Innovation in Education

Since its inception in 2005, the One Laptop Per Child Program (OLPC) with its $200 XO laptop has simultaneously sparked excitement and hype as well as controversy, particularly within the realm of educational discourse. After all, in OLPC chairman Nicholas Negroponte’s own words, “It’s not a laptop project. It’s an education project.” In Nepal, Open Learning Exchange Nepal (OLE Nepal) has created its own model. Instead of simply distributing XO laptops to children, the organization has taken matters a step further by creating original digital learning activities directly supplementing the current national educational curriculum, training teachers to use the new resources to best effect and creating a digital library with a wide range of educational materials before finally distributing the laptops in public schools all over the country. What they are doing in Nepal, in the systematic manner that it is being done, in conjunction with the government, is the first project of its kind and its success could inspire countries around the world to adapt the model to fit their own requirements.

With the start of the new academic year, OLE Nepal is in the midst of deploying nearly 1800 laptops in 26 schools in 6 districts around the country. The deployment was preceded by a series of district-based teacher training program on the basic functionalities of the laptop and how best to use it within a classroom. A detailed teacher-training guide as well as individual lesson plans and guidelines are available for teachers for each of the learning activities known as E-Paath (try E-Paath online or by downloading at: http://www.olenepal.org/e_paath.html). The laptop and the digital activities in no way intend to replace regular teaching but to complement it instead. E-Paath consists of both lessons and exercises. Students can use the lessons to revisit a lesson already taught by a teacher and use the exercises to deepen their understanding of the material studied. The machine, tailor made to fit educational needs, encourages ‘active learning’ drawing children and teachers away from traditional rote learning methods to learning by doing, hearing and seeing.

OLE Nepal has also created a digital library, E-Pustakalaya (www.pustakalaya.org), which adds an entirely different dimension to the work it is doing. In addition to allowing children to visualize what they’re learning, with E-Paath, the library provides children with a repository of information (materials on health, the environment, education, literature, etc) that they can visit and revisit searching for and reading up on topics that may interest them, ultimately helping them become independent critical thinkers and information seekers.

It is natural for some people to be skeptical about something so new and seemingly counter intuitive; how can spending money on laptops be justified in developing countries where basic needs, like food and clothing, aren’t being met? The initial investments in laptops may seem extravagant and unjustified at first, but on closer inspection it is clear that the possibilities for information sharing and empowerment are limitless. The potential achievements of a program like this reminds us of the old adage “give a man a fish, feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and feed him for a lifetime.” Education is undoubtedly an integral part of all development models today. Even the biggest critics of formal education would be hard pressed to argue that education in some form is not essential for development. If education is so essential, then logic demands that giving the very best education possible must be a priority for effective development. The model being implemented by OLE Nepal both bolsters the current education system as well as aims to bridge the gap in access to information between different socio-economic realities. The success of the project will bring the students from different backgrounds in Nepal to a much more level playing field than before. If we are to make progress in leaps and bounds, we must focus on treating problems rather than just washing away the symptoms and this project aims to do just that.

Astha Thapa

This article is from the June issue of UNWO’s The Mirror.

