OLPC India/DBF/Khairat Chronicle
From OLPC
Ulaanbaatar.mn | Arahuay.pe | Khairat.in | Ban Samkha.th | Galadima.ng | Cardal and CEIBAL.uy | Bashuki.np | Bishwamitra.np | Atlas School.pk | Altos de Cazucá.co [+/-]
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Text and Photos by Carla Gomez Monroy, OLPC
Khairat school, OLPC in India: September 26 – October 13, 2007
[Editorial note: The students' names are fictitious.]
[edit] October 12th at Khairat school
At the entrance, there was a black dog taking a rest. Beside the dog was Rajiv, in first standard, working on his XO while it was charging, plugged to the outlet on the wall. At the foot of the wall, on a long mat, there were some XOs, being charged.
On the other side of the door, sitting on long, thin mats on the floor, there was a small group of girls and boys working on Etoys. Some were trying out all the sample projects while others were making their own. Among them were Gayatri and Sarasvati, two girls, in third standard, who usually go around the classroom helping others.
Just sitting with their back against the wall, and working on their own on Memorize, were Nandini and Karan. They are a girl and a boy, also in third standard, who are quiet and somewhat shy.
Close to the drinking-water container, were Malini, Mahima, and Vidya singing songs while recording them on Record, and playing them back.
Just behind them and below the window is Sameera taking photos on Record. Next to her, there is a small baby, sitting there, and he suddenly starts crying. Sameera tries to calm him down by patting him on his back while at the same time trying to take more photos. The baby keeps on crying, almost uninterruptedly. He looks very sleepy. After a while, the teacher, comes round and gives him a piece of candy, which keeps him quiet while it lasts, then the teacher asks Sameera to take the baby home.
In the middle of the classroom is Vinod investigating different activities on his XO. Kaushal and Sooraj are exploring eBooks and different links on the Web application.
In the front row, there are Deep, Harihar, and Hridayesh, playing together with Memorize, doing additions. Rohan is close to them typing the Arabic numerals from 0 to 9 on Write, making them big, choosing a color for them, and saying the name of each number in Marathi while pointing at it with his index finger. Then he forgets about the numbers and goes see what others are doing, is interested in Etoys, opens it, and starts drawing, just as some others are doing.
Kamala is exploring her laptop with the help of a few classmates. She got her laptop some time after the other children, the same with her brother, sister and cousin, because they were not coming to school. Everybody is willing to show them how to do this and how to do that. But the children help them learn how to do things by letting Kamala and her siblings do it themselves. Sometimes, the teacher, also sits among the children and explains how to do something on the XO. At times, he brings everybody together and explains the new activity he wants them to do and how to do it. Everybody is 'around' him paying attention, and then everybody goes back to their places to work on it by themselves or in small groups.
Gayatri and Rajiv are siblings, and sometimes they sit together to work something out. Arun learns at a slower pace than others. Sarasvati is Arun's older sister, and she patiently sits with him to explain to him what they have to do and to guide him through the task. Arun is a child with a great heart, who fortunately has the support of his sister, parents, and classmates to learn. Karan also likes to help Arun. And sometimes Arun's father comes to school to work with him, or to sit with the teacher to learn how to use the XO better. Sarasvati also teaches their father how to do things on the XO.
There are also other children that visit Khairat school, who live in the village but are now in 5th standard or higher and therefore attend a school that is farther away. Some teenagers also come a lot and work with the children on the XOs.
The teacher juggles his time with tasks, topics, and children of different ages and grade levels, called standards. He tries to make sure that every child is learning something, that each grade (1st to 4th standard) is moving along. He does it all so naturally that it even seems like if at the same time he is creating and designing new activities on the XO, making simulations of the water cycle on Etoys for the children to see and learn how to do it, and showing them how to write Marathi letters and record the correct pronunciation. And when the Marathi letter that each child drew on Etoys appears on their screens, they each say it aloud, giving as a result many different letters being said or played back at the same time as they say or click on the Marathi font. The teacher also talks to the parents and to the people who come by to visit, or he walks around with his XO while children answer some written task or test. The teacher also takes photos of events he considers important, like the day the hole for grounding the server was made by the locals, and the day we gave the laptops out, and the parents' meetings,....
Time goes by, and suddenly it's already lunchtime. They all put their XOs away, and Sooraj goes out to strike the cymbal. The mats are all picked up (This task is usually done by the boys, other tasks, like fetching water, are done by the girls, though the division of tasks isn't rigorous or inflexible, and the boys may do the sweeping or fetching of water.) The children go out and come back a little later.
