[img_assist|nid=74|title=E-Paati Main Page|desc=|link=node|align=right|width=600|height=384]
OLE Nepal’s first demo of learning activities are out just in time for Dashain. Download them from here (43 MB). To run the demo you must first download and install the Squeak plugin, which is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux. Please download, comment, and enjoy.
This is the Main Page for all activities. We currently only have Grade
2 activities for mathematics and English. We wanted to have a very
simple starting interface to make both the children, parents, and
teachers comfortable. The subjects listed are Nepali, Math, Science,
English, and Library.
The word in Devanagari script at the top is "E-Paati." OLE Nepal’s General Secretary created this term. "Karipaati" means blackboard and we use "E-Paati" to refer to any kind of computer, such as a desktop, laptop, or PDA. OLE Nepal’s unofficial slogan right now is "From Karipaati to E-Paati." We think this slogan expresses that using laptops in schools in simply the next logical step in education. We prefer the E-Paati over "laptop" or "computer" because both are seen as luxuries in Nepal. Karipaatis are not seen as luxuries but essential to education. We hope to convince the Nepali public that in this day in age E-paatis are essential to a quality education.
For the next 10 months we are focused on developing learning activities for Grades 2 & 6 that match the Nepali curriculum. We are working w/ the Nepali govt to make sure that the activities match the learning objectives for these grades. This ensures our activities will be part of an eventual government pilot of OLPC.
[img_assist|nid=76|title=Current Math Activities|desc=|link=node|align=right|width=600|height=384]
Our Education Director, Dr. Saurav Dev Bhatta, instructed the development team to build several learning activities to teach the same concept in several different ways. The activities listed under math test the same kind of problem several different ways. The first activity asks kids to add actualy physical quantities of items, such as 2 flowers + 3 flowers = how many flowers? The second activity uses actual numeric symbols, e.g. 2 +3 = ?
Then we move on to rephrasing the same question as a word problem.
We made these activities somewhat familiar to existing Nepali textbooks. So far, Nepali kids and adults really like them. We hope to build activities that are both constructionist AND make Nepali teachers, officials, parents, and kids comfortable.
[img_assist|nid=77|title=A Word Problem|desc=|link=node|align=right|width=600|height=384]
The OLE Nepal Content Development Team are:
Programming:
Surendra Sedain
Ram Krishna Singh
Luke Gorrie
Graphic Design:
Om Yadav
With continual advice and support from educator Christine Stone and Dr. Saurav Dev Bhatta
We have not licensed these activities yet but we expect to license them under either the BSD License or the Squeak license, which is very similar to BSD. Either way they will be open source. All activities developed by OLE Nepal will be open-source. We have not yet determined the licenses for some of the images used in these activities. Some may be proprietary (we got a few from google images). This is only a demo. After Dashain we will go through and make sure all the images used are open-source.
We welcome contributions and comments. A 10 day Nepali holiday starts today so much of our development team is out trekking in the Himalayas until Oct 29th.
7 responses so far ↓
1 Anonymous // Oct 30, 2007 at 10:33 am
Please do not use the Squeak License. It is not considered an open source license by the free and open source community. The growth of Squeak in the free software world has been crippled by this license, and a promise from Apple to re-license the original core of Squeak away from the Squeak License to BSD was necessary to get Squeak onto the OLPC at all. Software with the Squeak License will never be allowed in Debian, Ubuntu, or most other free software distributions.
There is no advantage whatsoever to your using the Squeak License. It only provides additional legal protections to Apple Computer, which Apple has now acknowledged are completely unnecessary and they no longer require them.
Beyond that, I’m very excited to hear about your work! I just want to make sure it sees the widest audience possible and isn’t hung up on arcane arguments about licensing.
–Tom Hoffman
2 Anonymous // Oct 31, 2007 at 1:48 am
Yes, i second this request. You can use the MIT licence for example.
– Serge Stinckwich
3 Luke // Oct 31, 2007 at 3:27 am
Thanks for the tip! We’ll choose the license that fits in best with the rest of Squeak on the XO and that’ll probably be BSD.
4 uddhab // Nov 10, 2007 at 10:44 am
This learning material is really intuitive. Concept, graphics and presentation are very good.
5 Anonymous // Nov 13, 2007 at 8:00 am
While I agree with Tom that the Squeak License should not be used anymore (indeed, Etoys on OLPC is licensed under Apache 2.0, not SqL), it is FUD that its *only* reason was to protect Apple. It actually required contributors to give back to the community (similar to the GPL), which was a Good Thing. It also allowed for private extensions. Both of these properties were necessary for the original Squeak developers to be employed by Disney while still being allowed to release code to the public (something unheard of before).
All new Squeak code is MIT licensed, which has no such requirements for giving back. I would suggest putting the OLE Nepal activities under MIT only (which is compatible with every other open source license to my knowledge).
- Bert -
6 Anonymous // Dec 20, 2007 at 1:34 pm
Hi Team,
Great new eToys! Congratulations!
I think I’m learning to count in Nepali (Devanagari?) after playing with Puzzle123. At first I thought it was too easy then I tried the one with paints or something colorful (the right most picture). I’m a little color blind and it seemed really hard, but I definitely learned the order of the numbers! BTW I think I solved it but the lines didn’t disappear at the end. Maybe I didn’t solve it or maybe its a bug. Just thought I’d mention it.
I’d love to hear more feedback from the kids and teachers on how they like it.
A couple of suggestions if you have the time and inclination. You could let the kids add their own picture and then use that to make the puzzle. Maybe they could even take a picture with the XO camera and that becomes the puzzle… Another option is to make a painting with the paint tool and let that be the background.
I think that anything you can do to help the kids make the game their own will be useful. Choosing backgrounds and objects is the only concrete idea I have so far. I think the kids will come up with other ideas too once they realize that they can make the XO do what interests them.
Please let us know what feedback you get and how it goes.
Just some thoughts and notes of support. I have no special background in education (aside from my own kids). I appreciate you sharing your work and wanted to send a note of support and solidarity.
Thanks,
Greg S
7 santhapok // Nov 13, 2008 at 10:39 am
hi,
I learning to Nepali(Gorkha) - English speaking
language . I wanted to language book download online.
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