Open Learning Exchange Nepal (OLE Nepal) began the first part of training teachers to integrate E-Paati (XO laptops) in classroom teaching-learning process by conducting a four day training workshop on March 22-25, 2009. This training was designed to train master trainers from the Ministry of Education’s teaching training body, the National Center for Education Development (NCED), for the next round of OLPC laptop deployment planned for April 2009. The training covered a wide range of topics including IT literacy, classroom arrangement and management, challenges in using laptops in the classroom, maximizing use of laptops both at home and school, non-technical issues and their possible solutions, parents and community awareness, etc. The workshop was conducted at NCED’s training center in Sano Thimi. The fifteen participants included five trainers from NCED’s central office, as well as four Education Training Centers (ETCs). Program Officers from four District Education Offices also participated in the workshop. These trainers will go out to the pilot districts to train teachers of the schools where the XO laptops will be distributed.
The first day of the training started with an opening speech by Rabi Karmacharya, the Executive Director of OLE Nepal. He gave an overview of OLE Nepal’s mission, strategy, goal and the status of its continual effort to integrate ICT based teaching-learning method in Nepal’s education system. That was followed by remarks from Mr. Mahashram Sharma, Director General of Department of Education (DoE), who highlighted on the role that the OLPC project can play in improving the standard of education in Nepal. He also applauded OLE Nepal’s exemplary work in this area. Finally, Mr. Harka Prasad Shrestha, Executive Director of NCED thanked everyone involved in the process and hoped that this training program is the first step in building NCED’s capacity to train teachers in ICT-based education approach.
The exposure to E-Paati and its activities were a novelty for the participants. For many, it was the first time that they saw the laptop. They were also amazed to see the variety of things that could be done in such a small machine. All participants agreed that this initiative has the potential to bring a revolution in education by improving quality of and access to education materials.
Dr. Saurav Dev Bhatta, Education Director of OLE Nepal, who was also the heart and soul of this workshop, conducted the major parts putting strong emphasis on how this training should be delivered to the teachers.
OLE Nepal had prepared a training manual with help from trainers from NCED, DoE officials, and teachers from the current test schools. A copy of the training manual was given to each participant. By the end of the workshop, participants had read through the manual and discussed its strengths and weaknesses. Their feedback was taken positively and necessary amendments were made before it was made ready for the seven day residential training for the teachers of our pilot schools. Most participants commented that this training manual followed a new modality that was very effective and should become NCED’s standard training manual on ICT-based education. They also expressed the opinion that the training program should be turned into one of the standard training programs that NCED offers to public school teachers all over the country.
This workshop ended on March 25, and after a one day break these participants joined the residential training for teachers from the pilot schools in Kavre district. During this seven day training program, the master trainers are expected to get a firsthand exposure on how to train teachers to implement the processes outlined in the manual. This training is currently being held at Malpi International School, Panauti. In addition to observing the training sessions for the seventeen teachers from three pilot schools of Kavre district, the trainers are also participating actively by conducting at least couple sessions a day. This time, the work load has been divided among the trainers from NCED and the OLE trainers. The NCED trainers are doing a good job by trying to show the connection between child centric education philosophy, learning styles and the E-Paath activities.
It is encouraging to see that eight of these enthusiastic teachers from Kavre district are female and despite their family responsibilities, they have opted to join this training. Two of them have little children and one is in her later stage of pregnancy. Four of these female teachers come from Jana Jyoti school where XO laptops had already been distributed last year. The teachers said that this was the first time they learned how to open the laptops. They commented that they did not know children could have learned so much using these laptops. Although they had taken a long time before deciding to join this training, they do not have second thoughts about their decision. They now feel that the laptops from last year that were being stored in children’s houses will now come to life.

Open Learning Exchange (OLE) Nepal has been working on its digital library, E-Pustakalaya, since summer 2008. Several accomplishments have been made and E-Pustakalaya (www.pustakalaya.org) has now been launched publicly with some basic features and content; more content as well as features will be added in the future.

The Nepal Library Foundation (NLF), Canada, who assist the Non -Resident Nepali Association to implement their Public Libraries Project, initially provided OLE Nepal with a start up fund to maintain E-Pustakalaya as a robust and publicly available website. This fund had been instrumental in helping OLE Nepal to purchase a server for E-Pustakalaya. Starting January 2009, NLF extended its support to hire two full time staff to work on content acquisition for E-Pustakalaya. The two E-Pustakalaya coordinators have been in touch with many authors, publishers, news agencies and other relevant organisations to solicit material and are working on setting up an editorial board as well as on constantly acquiring new material. In the process of acquiring content for the digital library, OLE Nepal has already established official partnerships with a number of organisations including Room to Read, Save the Children, Madan Puraskar Pustakalaya, Rato Bangala Foundation and World Education Nepal. OLE Nepal is currently in the process of forming a partnership with Nepal Water Conservation Foundation as well.

