One of the things that initially attracted me to OLPC was that we Nepalis could it make it our own. So often ideas and initiatives that come from the West are pre-packaged and controlled. With XO’s we can localize the Sugar interface, develop activities that accord to our needs and culture, and come up with power solutions that work in our particular environments. One of the key things that we needed to localize was the name of the laptop itself. This has happened in an unexpected manner.

When the concept of One Laptop Per Child was first being introduced and spread in Nepal back in 2006, one question that was discussed regularly in the community was: what should we call the laptops? There is no Nepali word for computer, let alone a laptop. In normal usage, computer is referred as computer written in Devnagari script.

While most people who have come in contact with a computer do have an idea of what the word refers to, we thought that the word does not do justice to the education aspect of the laptops that we were trying to highlight. Besides, the words computer and laptop have technical connotations that make the large non-tech savvy public resist to the OLPC concept at some level. Referring to the laptop as “XO” was acceptable within the OLPC community, but it was too abstract and caused more confusion outside of the community.

Many names were suggested. Some chose to call it Mero Sano Sathi, which literally means “my small friend.” Others believed that it should be a single word, not a phrase like “100 dollar laptop.” Other suggestions included various combinations of Nepali words for book, learning, knowledge, machine, etc. Needless to say, the community could not decide on a single name, although few continued to refer to it as Mero Sano Sathi. For me, this name just did not cut it. OLPC is fundamentally about connecting kids with other kids not about connecting kids to computers. The XO icon emblazoned on top of the XO represents the child’s own agency, not a separate entity.

When Open Learning Exchange Nepal (OLE Nepal) was established, the group decided to give itself the Nepali name Sajha Sikchha E-Paati after much discussion. Sajha in Nepali means open and public. This was important because we believe that quality education should be freely accessible to anyone and everyone. Sikchha means education. Paati in Nepali means a board, and is used in words like Kalopaati (blackboard) and Kharipaati (wooden predecessor of the blackboard). Paati also means a gathering place or public shelter. For our purpose, E-Paati stands for digital or electronic learning platform.

One of OLE Nepal’s main strategies to implement OLPC project in Nepal is to develop interactive digital learning activities based on Nepal’s national curriculum to go with the laptops. These activities are designed with the goal of integrating laptops in daily teaching-learning process in and outside of the classrooms. We called this set of learning activities E-Paati when we developed the first ones back in the fall of 2007.

The second part of our strategy is to ensure that teachers are well prepared to not just use laptops in classrooms, but to use them effectively to deliver quality education to their students. With that in mind, we held an extensive teacher training program that included a four day residential training a month before laptops were deployed at the two test schools. This was followed by a three day onsite program right after deployment in April 2008. Most of the teachers from the poor rural schools had never even used a computer before they came to the residential training.

During the course of the program, the teachers started referring to the laptops as E-Paati. Then it occurred to us that it was an apt name for the laptops. While a community of tech enthusiasts, education specialists, and volunteers had not been able to come up with a Nepali name for the laptops, it was a natural choice for the teachers - the users of the XO’s - who at some time used Kharipaati, and now use Kalopaati in daily classroom teaching. With these laptops, teachers now have a powerful tool that teachers and students in Nepal refer to as E-Paati. Personally, I love the name E-Paati because it connects Nepal’s past with its future.

That left us with the task of finding a different name for our set of digital learning activities. Calling both the laptops and the activities by the same name created confusion in the classroom. For example, when teachers ask students to close their E-Paati, students were confused whether to close the activity or turn off the laptops. It was important to make a clear distinction between the content (activities) and the hardware (laptops).

Once again, many names where suggested, and out of the many great suggestions, we chose to call the learning activities E-Paath as suggested by our Education Director Dr. Saurav Dev Bhatta. For those of you who are still struggling with their Nepali, Paath means lesson. However, we want E-Paath to mean more than just digital lessons. We want it to stand for interactive digital lessons that children find easy and fun to use.

Currently in Nepal, there are two test schools in the outskirts of Kathmandu Valley where 135 students and 20 teachers are blazing the trail to transform education in Nepal using E-Paath on their E-Paati. It makes me proud to see how we have made this project our own - starting from the implementation plan that suits our needs and environment, to the localized content that Nepali children can relate to easily, all the way to the names that reflect the noble- yet intimately local - initiative.

Last week, I spent a fair amount of time stumbling through the various available methods for reading on a computer. Our current method is that of the .pdf. Well, if your are at all like me, you hate reading a .pdf soft-copy. I always end up printing the damn thing, so I can sit down and mark it up. This option obviously won’t work in Nepali schools, because they don’t have access to a printer, and even if they did, it would not be cost effective.

