Core Group Meeting - New Delhi / 18-21st October 2011

A DE Core Group Meeting was held in New Delhi, from the 18th - 21st Of October 2011. All the State Program Managers and selected Regional Coordinators attended the meeting apart from the Director DE Program. Country Director, AIFT and the Accounts Team were the special attendees while Prof. Dr. Rajaram, Joint Director, CIET, NCERT attended as an external speaker. The following agenda items were taken as part of the meeting:

• Planning for DE expansion under LSP 
• Extension of Full Service for 2 more years 
• Pro-active approach towards Gender 
• Increasing the over all DE tenure rationale
• Induction and Orientation Module for fresh team members
• Additional content for ILTM 
• DE Blog
• Donor Reports
• Dell Program
• Laptops for coordinators
• Projectors for Schools (Top 25% max in first phase)
• Key Drivers for 2011
• Review of various deliverables of the team as set in Feb 2011
• DSTs for DE Program
• Discussion on Indicators
• Decreasing the number of days from 6 to 5 for DE Coordinators

ICT Workshop CIET, NCERT New Delhi

      I just came back after attending a two day ICT workshop for Secretaries, Directors, ICT Coordinators etc. organized by CIET, NCERT New Delhi. It was a good experience to see the state representatives making their presentations on the status of the CAL initiatives in their respective states. 
Some of the presentations like those of Gujrat and Punjab were pretty interesting. Presentations by Dr. Rajaram, Joint Director, CIET, Prof Pant were interesting and thought provoking. They put things in perspective - especially the fact that the BOOT model has served its purpose, especially deepening the reach of hardware as far as the schools are concerned. This was the first generation of the so called CAL programs. 


The time has now come for the second generation programs, which is system embedded and based on the "Total Cost of Ownership." The focus should be more on the effective integration of technology in teaching rather than hardware procurement - a shift from procurement to an output oriented model. 

      My own observations based on the two day deliberations are mentioned below:

• Boot model which is currently considered as the most popular approach to computerization of schools, in a majority of the states, has failed to achieve the expected results. It has resulted in a monopoly situation whereby selected vendors are working in a majority of the states. This has in turn led to a lack of freedom of choice on the part of the customer – the schools, teachers, students et al as far as the basic requirements are concerned – be it resource persons (who are at best hardware mechanics) or content is concerned.
• This in turn is symptomatic of a deep seated malaise, which is systemic in nature – over emphasis on a procurement model rather than an output oriented model. Thus one finds a proliferation of high power purchase committee’s which endlessly deliberates on the configuration of the hardware to be procured, tender process to be followed, utilization certificates to be sent rather than the training requirements of the teachers, training modules and approach to preparing the same (top down or a cafeteria approach), mentoring, monitoring and evaluation etc.
• A system wide approach designed to extract the full impact of employing ICT in schools, is the need of the hour. A system wide approach takes into account the total cost of ownership, which includesthe long term costs of purchasing, deploying and maintaining ICTs, costs for replacements, disposal or even operating costs for refresher training, maintenance and technical support etc.
• The boot model has served its purpose of increasing hardware coverage to schools and the time is now ripe for a switch over to the second generation CAL programs – focusing on a more effective and appropriate integration of technology in teaching learning. 

My Field Trips

Recently, I have started to visit a number of schools in the Cuttack and Kendrapara districts. Though not without their bumps and rough edges, the visits have been interesting and informative.

I began the process a number of weeks ago by drafting a theory of change model with the staff (as a group). After making changes and finalizing the logic model, we settled on a process evaluation as the most appropriate type of evaluation for this stage of the program (given the fact that it is too early to carry out an impact evaluation). Last Saturday, I began systematic school visits.

At the schools, I am conducting focus groups and observing classes taught by teachers who have undergone training. One of the biggest hurdles thus far has been the language barrier during the focus groups. Since I unfortunately do not speak Oriya and many teachers are unaccustomed to an American accent, I spend several minutes simply trying to communicate the question. Thus, I have come up with a few strategies intended to make the focus group process a little bit smoother, such as translating questions in Oriya and handing them out to teachers.

Despite the communication gap, I have gleaned quite useful information from the focus groups.

Marina Yakhnis,

Clinton Fellow, (AMAT)

DE Orissa

DE Team Outing

A outing for the team members was held recently on the 9th of October in Kenduli. Marina, the AIF Clinton Fellow, accompanied the team members. 

The team visited Kenduli, located at a distance of 25 kms from Bhubaneshwar and spent a very relaxed day enjoying the delicious food cooked by Soumya and Sanjaya.

DE-MAST / Stewart School

A meeting between AIF and the Stewart School Management was held on the 14th of October 2011, in Stewart School. The meeting focused on the nuts and bolts of starting a DE-Mast Centre in the school premises, leveraging the DELL lab, which has been recently set up by AIF, with a funding support from the Jain family. 