In April 2009, OLE Nepal will launch the pilot phase of the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) programme in over 25 schools in six districts in the country. This will greatly expand the reach and readership of E-Pustakalaya and we hope to get very useful feedback from these schools. Children using the laptops can access E-Pustakalaya through the intranet that OLE Nepal’s network team is setting up at the schools. The teacher-training programme conducted for the teachers from the pilot schools will include training pertaining specifically to E-Pustakalaya. This training will not just educate teachers on the basic functionalities of the digital library, but will also train them to use the material more creatively within their classrooms.

On the technical side, E-Pustakalaya is using two pieces of software: Fedora Commons and Fez. Fedora Commons is the library engine that forms the back-end of the library. This part of E-Pustakalaya has not been modified much and is consistent throughout. The second software, that forms the front-end of Fedora Commons, is called Fez. This front-end, compared to its back-end counterpart, has been heavily modified to make it more user-friendly and to meet the needs of the kind of library we are striving to create.

Various features of the library are already in place and several others are being worked on and will be added in the near future. Some of the features that already exist include one where users can sign up to become registered users and use features that are otherwise not accessible. The bookmark feature is the only feature enabled at the moment, which only registered users have access to. This feature allows a registered user to bookmark up to 20 favourite links that can easily be accessed whenever he/she logs in to his/her account. In the future, we also plan to add features like rating, blogging and others for registered users. The library interface is entirely in Nepali at the moment to cater to our primary audience. However, adding an English version of the library to facilitate use by a more diverse group is in the works.

On the content side, E-Pustakalaya has a wide variety of materials already available, a total of 373 entries to date, with new materials being constantly added. The library is divided into seven main sections, namely Sahitya (Literature), Kala (Art), Bishayagat Pathya Samagri (Course-related Materials), Sandarbha Samagri (Reference Materials), Anya Sikshyaprad Samagri (General Educational Materials), Sikshan Samagri (Teaching Support Materials) and Patrapatrika (Newspapers and Magazines). In addition to literature, primarily for children, in English and Nepali, content highlights include audio books, a Nepali dictionary acquired from Madan Puraskar Pustakalaya, School Wikipedia, a map section that is constantly being added to and a video section with educational videos, among others. A Balwiki (Children’s wiki) has also been set up, aimed primarily at children and we hope this will allow exchange of ideas and knowledge but we expect this to take time to fully pick up steam. Wikimedia Foundation’s Wiktionary (dictionary) will also be added on our server in the very near future.

The library also has a link to OLE Nepal’s E-Paath activities. E-Paath activities are interactive digital lessons and related exercises developed at Open Learning Exchange Nepal that meet the learning objectives of the national curriculum and intend to supplement existing learning materials. The entire package is both available for download from OLE Nepal’s website (www.olenepal.org) and included in the One Laptop Per Child’s XO laptop that the organisation is deploying in public schools all over the country. For the moment, they can be accessed from E-Pustakalaya, but not downloaded directly from there. They will be available for download soon. For the time being, however, a link is available on the home page of E-Pustakalaya to OLE Nepal’s website, from where the activities can be downloaded onto users’ computers.

Provision for feedback has also been provided in the form of a feedback form accessible from the homepage of E-Pustakalaya. The idea is to make the library responsive to and as in tune as possible with the needs of its users.

In addition to new features and added content within the main sections, E-Pustakalaya will also be adding a Community/ News and Events page in the near future. This page will provide users with a place to blog with fellow teachers and students as well as share and learn about what is happening at the local level, in Nepal as well as in a larger global context. This section will facilitate dialogue and interchange between people in various different places in unprecedented ways.

The E-Pustakalaya project has quickly picked up momentum and new material is constantly being added to the digital library. Authors and organisations, that have been approached, have mostly responded with enthusiasm and interest in the project, which is a novel concept to a lot of them. There is much reason to believe that there is a great number of materials that can still be collected and added to the existing archive.

