Education in India

Translating Khan Academy videos into Indian languages

The process of  translating Khan Academy's videos into the world's most spoken languages is underway.

Amongst the Indian languages, work has begun in Bangla (1,243 videos so far ), Hindi (21 videos so far) and Urdu (101 videos so far).

Khan Academy is looking for volunteer translators for the other Indian languages. More information on issues related to the translation of the Khan Academy videos to other languages is available at a Google Group.

6.8 million laptops to be distributed free to students by the Tamil Nadu Government - details and implications

The Tamil Nadu Government is making good on Chief Minister Jayalilatha's poll promise of giving away free laptops to all students of government-aided higher secondary schools (classes XI and XII), arts and science colleges, engineering colleges and polytechnic colleges in Tamil Nadu.

912,000 laptops are to be given away this year in the first phase of the scheme with a total of 6.8 million laptops to be given away over the next five years. Over 10% of Tamil Nadu's population will be toting laptops in five years time. The families of students getting a laptop will also have access to a laptop, especially the younger siblings in these families. The total five year budget for the scheme is estimated to be Rs. 10,200 crores (about 100 billion rupees or US$2 billion). More information on the scheme is available in the detailed tender document.

A few observations and implications of this scheme:

• This is probably one of the the largest unconventional ICT interventions in schooling in India or possibly even the whole world.

• The traditional approach would have been to give the laptops to schools and let the children use the laptops while in school. In the Indian context, with tightly controlled access to anything in school, that would have probably limited the use of the laptops by the students to a computer period under the watchful eye of a teacher or a computer operator. The Tamil Nadu Government's scheme takes a diametrically opposite approach and puts the laptops directly in the hands of the end users, with no role for the school or the teacher.

• This scheme has political rather than educational origins. Jayalalitha probably got this idea from one of her political advisers and not from an educationist or anyone with an educational background who believes that laptops will make difference to learning. The Government has gone ahead without worrying about how the students ought to, or will, use the laptops. They have left it to the children to figure it out. But going by Sugata Mitra's experiments in Kalikuppam (Puducherry) and elsewhere, it is quite likely that give the laptops, the students will figure out ways of using them in various ways.

• The scheme has been pitched by the politicians as a great leveller for those children who could not have afforded to buy laptops themselves.

• It would have been ideal if educational video content in Tamil (for. e.g. the entire set of Khan Academy videos dubbed in Tamil) had been bundled on the hard disks of each free laptop being given away to all the students.

• Although laptops are being provided free to the students, Internet access is not being provided free. Students will need to figure out ways of accessing the Internet themselves. But with the spread of Internet browsing centres across Tamil Nadu, the easy availability of dongles like Tata Photon or Reliance NetConnect and Internet services being provided even in rural areas by BSNL and other ISPs, I am sure the students will figure out ways of getting on to the Internet. This is also a huge opportunity for the ISPs to make a huge Internet push across Tamil Nadu, since the availability of devices is no more a constraint.

• The suppliers of the laptops are required to provide a 12 month warranty. They are required to establish service centres in over 100 towns across Tamil Nadu and a call centre facility to take service calls. The service network will probably remain in place beyond the 12 month warranty period, with more laptops being sold to the public in these small towns given the availability of the service network locally.

• The original spec for the laptops to be given away free was an Intel Pentium Dual Core P6200 equivalent with 2.1 GHz clock speed, 2GB RAM, 320GB hard disk and a 14" screen, an inbuilt camera, 2 hour battery backup, along with a customised backpack. The Government had expected to be able to source these laptops for not more than Rs. 10,000 per piece, but the lowest bid for the laptops was not less than Rs. 18,000 per piece. So the spec was then downgraded to a 160GB hard disk and a one year warranty, leaving the processor and RAM unchanged.

• The laptops will come with Windows Starter Edition and anti-virus software pre-installed. Apart from that the only additional software to be pre-loaded is Open Office, Tamil unicode fonts, Tamil glossary, Tirukkural software, and the State Board's syllabi of class XI and XII. Initially, the Government had stated that Linux would not be installed, but later on, the Tamil Nadu IT Minister announced that the BOSS version of Linux wouls also be installed to offer a dual boot option.

• Educationists around the world may have their own views on the effectiveness, or not, of the use of ICT in schools, but this scheme provides an excellent opportunity for a long-term study on the impact of such an intervention. It would be worthwhile to embed researchers in a few schools to observe how students use the laptops by themselves, whether the laptops become tools in the classroom environment and/or outside the classroom. The schools could be split into a control group and a test group with the researchers in the test group actively helping students make the most of the laptops and look at the results. The Azim Premji Foundation or NCERT or some other educational research organisation could initiate a project to study this. I hope they take this up.