Some bring small containers with some curry or masala. A gigantic pot of rice is brought in. The children sit cross-legged on the floor, forming a big square, facing each other. One of the older girls serves the food, and the plates are handed around. The school door is kept ajar to keep the dogs from coming in. The children start eating with their right hands. Some share their own food with their younger siblings who are not registered in school and sit in the inner part of the square. The classroom is quiet while everybody eats. Once everybody finishes, they stand up and drink some water; they also clean their plates with water. Someone sweeps the floor. The mats are put back in their place while the children play for a while outside.
After a while, class starts again and goes on till 5.30 p.m., when the children go home...
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[edit] Intro
To run the first school implementation with prototype B4 XO laptops in India, we are working with a renowned telecommunications company. Specifically we are working with the Navi Mumbai staff of the company, who for short I will call the Mumbai Team. Following the guidelines I gave them, the Mumbai Team did the magnificent job of locating and establishing a relationship with Khairat school, which was done mainly thanks to Mr. Iyer, who sponsors some schools in the area. The Mumbai Team visited the school and spoke with the teacher about furthering OLPC's mission with his help and that of the children attending the school. And it turned out that they struck a gold mine in terms of kindness and pro-activity of the teacher, children, and community.
[edit] Panorama
Mumbai is a big city in Maharashtra state. Its streets are busy with lots of people moving from one place to another, with all kinds of vehicles honking at all times and traveling so close to each other that it seems like at any moment they will collide.
Buildings and shops are all over the island, and the metropolis has outgrown its natural limits and taken over vast expanses of continental land. It's so alive and dynamic.
Around 1.5 to 2 hours away, to the East, is Navi Mumbai, an extension of Mumbai, known as the corporate business area. It is there were the Mumbai Team offices are. Another hour farther East towards Pune is Khairat-Dhangarwada village, in Raigadh district. The monsoon had recently subsided, so once on the highway, the landscape changes from office buildings, production plants, and houses to green fields and hills. After a while, the car takes a two-lane road, and later on, we turn left and take a narrow dirt road. Once the car gets to the end of the road, we get off and walk down a footpath all the way to the village, and to the school.
Khairat is a small village, originated by what once were nomadic tribes, with around 20 houses and 200 people. They settled in that area many years ago, but they still live from their rice crops, chickens, cows, and buffalo.
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The houses I visited were spacious and minimalist in their furniture. A section of each house is for the cattle, and a broad hallway connects it to the other rooms of the house. Most of the houses only have outside doors. Inside, there are doorways between rooms, but no doors to open and close. The kitchen ranges are fired with wood sticks. Water is brought by women from the water pump. The houses usually have a partial second floor (like a loft) where people sleep.
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[edit] Khairat school
Khairat school is a one-room schoolhouse. The land to build it was donated by a villager, who is extremely happy with the idea of having the children of the town educated. I was told that she used to go and help the construction workers with the building of the school. She also came to help organize the digging of the hole for grounding the server. The building itself was sponsored by a villager who has a lot of land in the area. He also supports, on a continual basis, with other items the school needs.
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The schoolhouse is 6 years old. Before, thanks to one of the villagers, classes were given in the front room of his house, which is across the street from where the school stands today. The schoolhouse has three cabinets. The one with glass panes is where the children keep their textbooks, and it also contains reading books that children can grab to read. On the top shelf, there is a statue of Ganesha, to whom every day children bring some fresh flowers. In one corner is the water bucket, glasses, and dishes. On the other, is the raw rice bucket and the server cardboard box that sometimes is a desktop for the teacher and other times a table to drink our milky, sugary Indian tea. This arrangement is recent though, because he volunteered his desk for setting up the server.
A broad black strip is painted horizontally across all the walls, on which varied learning stuff is colorfully sketched with colored chalk, such as the Marathi and English alphabets, the water cycle, Mahatma Gandhi's face, the numbers in Marathi,.... Hanging from the ceiling, there's a fan and a few light-bulbs, which are rarely used because the sunlight that comes in through the door and the three grated windows is enough.
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[edit] The workplace
The first girl to arrive to school early in the morning sweeps the floor. The second girl to arrive helps her remove things from the corners. Other children help by taking out and placing at the entrance two small palm trees they keep inside when the school is closed. The older girls go to the village well for water to refill the water bucket and have water to drink during the day. They also count the rations of rice to be cooked for lunch and take it to the person who will cook it. Three rows are made with mats on the floor. The floor is the seat where the students sit, the surface on which they write, the boundless space they can use to adopt any position they find comfortable as well as to work in pairs or groups, and a classmate—or the teacher—can come and sit next to anyone to help.