OLE Nepal organized a three day workshop on December 23-25, 2008 to prepare the teacher training manual for the next round of OLPC laptop deployment planned for April 2009. The workshop participants included experts from the National Center for Education Development (NCED) – Nepal Government’s teacher training body under the Ministry of Education, as well as officials from the Department of Education (DoE)’s OLPC team. Teachers from the two test schools – Bashuki Lower Secondary School and Vishwamitra Ganesh Secondary School – were also invited for a day to share their experience on using , shed light on the challenges faced so far, and give suggestions on how the training program can be made more effective and relevant in integrating the laptops and ICT-based teaching-learning method in their classrooms. Earlier on December 15^th, few of the participants had also visited the two test schools to observe how the program was being implemented in the classrooms.

The OLPC Project in Nepal will enter its second phase when the next school session begins in April, 2009. In the second phase, OLE Nepal, in partnership with the DoE, plans to expand the project to more than 20 schools in at least 5 different districts in the country. While OLE Nepal was able to train the teachers from the two test schools for the current deployment, it would be nearly impossible to train teachers in 5 districts scattered all over Nepal without NCED’s involvement. Moreover, since teachers have barely 3 weeks of break between two school sessions, the training programs have to be run in parallel in various places. With NCED’s involvement, not only can the trainings be conducted in parallel, but the project can utilize NCED’s training resources and infrastructure that are located all over the country. Following NCED’s training modality, one of its Master Trainer will be prepared on ICT-based education approach. The Master Trainer will then train other trainers from Education Training Centers (ETC) located in or near the pilot districts. These trainers will in turn be responsible for training pilot-school teachers ahead of the April 2009 deployment. However, before all of this, the teacher-training manual as well as the trainer-training manual need to be prepared.

The goal of the workshop was to prepare the framework that can be used as the base to create the teacher training manual. In addition to the valuable feedback received from the test-school teachers, the participants had last year’s training manual that OLE Nepal had prepared to train those teachers. The first day of the workshop was allocated for needs assessment. After a brief discussion on the points gathered from the school visits, teachers from the test schools answered queries that the participants had about various aspects of the test-phase implementation at the schools. Later on, participants and teachers mixed up in smaller groups and asked to make a list of suggestions that could to be incorporated in the new training package. The groups discussed about a wide range of topics including classroom arrangement, IT literacy, use of laptops in the classroom, classroom management, maximizing use of laptops at homes, non-technical issues and their solutions, parents and community orientation, etc. Suggestions from the groups were later incorporated into a comprehensive list that was used to prepare the framework for the manual.

Participants were given first half of the second day to review the existing manual, and the afternoon session began with participants expressing their views on the strengths and weaknesses of the manual. After much discussion, it was decided that the new manual should conform to NCED’s standard format so that its trainers can use it with ease during training. The training structure was kept similar to that of last year – 5 days of residential training followed by 3 days of on-site training. The teachers will be given at least few days’ time between the residential training and the on-site training in order to organize orientation programs for parents, communities and local stakeholders in each pilot-school area. This time will also be used by teachers to get familiar with laptops and raise their comfort level in using them.

Once the structure and outline of the training manual were finalized, the participants broke into four groups and set out to preparing the manual based on suggestions from Day 1, materials from the current manual, and other points that came out of the discussions. At the end of the workshop, a solid framework for the manual was prepared. It was decided that the OLE Nepal team will complete the the remaining task of filling up various portions of the manual.

In the next couple weeks, OLE Nepal team will work to complete the first draft of the manual. It will then be circulated amongst the participants of the workshop for a review before completing the final draft. The team is scheduled to complete the manual by the first week of February. That will give enough time to prepare a trainers manual and start working with a Master Trainer from the NCED. The teacher training program will take place between the third week of March and first week of April.