• One important aspect that has not been given much attention is the fact that teachers are not going to be given free laptops. Most school teachers are not computer-literate, not having had the opportunity to learn to use computers during their education. This tends to lead to a general fear and diffidence amongst teachers about using computers. When each of their students has a computer and begins to use it without requiring any help from the teacher, this could lead to teachers either becoming anti-computer and decrying the use of laptops as distracting from learning or teachers simply going into a shell, or teachers forbidding students from bringing or using laptops in school or
  even teachers commandeering laptops from their students for their own use.

  College teachers are more likely to have used computers or have access to computers in their colleges and may be less fearful or diffident about laptops in the hands of their students.

  There are around 130,000 teachers employed in high schools and higher secondary schools in Tamil Nadu. It would have been a good move on the part of the Government to give a free laptop to every school teacher too as part of the scheme. It may not be too late yet to include the teachers. Adding another 1.3 lakh laptops to 68 lakh laptops will not cost that much more and could help teachers begin to benefit from the use of IT too.

• Once the laptops are in the hands of the students, what will they do with it? Putting laptops in  the hands of students addresses the demand side challenge of making computers available amongst a large number of students. The challenges are now on the supply side
  
  • What kind of educational content can be made available to the students?
  • How do we make the content available in particular in Tamil which is the medium of instruction for a large majority of children in Government schools in Tamil Nadu?
  • How do we get the content across to the students if they don't have an Internet connection?
  Since the Government has not announced any plans of providing students with educational content, the students will have to rely on free content available on the web and find it themselves. This opens up tremendous opportunities for entrepreneurs across Tamil Nadu to create and deliver content in Tamil and English for the school/college curriculum, different kinds of teaching and learning material, various kinds of portals like career and job portals, news portals, entertainment portals and so on. This is also an opportunity for different educational portals to curate the best content already available on the web and bring it to the attention of students.

• Since most parents and teachers are not conversant or comfortable with the use of computers, they are not going to be in a position to help students when they begin to explore with their laptops. Fears have been expressed of a generation divide which could lead to students "misusing" computers or being exposed to inappropriate content or being taken for a ride by others on social networking sites. As with any scheme, there is bound to be misuse by some people. How the misuse is perceived and dealt with by parents, teachers and society at large remains to be seen.

It may take a few years for the dust to settle and the impact of the scheme to become apparent, but all other states in India and countries around the world too will be keenly watching the outcome of this experiment in Tamil Nadu.

Update: (Source: Business Standard May 16, 2012)

For students, Rs 1,500 crore has been allocated for procuring and distributing 784,000 laptops in 2012-13. The free laptop scheme was part of the Tamil Nadu chief minister’s promise to distribute 680,000 (sic) laptops to students in government-aided higher secondary school and colleges. The total amount to be spent on purchase of laptops will be Rs 10,200 crore over the next five years.

Last year, the state government spent Rs 912 crore on the purchase of 907,790 laptops.

 

Video is the killer app for ICT in education in India

Listen to the talk by Salman Khan of Khan Academy at TED 2011 where he advocates using video to reinvent education. Brilliant stuff. Don't miss it. 

Salman Khan describes how he got started, what they have been doing at Khan Academy using video, and brings out the following key insights in his talk.

• Self-paced learning can make a huge difference. Students prefer to learn by watching videos rather than learning face to face from a teacher. Videos offer students the ability to learn at their own pace from the comfort of their own homes, replay the videos any number of times, go back and replay videos of concepts that they want a refresher on and not be embarrassed to have to ask their teacher to repeat something many times.
• Rather than teach in class and assign homework to test the understanding, students can now learn at their own pace at home. Their understanding can be tested in class under the watchful eye of the teacher
• All of the tests can be administered online and the teacher can have access to all the usage and test data to to be able to diagnose and address the gaps in the students' understanding.
• The conventional model tests the understanding of students but doesn't insist on mastery. The teacher simply moves on to the next topic after administering a test and grading it even if there are gaps in the students' understanding. But now the students can be asked to master a topic before moving on to the next. Students can be encouraged to fail and the teacher is there to help students gain mastery. They will be asked to move on to the next topic only after achieving mastery on what they are currently working on. This ensures that there are no gaps in the students' understanding.
• Rather than the conventional approach of improving the student-teacher ratio to improve the learning outcomes, the metric we need to focus on is the student-to-valuable human time spent with the teacher ratio. This humanises the classroom experience and facilitates learning far better.
• Students who have gained mastery can help their peers who are yet to gain mastery. Since the Khan Academy model works over the Internet, this kind of peer-to-peer learning could happen between two people anywhere in the world. We could have a global one-world classroom.