In searching for a reasonable alternative to .pdfs, I came across a few “flip-books,” and a decent program called Sophie. The flip-books were pretty cool, although they do tend to lag pretty severely on the XO, and there is occasionally significant quality loss when converting from .pdf to the flip-book. Incidentally, this is the same issue I had with Sophie. What lies at the root of the problem is transference of Nepali characters. I for one do not have the ability to understand the characters, however, even if I did, the process of re-typing the characters of a page into Sophie would be far too time consuming.

So what does that leave us with? Well the flip-book’s look pretty authentic, and there may be some potential partnerships for acquiring content, but for the immediate future we are left with existing formating. I conducted a comparison of features between Sophie and Adobe, and here are the results:

Reader Comparison

Author Comparison

So as you can probably see, there are some issues with Sophie, especially due to the fact that is very much a beta package, and there are many platform kinks still needing to be worked out. Sophie actually worked great on my mac, but this does little to help with the XO, or with creating docs. None-the-less, it appears that for the time being, .pdf will have to be the answer for Pustakalaya (the e-library).

We are exploring the use of other options, but for now, I hope you can enjoy our observations.

Doug

Bernie Innocenti arrived in Kathmandu a week ago and he has changed the OLE Nepal office in so many ways. For one thing, this guy knows linux inside and out, in so much more depth than anyone else on the team. He has already made a big impact on the sysadmin team by showing us how to set up LVM RAID 1 for our E-Pustakalaya (E-Library). He is teaching us about Sugar and helping us optimize our activity performance.

Sometimes, I get the impression that Bernie can do anything and knows everything about linux. Yesterday, I had a problem with Apache and I told Sulo “I was going to consult with the Oracle,” Bernie.

He not only is darn helpful but is a super nice guy. It truly is a pleasure to have him hear. The guys in the office are already trying to figure out how to match him with Miss Nepal 2007 so he will stay here longer. Word on the street is that she likes Linux and C

This week, Bernie Innocenti, Sunil Pokhrel, and Uttam Sharma joined the OLE Nepal Community. They are all extremely talented in their various fields, and welcome additions to OLE Nepal.

Bernie, as you may be able to tell from his last name, is from Florence, Italy. Bernie is a self-described geek, and will be with us until the end of August.

Bernie is something of a computer guru, and admits that computers are his life. He enjoys breaking computers (hopefully only his own), only because he likes to fix them afterwards. Beyond his talents with hardware, Bernie is also a programmer. While he likes all programming languages, when forced to choose one, he chose C as his favorite. This week, Bryan has been especially thankful to have his help with RAID.

During his time here, Bernie hopes to help build a bridge between real-world deployments and sugar developers. In his free-time, Bernie likes traveling around the world (and has actually traveled all the way around the world), both as a volunteer and for fun.

Sunil is from Lubhu, Shankadevi, Lalitpur, Nepal. He attended St. Xaviers in Kathmandu, and has spent the last eight years teaching classes 7-11 in Nepal. While here, Sunil will develop activities and curriculum for the software developers to create for the XO. He hopes to contribute good activities for poor Nepali kids, and is very interested in showing the benefits of OLPC and ICT education deployments.

In his free-time, Sunil enjoys hiking and walks with his son, Subodh. He is married to Kabita Pokhrel.

Last, but not least, Uttam, who is from Pokhara, Nepal, comes to us from the University of Minnesota. He earned a Bachelors Degree from Brandeis University in Massachusetts, a Masters from the University of Maryland, and is currently a Doctoral Candidate at the University of Minnesota, in the field of Applied Economics. Uttan will be conducting an evaluation of the initial deployment at the two pilot schools during the next two months. While here, Uttam hopes to gain a better understanding of how the OLE deployment is working, how it is percieved from within and without the program, and which areas are in need of attention.

In his free-time, Uttam enjoys surfing the internet when not studying.

-Doug

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Yesterday I decided to share with the team an overview of a Wired and Wireless Network and how certain loopholes in them can pose a threat to our data and confidential information. Due to lack of time I could not cover, “How to secure the network from such vulnerabilities” Which I hope to cover another time along with Web Server Security.

Below are the topics that were covered during the presentation.

Network Analyzer and Sniffers:
An overview of Wired and Wireless Networks & key distinctions between them.
Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) on wireless networks.
Gateways and Routers.
Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) and how ARP requests could be re-routed to a specific MAC.
Mac Cloning, Ip Spoofing.
Creation of fake RSA certification for a MITM (Man in the middle) attack.
MITM attack with ARP poisoning and Denial of Service (DOS).
Decryption SSL dumps.
DEMO given on the above, to read captured passwords from a live ssl session over Wired/Wireless Network.