There's a plastic chair for the teacher, but when we come, they bring some more from other houses.
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[edit] School hours
Children go to school from Monday to Friday from 10.30 AM to 5.30 PM (having one hour for lunch from 1.45 to 2.45, and they attend also on Saturdays from 8.30 AM to 10 AM.
[edit] Grade levels
The school is multilevel. Children from first to fourth standard take classes in the same classroom with the same teacher. Sometimes they all listen to the same explanation or work on the same assignment, but the teacher usually assigns different tasks to each level, and when the younger ones get stuck and he is busy working with other students, children from third and fourth standard help the first and second standard ones. They learn so much by always being in touch with the 'basics' and previously learned facts, knowledge, or skills, and by teaching others, they reinforce their knowledge. With the XO, they help each other by explaining or by pointing a finger at the screen or keyboard or by checking the work done. And it's not necessarily the older ones who help the younger, nor age or grade level what determines how they group together. You can also see children by themselves, focused on their work, oblivious to what is going on around them, even to what the teacher is saying or doing –and in this case it's totally OK to not pay attention to the teacher.
Although the teacher conducts the activities and is the leader and most knowledgeable one in the room, there reigns an atmosphere of independent work and independent grouping and consultations. The smaller ones are natural scouts and keep on exploring the laptops on their own, and when they find something interesting or need some help, they go to others to show them their findings or be helped out.
[edit] Marathi
The people in the village speak Marathi. The teacher speaks some English too. The children and the villagers talk to me in Marathi. I keep the communication channel open by smiling, which is easy and effective. Amit helps a lot by translating.
Regarding the XOs, the children tell me in Marathi what they want to do or what they can't do as they point their finger here and there. I in turn get across to them by showing and doing on the XOs, or by pointing to objects on the screen and keys on the keyboard, and by simultaneously saying and repeating names and actions in English, or in my few words of Marathi that they and Amit have been teaching me. I rely a lot on their goodwill and the context. Even when English and Marathi are so different, even when the keyboard is in English, even when the interface is in English, even when we don't speak each other's language, and even when they are so new to computers, the XO is so user-friendly that I can manage to get across to them, to show them how to do something with it.
And in little time, and having lots of fun, the children of a completely different language are doing this or that on their XOs.
We manage to communicate sufficiently well like that. But Amit helps me when something is really important, like being careful with the XO power adapters that are loose and that the children time and time again keep on adjusting.
[edit] The teacher
[Implementation of the OLPC learning approach by the teacher.]
The teacher is a very proactive person. He loves learning and is very committed to OLPC. Everyday he comes with a new idea or a new discovery of how the XOs could foster children's learning in a more fun way.
He is fascinated with the laptop and devotes a lot of quality time to the XO within class and after class. He does small XO activities with the children and guides them through the different phases or lets them find their way on their own, depending....
He also looks after his students' laptops. If there's a problem with one, he reports it immediately. He helps get them charged, and the children with no electricity at home get higher priority charging their laptops in class. (Some go to their neighbors to charge their laptop.)
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The teacher also keeps a detailed Journal in a Write file of all the important events since OLPC came to school. He made his student list on the laptop and was appalled when he lost it because we hadn't backed it up on the server. Our fault.
He also likes Etoys to prepare his classes or do projects on it. He takes photos of local views, people, plants and flowers and tags them all. He explores all the software activities and tries to incorporate them to his classes.
The villagers and the sponsors say the teacher is very dedicated and that he's always doing everything he can to give better opportunities to the children.
[edit] Older children, teenagers, and villagers
[Active participation of parents and siblings.]
The first day, which was a Friday, when we were giving a laptop to each child, several children that go to another school farther away because they are older came to Khairat school to help. They helped register the XO serial numbers with the names of the children, ordering them by groups, and handing out the XOs. Afterwards, they also helped look over and try out the laptops with the children. They keep on coming, especially during holidays and Saturdays, but once in a while, some have come even on regular school days. They pay attention when we work with the teacher and especially when we look into Turtle or Etoys. They even participate during the problem solving part of the activity, which helps understand or reinforce understanding.
I don't speak Marathi, but I sense that the villagers support the project, including those that don't have children at the school. And everybody is welcome to come and par