Video is the killer app for education in the Indian context, since children learn best in their own native languages. Of all the Digital Learning Resources (DLR) or Information & Communication Technologies (ICT) we can use in improving learning, video is the most effective at least cost. Imagine the possibilities if we had a Khan Academy equivalent of thousands of videos in each of the Indian languages with the best teachers teaching each of the subjects. Every child in India will have access to these and can learn at his or her own pace.

There are multiple constituencies that can benefit from these videos.

• School children can now learn from the best teachers at their own pace, from the comfort of their homes.
• College students and those already in the workforce who may not have learnt their basics thoroughly in the past can now relearn whatever they want from the best teachers at their own pace and in privacy.
• Today's school teachers who may not be fully on top of their subject (due to lack of good teachers when they were in school/college) will now have the option of strengthening their understanding in the privacy of their homes, without any embarrassment.
• School teachers who may be thorough with their subject but not very good at teaching can now learn from the best teachers on how to help children learn by diagnosing and addressing the gaps in students' understanding.
• Parents can also learn the stuff that their own children are learning in school. As adults they will learn the stuff faster and also help their own children learn better. Parents need no more feel at sea when their children are learning stuff that they know nothing about.

With the imminent explosion in the number of screens (computers, tablets, mobile phones, and even the good old television) that will be accessible to children, all enabled for WiFi/3G/4G/DTH, videos would be an excellent way to make the best teachers accessible to every single child in India.

An organisation like the Azim Premji Foundation is ideally placed to do a Khan Academy in India, if they choose to do so.

 

Debating Azim Premji Foundation's decision against using Digital Learning Resources in schools

To continue to focus on Digital Learning Resources (DLR) in education, or not to do so, was the question facing the Azim Premji Foundation (APF). Anurag Behar of the APF says they have decided not to focus on DLR after years spent working on DLR and much thought on the decision and explains the APF's view point in a recent article in Mint.

Over a four-year period, we at the Azim Premji Foundation produced the largest single library of digital learning resources (DLR) in India for children. Contained in 125 CDs, these were exciting lessons for children from classes I to VIII. Made in 18 languages—including tribal ones— they were designed to be completely integrated in school curriculum. We worked with various state governments to use these DLRs in thousands of schools. But they did not run well everywhere.

This was a big bet, and a lot of investment. It had an even bigger opportunity cost for us—we could have been doing something else in the time that we did this. After 5 years, when we took stock at a fundamental level, we realized that the whole thing was at best a qualified failure. Certainly, the children and teachers who used them, loved them. It created excitement and interest in the classroom. But beyond that, there was practically no impact in a sustained, systemic manner on learning.

I will just list the issues, without attempting to explain how these worked in a complex inter-related manner.  

First, the limited numbers of schools with computers (today an estimated 14% have at least one) have a very poor uptime. In the studies that we conducted, this was at best 30%, driven both by poor electricity supply and the inability to fix technical glitches. Let’s not even discuss Internet availability.  

Second, the school culture, its leadership and the broader system that the school was part of had a determining impact on whether the computer and DLRs were seen (and used) as a new toy, as a piece of furniture or as the crown jewel that needed to be protected.

Third, irrespective of the DLR quality, its use for learning was only as good as the teacher in the classroom. With a few exceptional teachers, it became a useful tool. With an ordinary teacher, it was just a means of entertainment.  

Fourth, the DLR seemed to add no value to the dialogic, discovery driven process of actual learning—which was completely determined between the children and the teachers. If it did add anything to the standard rote method, it was not noticeable, and it was certainly not needed.

So, with a rational mind and a heavy heart, we abandoned our focus on DLR. Today we use it in a very limited ways in schools, and continue to share it freely with anyone who wants to use it. Now, we think of information and communications technology (ICT) as an important tool on the management side of the education system. We continue to explore its potential, but we believe ICT is important, not fundamental.

He goes on to say that the APF will now focus on other areas to improve school education in place of their earlier focus on DLR and the use of Information & Communications Technologies (ICT).

This effort must lie in teacher and school leader capacity building, in examination reform (away from rote to assessing real learning), improvements in curriculum as well as accountability, governance and management. All this must happen, not just in intentions and policy, but in actual implementation—in a sustained and institutional manner. ICT would have a role in all this, but not the central role.

At its best, the fascination with ICT as a solution distracts from the real issues. At its worst, ICT is suggested as substitute to solving the real problems, for example, “why bother about teachers, when ICT can be the teacher”. This perspective is lethal.

