ECTAL Plan Aug 2004

The proposal for Educational Content Development for Technology Aided Learning is documented here. Note unlike other project proposal this proposal is not an annual proposal. This is an ongoing proposal. The expenses for the project to develop 250 lessons is budgeted here. The time taken to develop these 250 lessons is not expected to alter the budget for this project. Therefore the proposal would remain current (with updates as required) until the 250 lessons are developed.

1. What would be developed as part of ECTAL?

Lakshmi and team have identified materials to address hotspots (or tough lessons) for the various classes. Based on preliminary study she expects there to be about 20 lessons for 3rd standard (i.e. about 4 lessons per subject), about 25 for 4th standard and so on to about 50 lessons for 10th standard. So the total for all classes would come to between 250 and 300 lessons. It would make sense to develop these first and then concentrate on the other lessons (say next year). There would also be other contents like for instance examination tutorials like the one Nlogue has been working on. We can look into these for the next year. Anyway OMHS is also working with Nlogue on some of these things.

2. Plans for developing the same.

Teachers of OMHS are already working on developing some of these lessons. Ten lessons are already ready for us to take a look at. Several factors weigh in favour of out using OMHS resources to develop these contents,

• OMHS won the Intel award for innovative use of technology in learning.
• Another OMHS teacher recently won a prize for creating the best lesson in Maths.
• We have Lakshmi to manage the teachers in developing the contents.
• Asha has already contributed couple of computers to OMHS and has a history of working with OMHS.
• OMHS teachers have good knowledge of Tamil and have been teaching Tamil medium which is the medium in which we want to develop the contents.

Therefore the idea is to use around 5 teachers from OMHS and some more teachers from outside (including Balatripurasundari and other teachers Lakshmi has come to know from Kalvi Kanini Kalanjiyam, an organisation to promote use of computers in education).

Once the contents are developed it would be vetted through a panel of evaluators that Asha should select. These can include experts in education like Lakshmi herself, couple of schools which would be our guniea pigs (Urur Olcott School, Udhavum Karangal (?), Mutha), expert in the subject but not in teaching (like ourselves, Asha Sanjay, etc.). 

Once the contents are vetted they will be ready for dissemination.

 
3. Plans for diseminating the contents developed.

We plan to disseminate in the form of CDs. The media is dirt cheap these days and OMHS has a CD writer. 

Asha needs to identify the broader list of schools to which these contents may be disseminated. We may also include corporation schools in this list given that we are going to be interacting with them closely as part of the ongoing Citizen's Forum work.

We need to streamline the process of vetting and the process of disseminating to schools. Then on we can deliver new lessons on a monthly basis. The idea would be to deliver each month the lessons that teachers would typically take the following month.

4. Cost of the project.

The estimates are still somewhat preliminary. We initially wondered whether to pay a flat per month honorarium to the teachers participating in this effort or should we pay a per lesson fee. We are currently leaning towards a per lesson fee. We think about Rs. 300 per lesson would be reasonable given that a teacher would be able to make about 2 lessons a month if he or she works hard at this. Note this would be the final vetted version of the lesson. i.e. The teacher's effort required to correct the mistakes in the lessons is also included in this fee.

The key thing to note is that for a cost that is about the same as what we would pay to Schoolnet for the three schools we have worked with (Ramakrishna Vidya Niketan (Udhavum Karangal), OMHS and Urur Olcott School) in one year we will have our own contents which would be more useful for Tamil medium schools. This would be done in one year.

5. Current Status of the project 

We have 46 lessons in the ready created state. We are to get them vetted with some experts, before coming out with next CD ECTAL-3 containing the earlier lessons and the new ones. 

There are about 25 lessons in the process of being made. 

We have made good use of the digital camera getting pictures for the lessons in science and geography. The scanner has been very useful in the History area where drawings and maps add value to the lessons. Some children and some teachers have drawn for these lessons.

The State textbooks for Std 10 and Std 7 have changed. We are creating lessons for Std 10. We wish to have quick revision lessons in English grammar, science, geography and Maths by December so that these can be made available to schools in time for the pre-final exams starting January 2005. 

We expect to complete the target of 250 lessons by the end of the academic year 2004-2005.

Funding received = Rs 60,500 (Rs 59,000 from Cairn Energy)

6. Sustainability and Future Goals of the Project

There are several open questions about the project. 

1. The quality of the lessons (not in terms of contents but in terms of “attractiveness or appeal”) are not at the same level of private content providers like Schoolnet or EduComp. Currently we are focusing more on getting practical/useable contents for Tamil medium schools. These do not exist and even whatever exists (which is in English) is too costly. We are not focusing on creating something that rich private schools would also like to use. Therefore our ability to make money off of this product and thus making it sustainable is limited.
2. The contents developed are contents that a teacher would use as a teaching aid in a classroom. This is as opposed to contents which a child can use on his own or her own to learn. Once again this is a choice we have made which we should continue thinking over.

It is my opinion that, while these are things to think about in the context of the long term vision for this project, we should not let these hold up the effort already underway.