in an informal setting, without asking specific questions. Some problem solving tasks can be set. The session can be recorded with digital camera, video, and a survey form or template report for the observer to use."

"Have the teachers adapted to more discovery learning / constructivist methods" Needs to be a clearer distinction b/w discovery learning and constructionism Discovery learning usually does not work

"Learning by Doing" is too vague

Too early to say that the Peru transformation is effective?

prepared questionnaires (take home) may not be effective way to gather correct information - how to tell if people are answering according to what is expected versus what they really think?

"Every morning, the first lesson is an “oral session” where teachers can discuss the laptops with the children" Good idea. It also raises broader questions ie. some things are better done not on laptop - what are these things in general? or how should laptop and no laptop activities be co-ordinated successfully?

"Have the laptops helped the teachers directly in their teaching (i.e. access to resources ...." Resource based teaching involves far more than looking up the internet - generally not well done in industrialised world 6 steps of RBL


 * reference** (haven't read this yet, from oceania wiki link)

A Copy of the Ethnographic Action Research (EAR) is available at http://www.twine.com/_b/download/11w8fyrcz-w5/b0bsl79jx59rwtw7lr978psshbdk7tsxlb1w4wlpmfhprmt/11w8fyrcz-w5/b0bsl79jx59rwtw7lr978psshbdk7tsxlb1w4wlpmfhprmt/ear_handbook.pdf