Without doubt, we need hundred of thousands of good teachers and all efforts in figuring out how we can turn out good teachers will be invaluable. But I would argue that there's nothing more lethal than ill-informed, ill-prepared and just plain bad teachers let loose on children. Many of the existing teachers are not good teachers and many of the teachers that are expected to be trained in the hundreds of thousands over the next few years to enable us to comply with the Right to Education Act are not going to be good teachers either, given the track record of our teacher training institutes as well as our ability to attract talent into the teaching profession.

ICT can do better than bad teachers or no teachers

Sugata Mitra's experiments with ICT/DLR with children with no access to teachers at all are very interesting in this context. The children seem to learn well all by themselves and we need to get a better understanding of how learning happens in such situations, whether this is superficial or not and so on. But that cannot be an excuse to do away with teachers all together. A good teacher can help improve learning substantially even for children who are learning well with the help of DLR and we need good teachers desperately. More importantly, ICT can help democratise the quality of education for all children by bringing the best teachers to the screens in the hands of the students in the form of videos of the best teachers teaching in the native languages of the students.

APF's decision needs to be challenged, discussed and debated widely

Anurag Behar has made a strong and persuasive argument to justify the APF's decision to shift their focus away from DLR and ICT. The APF spent much time and money with serious intent before deciding to focus elsewhere. But their argument needs to be challenged, discussed and debated widely. I agree with the need to work on developing good teachers, and school leaders. Good teachers will not only be the backbone of our education system, but also be the drivers for improving the quality of school education in the country. Without their committment, capability and competence, children will get short shrift. But alongside the focus on developing good teachers and school leaders, I think ICT and DLR will also be extremely important in improving teaching and learning in our schools. Rather than thinking in terms of good teachers vs ICT/DLR as an either/or issue, we ought to think of both of them working in tandem to complement each other. That may not have happened yet, but we need to plan for that.

I have been thinking about the use of DLR in education for some years now and also toyed with the idea of developing educational software for science education about fourteen years ago and got nowhere. It was an idea whose time had not come then. Today the use of ICT/DLR in education is being talked about a lot but the focus tends to be more on the technology aspect of ICT  (digital white boards, computers etc.) rather than the content aspect of DLR. The real impact of ICT on improving learning outcomes is still in the future, but not a distant future any more. We are fast approaching a tipping point for the use of ICT/DLR in education.

A matter of timing

It is interesting to note a parallel to the growth of teledensity of phones in India which was languishing below 10% for over ten years even after the advent of mobile phones in India. Beginnning around 2005, the tipping point was reached and the teledensity exploded dramatically to reach the current level of 68% in just five years. Imagine what would have happened if large players like Bharti and Vodafone had decided in 2005 that after ten years, with the teledensity continuing to be less than 10%, they ought to relook at their decision to be in the mobile phone business. They would have missed the tipping point just around the corner.

We are likely to see the same kind of exponential growth in the number of screens (tablets, computers, even some of the larger screen mobile phones like iPhone and other Android phones) over the next few years, riding on a boom in better and better technology available at a lower and lower price. There will come a time in the near future when every child in the country will have access to some kind of a screen made available to them and enabled for Internet access either through WiFi, WiMax or 3G. This will be cheaper and more effective than trying to give all children access to a whole lot of printed books and other kinds of printed material. When that happens, the availability of Digital Learning Resources will have a huge impact on learning. But even as that happens, the availability of DLR and the screens in the hands of children won't be enough. We will need a good teachers to enable the children to get the best out of the DLR in their hands and there's a whole lot to be done in turning out good teachers.

There are plenty of other players focussing on the technology side of ICT and technology will become commonly available. It is the content in multiple Indian languages (DLR) that will be key as screens and devices become commonly available. In their efforts so far, the APF has focussed on the content aspect (DLR) and that is going to be hugely important in the coming years.

It isn't time to give up on DLR yet

I hope the Azim Premji Foundation doesn't discontinue its DLR efforts altogether. While they may choose to focus more on developing teachers and school leaders for the present, the APF ought to continue, at least in a small way, to keep experimenting with DLRs that can be consumed not only on computer screens but also on various kinds of tablets and other devices.

 

P2P filesharing to help teachers share one another's teaching resources

The Chronicle of Higher Education points to LionShare - a peer-to-peer file-sharing system will allow teachers/researchers to search their own and one another's digital collections of documents, images, and other material (residing on each other's computers).

The Internet itself was the first step towards that, but required each individual to put up his/her resources online and not many folks put up stuff they had. But now with storage being pushed back one level to each indivdual's own computer, all the interesting stuff residing on one's desktop can becomes available now to others.

Along with the benefits, the article also discusses the fears of the teaching community if they chose to share their files.