This workshop marked a major milestone in OLE Nepal’s effort to bring various government agencies on board the OLPC project. From its inception more than a year and a half ago, OLE Nepal has always held on to the belief that the project will fall short of its goal to reach all corners of the nation unless the government agrees to incorporate the OLPC initiative in its overall education plans and policy. With NCED’s involvement, the project can now benefit from a pool of experts who have in-depth knowledge of the country’s education system, as well as utilize existing training infrastructure to carry out the training programs. At the same time the partnership will help build the capacity of NCED’s trainers in the preparation and delivery of training programs on integrating laptops and ICT-based teaching-learning methods in classrooms.

During the course of the workshop, Executive Director of NCED Mr. Harka Bahadur Shrestha, Director of DoE Mr. Bishnu Devkota, and Deputy Director of DoE Mr. Baburam Poudel paid a visit to get an update on the workshop progress. While all three threw their support behind the project and expressed satisfaction over the ongoing work, it was particularly encouraging to hear the head of NCED Mr. Shrestha say that he wants to see this manual become NCED’s standard training manual on ICT-based education. He further stated that the training program should be turned into one of the standard training programs that NCED offers to public school teachers all over the country.

Who we are

We are the guys from upstairs who play loud music and disturb everyone else. Currently there are eleven interns working for OLE Nepal. All of us are intelligent, hard-working and energetic young high school graduates committed to helping change the Nepalese education system. We were too lazy to apply to colleges while still in school and so we had a year with nothing to do. Fortunately, OLE Nepal beckoned us and now we have something interesting and worthwhile to fill our time with. Some of us are seasoned veterans who have worked long hours until late at night on weekends to meet deadlines. Others are newbies who grumble all the time about not having their own desktops.

What we are doing

When not arm wrestling or flirting with the girls next door, we are usually trying to fix the few broken laptops from the schools. Most of the time we end up solving the innumerable important problems that everyone wants taken care of, but no one seems to have the time for; simple things like getting the laptop to type in Nepali or adding the Nepali language to an activity on the laptop and other similar things. Sitting in front of our computer we browse through a million pages, writing emails to hundreds of people looking for solutions to those problems. Then there are the minor tasks; a pinch of documentation on the OLPC wiki, a dash of translation, a little bit of this, a little bit of that. Basically we do just about everything everyone throws at us. We are also going to play a major role in the larger OLPC deployment next spring. We will be staying at the schools for a month, training teachers and students to use the XOs.

Right now we are working on installing and configuring the school server, customizing images, adding features to activities form the XO, designing web pages for the E-Pustakalaya and translating existing E-Paath activities (all for free). However our work cannot be labeled as “charity” because our involvement with OLE Nepal has given us more than we had bargained for. For starters, we get to be around hard-working and passionate people who are wholly dedicated to the cause of this organization and to Nepal. The opportunity of working and interacting with them has proven to be very exciting and stimulating. During the course of our work, we also get the opportunity to interact with brilliant people from different walks of life who have continued to contribute to society in their own individual ways. In addition, it is quite amazing how much we get to learn and discover in every hour of every day. Our work experience can be compared to an unusually long training course with the added bonus of not being billed for it. Of course, the best part is the realization that, for the first time in our lives, we are working for something that we truly believe in.

Why open learning

Mainly because our bosses say so. Also, because open learning has the potential to help bring technology to the masses and to spread the open source movement throughout Nepal. For us the open source movement does not just signify getting to use, modify or distribute software for free instead of having to pay thousands of rupees for a copy of commercial software (or a few hundred rupees for a pirated copy). For us it symbolizes the idea that all human knowledge has greater value when it is shared and that arbitrary restrictions on that information only serve to stifle human progress. The OLPC laptops exclusively use open source software and we cannot think of a better way to spread free software than to give it to people who had not even heard of computers or the Internet. But most importantly, because open learning will change the lives of under privileged Nepalese children by opening up a whole new realm of opportunities to them.

How we are doing

So far we are doing very good.