Remote administration tools:
Trojans.
DLL injection.
Firewall bypassing methods even over NAT.
Key-loggers.
Browser Hi-jacker.
Anti-virus bypassing methods with the use of Compilers, Packers and Compressors.
Anti-virus Signatures.
Demo given with a Yahoo IM Trojan with DLL injection capabilities and how confidential information could be retrieved without the user knowing off it.

Later had a feedback from the guys, that they had thoroughly enjoyed the presentation and were looking forward to more of such stuff in the future.

Background

For the past three weeks, I have explored the programs Scratch and E-Toys. While both programs provide the user the ability to write various programs, it is my impression that Scratch is far more intuitive, user friendly, and has greater accessibility to a larger set of tools.

While the most apparent uses for Scratch include the creation of geometric figures, a program demonstrating gravity, and other mathematical/scientific applications, there are also some secondary uses/benefits.

One such example is highlighted in the essay titled “Creative Coding: Programming for Personal Expression.” The primary argument made by the authors, Kylie Peppler and Yasmin Kafai, is that “Here, we argue that it’s not just in the viewing or playing of digital media but also in the constructive – or coding – experience through which connections to art can be established.” For them the less traditional use is more preferable: “even when computer science is a part of the traditional curriculum, programming projects tend to focus on mathematical and science content.” Furthermore, their essay acknowledges that, as is the case with OLE Nepal and the OLPC model, little evidence exists demonstrating the benefits of ICT in education. One result of this is that little documentation exists clearly explaining how to use computers in education.

The potential of getting youth interested in technology has not been realized in computer science nor in arts classes, representing a missed opportunity for arts education especially since many involved in changing the absence of women and minorities in information technologies have argued for alternative approaches in computer classes to broaden participation.

Clearly, our focus with the OLPC model is not to educate students as technology experts, however, the correctly designed curriculum will provide ICT literacy, while filling a much needed gap in available learning tools, in addition to providing a “virtual laboratory.” Where Epaati is the digital textbook, Scratch will serve as the “virtual laboratory.” In addition to mathematical and scientific uses, Scratch will provide an additional medium for student collaboration and an potentially infinite source for creative outlet.

Before continuing into proposed uses, I would like to elaborate on student collaboration, and how Scratch can provide a unique medium for increased collaboration. In his article titled “Astounded in Arahuay”, Ivan Krstic discusses a trip to Arahuay Peru to observe the outcomes at one of the Peruvian Pilot schools. The administrators told him the three greatest benefits of using the XO:

The second thing, Mrs. Cornejo jumped in, is that the kids used to be pretty selfish, an unsurprising consequence of the abject poverty in much of Peru. It’s not that the kids are starving, it’s just that they don’t have very much; what they do have, they’re reluctant to share. With the laptops, the kids had to turn to each other to learn how to use them. Then they realized it was easy to send each other pictures and things they’ve written — and it became commonplace. The sharing, asserts Mrs. Cornejo, extended into the physical world, where once jealously-guarded personal items increasingly started being passed around between the kids, if somewhat nervously.

With Scratch, collaboration comes through the sharing of programs, which can do everything from draw a square to run a short film, all created by the user with fairly limited training.

Strategy

So how do we best utilize the features of Scratch to supplement the sub-projects already being undertaken by OLE Nepal? The first, and most clearly defined, is through the creation of activities designed to complement the learning objectives in any given class(grade). For Class 2 this could include drawing geometric shapes and showing the relationship between different areas. For Class 6, applications could include experimenting with lines, creating mazes, and drawing parabolas.

Outside of these areas, there are scientific possibilities as well, including programs that show the spread of disease, or short films explaining specific areas researched by students. For instance, each student in a class could be assigned a vocabulary word to define graphically with a Scratch video. Through this collaboration, each student would then have access to a graphical definition of all vocab words, all the while becoming more computer literate as an added bonus.

One item of critical importance is that the concentration in using Scratch focus on the applicable lesson, and not on program issues within Scratch. To prevent the focus from shifting to Scratch, it is therefore necessary to develop Scratch lesson plans that will gradually teach the students more about how to use Scratch as they progress from one year to the next. Fortunately it is this area that has the most accessible existing material.

For our part, to make Scratch a successfully usable tool, we will have to pair clear lesson plans with learning goals from each year, taking the burden off of the teachers, and giving them another tool, albeit a relatively robust one.

Implementation

To transform the potential of Scratch into a reality, there are several steps which need to happen.

The first step involves the creation of graduated Scratch lessons, comprehensive enough to ensure that any lesson plans undertaken in any given year are easily achievable from a programming standpoint.