The meeting was a successful one and concluded on a very positive note. It was decided that AIF will implement the MAST program in Stewart School and as a part of that will be implementing some of its well known and popular courses such as ITES, Retail, Plumbing, Fitter etc. The ITES course, which will make use of the high-end DELL lab will start in a months time and all the formalities such as the signing of the MoU will be completed,  by then. 

This will be the first MAST Centre to be set up and run by AIF in Orissa. The courses will be run by Aide-et-Action, our implementation partners.

Visit to Ghatipari High School, Ganjam

I had an opportunity to visit Ghatipari High School, located at a distance of about 25 kms from Berhampur, recently. Marina Yakhnis, AMAT supported, Clinton Fellow, DE Orissa accompanied me on this visit. The excitement in the atmosphere was palpable, due to the presence of a foreigner in their midst. Although the Headmaster was retiring the very next day and had a lot of tasks to complete - related to the transition, still he was kind enough to spend some quality time with us. I had the opportunity to interact with most of the teachers, who had undergone training in DPIASE, Berhampur (training center) and was glad to know that the training was useful and they enjoyed the entire time they spent, at the training centre. Shanti Bhushan Padhi, the trainer in DPIASE, got a lot of accolades from the teachers for his creative approach and interesting examples related to the training. 

The most interesting and gratifying thing to know from the teachers was that the training and the EDU-KIT provided by us motivated them to make a use of computers, once they returned from their training. I was even lucky enough to observe a lab transaction - a teacher teaching about the circulatory system using computers with the aid of EDU-KIT. An interaction with the students and the teacher proved beyond doubt that using animations, multimedia etc. were proving to be useful as far as clarity on fundamentals was concerned. Although like any rural school in India there were day to day problems to contend with, I felt that the spirit and enthusiasm which was displayed by both the teachers as well as the students, will make them overcome day to day problems as far as effective and appropriate integration of technology in teaching learning is concerned.

Subrat Sarkar
State Project Manager
Digital Equalizer Programme
Odisha

Project Evaluation Committee Meeting - Sambalpur

The project evaluation committee meeting for Sambalpur and Bargarh district, was held recently in PMIASE, Sambalpur. 

 

Selected projects from different DE schools, were presented to the committee for evaluation.The initial screening / filtering had been done at the school level, by the school level evaluation committee, comprising of selected teachers.

DE Review-Cum-Refresher

 

A two day DE Review-Cum-Refresher, was held in Gopalur-on-Sea, recently. It was attaended by all the team members, including the Clinton Fellow, Marina Yakhnis, who has joined the DE Orissa Team, as a monitoring and evaluation expert.

 

The meeting focused on monitoring and evaluation issues, apart from a status update from each of the district presented by the district teams, comprising of the trainers and the monitoring experts. A brain storming session, was conducted with all the team members, with the objective of developing a logic model for the DE Orissa Program.

DE Team Outing

Recently the Orissa DE Team had an outing and visited Kenduli, the birthplace of Jayadeva, the famous poet and author of "Geeta Govinda." 

Kenduli is located at a distance of 25 kms from Bhubaneshwar, and the drive is through exquisite natural surroundings.

For around 10 kms the drive is alongside River Kuakhai. Kenduli had long been considered as the birthplace of the poet Jayadeva, who had composed Gita Govinda in Sanskrit

Visiting My First Indian School

Last week, I visited a rural Indian school for the first time in order to get a better understanding of how schools operate in smaller communities. When we arrived, the school was abuzz with activity in anticipation of the Headmaster’s retirement. Nonetheless, the Headmaster and several teachers greeted us and showed us around.

While conversing with the teachers, I learned that before they had undergone the DE training, many were scared to turn on their home computers. They also informed me that with the help of Microsoft Excel, which the school had recently started to use, many administrative tasks could now be done in a matter of hours as opposed to days.

The highlight of the visit was observing a lesson and speaking to students. The teacher spoke about the functions and anatomy of the heart with the help of PowerPoint slides, and concepts that were difficult to explain were taught with the help of visual and interactive material.

No matter how innovative a program and how effective the training, however, basic infrastructure sometimes gets in the way. Ultimately, as with so many other places in Orissa state during the Puja season, the school experienced a power cut which, unfortunately, also cut the anatomy lesson short.

My conversation with the students made it clear, however, that rural India would not be beholden to infrastructural problems for long. One boy, for example, barely knew Microsoft Word, PowerPoint or Excel, but he did teach himself how to use the internet on a mobile phone. As the digital age progresses, it will be interesting to observe how technology and human innovation bypass previously insurmountable problems.
Marina Yakhnis
Clinton Fellow, (AMAT Funded) DE Orissa