By - Bibek and Pradosh

Nepal’s OLPC deployments are now more than seven months old. I get a lot of questions about deployment issues and solutions. I hope the following information is helpful. First, a snapshot of our deployments:

OLE’s progress in Nepal

• Deployments began at Vishwamitra Ganesh and Bashuki public schools on April 23rd, 2008.
• 135 XO-1 laptops deployed to students in classes 2 and 6
• 0 laptops stolen, lost, or otherwise missing. One laptop has been seriously damaged when the child who owned it cleaned it carefully with soap and water. Otherwise no laptops have been seriously damaged as a result of use.
• 8 bad motherboards, 5 bad microphones, and 4 bad keyboards
• Kids use the laptops in the classroom 1-2 periods per week
• Most significant technical issue we have encountered is the “jumpy cursor” problem
• Teachers, parents, and kids are quite happy with the project according to our surveys

In the Beginning: Teacher Training

We conducted four days of teacher training off-site and five days on-site in the classroom with both the students and teachers. A large portion of our teachers had never used a computer before but they learned very quickly. Their enthusiasm was amazing. Training during the off-site sessions formally ended at 5:30 pm but the teachers stayed in our training room each night until 11 pm, pounding away on the XO’s and asking endless questions.

While the teachers learned how to use the XO very quickly, I miscalculated how difficult certain actions would be for them. Specifically, it took them a while to learn “dragging and dropping” with the touchpad. Many of the best activities on the XO require serious dexterity with the touchpad such as TurtleArt, Etoys, and Scratch. For this reason we couldn’t cover these activities during training. I recommend starting teacher training with activities that do not require a lot of dexterity with the touchpad.

Keeping Kids and Laptops Safe

We were quite worried about the security of the laptops and the safety of the children carrying these expensive machines to and from school everyday. Vishwamitra and Bashuki are both in poor communities. So far our fears have proved unfounded. Not a single XO has been lost, stolen, or otherwise gone missing. I believe this is due to two factors.

1. The children and their parents value the XO’s and protect them the accordingly.
2. Crime in rural Nepal is low relative to other developing countries. In rural communities, everyone knows each other’s business.

Limbu script on OLPC XO

Laptop Maintenance and Support

One of the great surprises is how little time our team has had to spend on XO maintenance and support. The XO-1 is a fantastic piece of hardware and I am convinced that anyone with a mechanical aptitude can fix 90% of the hardware problems that arise by swapping out the bad component with a good one.

The “test-all” command in the XO’s OpenFirmware is an indispensable tool. Just run “test-all” and the firmware will spit out a report indicating if any particular hardware component has failed. Unfortunately, you cannot access the firmware prompt without activating the XO with the developer key. For that reason, we requested developer keys for all of our XO’s and disabled the firmware security on each and every one.

We trained select teachers from both schools how to fix software and hardware problems. They can handle most of the hardware-related problems that come up. In my limited experience, it is feasible to train teachers how to fix hardware problems but more difficult to teach them how to fix software problems in the linux kernel or within Sugar. If a serious software problem comes up, our teachers simply reflash the stricken XO with a Nepal-specific software image that includes the standard activities.

Under Pressure: Keeping Up with the Curriculum

In OLPC-land we like to talk about lofty concepts such as constructionism, co-learning, collaboration, etc. Meanwhile, teachers at Bashuki and Vishwamitra have more pressing concerns. The Nepali system does not practice social promotion. Children have to pass year-end examinations to move on to the next grade. Nepali teachers are interested in constructionism, co-learning, and collaboration as long as they don’t hinder their students progress through the educational system. Our teachers are quite happy with the E-Paath suite of educational activities that OLE Nepal developed in accordance with the national curriculum. The real attraction of OLPC for teachers is that in class they can task students with a problem on the XO and then spend much of the period working with students that need help.

XO laptops in the Nepali wild

The Missing Piece: The School Server

When we deployed the school server back in April, XS-163 was a very immature server configuration. The XS has come a long way since then under the leadership of XS architect Martin Langhoff. Then and now, the XS does not come with a content filter pre-configured. We had to spend a significant amount of time configuring Dansguardian so that it wouldn’t block a lot of good content and still block the bad stuff.