The second step involves the creation of lesson plans for Classes 2 and 6, as quickly as possible. Additional classes can be added as required, however, OLE Nepal’s goal should be to complete these lesson plans before they become necessary.

The final necessary step involves the creation of a location for publishing, storing lesson plans. My inclination is through the creation of a wiki, because this would enable collaboration from abroad, and add depth to our lesson plans.

Conclusion

Scratch is unquestionable superior to E-toys. That schools in Nepal lack access to laboratories is a problem. Fortunately, Scratch is an easily accessible solution to this problem. It will take some work to turn the potential of Scratch into a reality, but my feeling is that the benefits far outweigh the costs, both directly through lesson related material and indirectly through secondary benefits ranging from artistic expression and collaboration, to improved ICT literacy and introduction to computer programming.

Yesterday, I had an opportunity to read an Academic Commentary by our Education Director, Dr. Saurav Dev Bhatta titled “Tackling the Problems of Quality and Disparity in Nepal’s School - Education: The OLPC Model.” While I had developed a relative comprehension of the OLE Nepal project, Dr. Bhatta’s article truly captured the project, providing the necessary context for it to make sense. The article is quite comprehensive, and while I highly recommend you read it in entirety, I will summarize a few key points below.

Four crucial changes taking place globally and nationally make this the right time for Nepal to leap into the world of ICT-based education. The first is the increasing integration of national economies in a global economy that is “high speed, knowledge driven, and competitive…” The second is the progressive increase in quality and rapid decline in price of computers and other ICT hardware…The third is the declining cost and continuing expansion of the internet, which is making it increasingly feasible for people in poorer countries to have access to up-to-date information from all over the world. And the fourth is the continuing expansion of a global community dedicated to contributing open-source software and open content digital materials for public use.

pg. 4

 Effective use of ICT in education means, among other things, creating adequate digital content for schooling purposes and integrating it in the regular teaching learning process.

pg. 9

It needs to be emphasized that one key difference between traditional approaches to educational quality enhancement and the ICT-based approach is that the latter puts special emphasis on the student-level processes…Thus a notable virtue of using the ICT-based teaching-learning approach is that it prepares individuals to “fish on their own” rather than simply “teach them to eat the fish someone else has caught for them.”

pg. 9

If we want to make a significant impact on the education sector using the OLPC model, the distribution of laptops to children must be accompanied by careful planning and implementation in four key areas: (i) development of digital educational content, (ii) training of teachers to integrate ICT-based educational materials in the teaching-learning process, (iii) design and installation of supporting network and power infrastructure, and (iv) development of the government’s capacity in the above three areas.

pg. 13

It is important to point out that project evaluation should be an integral component of both the test phase and pilot phase and should be done periodically during the lifetime of the entire project.

pg. 18

This commentary has attempted to dispel some of the main misconceptions about the OLPC concept and discussed how the OLPC model can be systematically and effectively implemented in Nepal. It has suggested that Nepal is already ahead of most other countries in developing and testing a viable approach for implementing the OLPC concept. And that the test sot far has yielded encouraging results.

It is not yet clear whether the OLPC project will yield enough benefits to justify the expected increase in education expenditure associated with the project. This issue can only be resolved through a careful evaluation of a comprehensive OLPC pilot project.

pg. 25

I cannot emphasize enough how critical I think the message of Dr. Bhatta’s commentary is. There were many numbers and models presented which clearly demonstrate that while Nepal has come a long way, it still has further to go. Furthermore, I have long believed in Education as one of the primary solutions to problems faced by developing countries. My belief in education developed first through my upbringing. I am the fortunate recipient of an upbringing by two highly educated individuals that place great emphasis on education (my mother completed post-graduate work in education and my father who completed everything but his dissertation for a PhD in Rhetoric is a college professor).

This value in education was re-enforced by my high-school Anatomy and Physiology teacher Mr. Winstead who told us before every test “Today you will be taking two tests. The first is on this course. The second, and more important, is a test of honesty. While I care about your comprehension of the course material, I care far greater that you are honest and that you internalize that education is not about specifics, but about learning how to learn. Good luck!” Twelve years later, I have not forgotten, nor will I ever forget this lesson. It is quite apparent that at some point Dr. Bhatta learned this same lesson. It was his emphasis on “preparing individuals to ‘fish on their own’” that spoke to me most.

I am a somewhat confused individual, confused meaning that I haven’t quite figured out what to do with my life. I do, however, love education, and it is quite possible that this summer with OLE Nepal could have a greater impact on my life than I could ever have predicted. The main reason being that Education is so important - more specifically that the OLPC model opens up this global problem to monumental possibilities.

I hope you can find the time to read this outstanding assessment of the OLPC model, and it’s specific applicability in Nepal. You can find the article here.