For example, “Dikshit” is a common surname in Nepal. Dansguardian will block access to news articles containing the name because it interprets the last four letters as profanity. The XS is still under heavy development and deployment teams need a significant amount of linux expertise to deploy a fully functional XS.

Top Requests from Teachers and Kids

• Easier way to play music and video
• A better E-Book reader
• A lot more activities for learning English
• All the Nepali textbooks in digital format
• A comprehensive digital library with lots of Nepali-language reading materials
• A Typing Tutor program for learning English and Nepali
• Interactive learning activities that match the Nepali curriculum
• A car racing game (the kids)

We will incorporate the lessons we have learned in these two deployment schools when we expand to 15-20 schools in 5-6 districts in April 2009. Hopefully, I will find more time to write about our experiences over the next several weeks but don’t count on it. I have been working on OLPC for more than 2.5 years and I have to say it has absolutely, positively been worth all the trouble.

Postscript: Pradosh Kharel has been working on a comprehensive Deployment Plan for Nepal. Check it out here.

Bryan Berry is the Technology Directory of OLE Nepal and deadbeat co-editor of OLPCNews.com. OLE Nepal is implementing Nepal’s OLPC deployments in partnership with Nepal’s Department of Education.

You may have read Rabi’s recent post about the formative evaluation of our test schools Vishwamitra Ganesh and Bashuki. We are proud of the progress we have made and are now starting to focus on expanding OLPC to more Nepali schools in spring 2009. Our current plan is to expand from one district to five districts (equivalent to a state of province) and roughly 10-15 schools. Technical support for our current two schools within driving distance of the office has not been particularly challenging or time-consuming. However, supporting schools in five distinct regions of Nepal poses a tremendous challenge.

We have found that teachers and children can do much of the day-to-day support and repairs once they have proper training. I had 3 days of quality time with teachers Neema of Bashuki and Manoj of Vishwamitra back April. They are now able to solve a large part of the technical problems that arise. We have decided that we need on-site technical support for at least the first couple weeks of each school but there is no way we can spread out our small staff across all those schools. We could contract engineers to do it but short-term contractors won’t be familiar with Sugar and the activities on the XO. Someone once suggested we could get foreign volunteers to the deployment, a good idea in theory but not in practice. Foreigners won’t speak the local language nor will they be familiar with the sociocultural environment. This limits their effectiveness considerably. Additionally, foreigners are easy marks for local bacteria.

There is an active and vibrant FOSS community in Nepal composed primarily of university students. Their university calendar coincides with that of primary schools so they will not be able to skip the first 2-4 weeks of classes to deploy OLPC.

So this is a tough situation. How can we scale out technical support for deployment? Well, with not a little bit of luck we have come upon a solution. There are several prestigious high schools in Kathmandu that encourage their students to take a year off between high school and university to work on social projects in Nepal. Pradosh Kharel approached us for an internship soon after he finished his exams for Buddhanilkantha School last June. He has made a big impact on our team in a very short period of time. He came in to our office knowing nothing about linux and has already learned the basics of shell scripting and system administration. On his encouragement, his classmate Bibek Kafle joined us to work on internationalizing our E-Paath activities. Last month, Avash Pandit and Aakash Gautam joined us part-time and they start full-time next month.

Out of this lucky accident, I have started to develop our deployment strategy. We need roughly two technical support personnel full-time in each district for the first 2 months and then 1 person for each district thereafter. That adds up to roughly ten deployment staff. These personnel don’t need to know how to create activities from scratch or be expert systems administrators but they need to know enough to fix 90% of the problems and that will arise and work together with our professional network engineers to solve the remaining 10%. The “Buddhanilkantha Boys” as I call them, are extremely eager to work in the field for this project. We believe that we can recruit 6 more deployment volunteers in January and our core group can train the new recruits.

So what do we do next summer when all of the Buddhanilkantha Boys leave Nepal for Reed, Swarthmore, Vassar, etc.? We will wish them the very best and ask for their help in recruiting from the next crop of graduates.

Ten well-intentioned and energetic volunteers simply can’t train and manage themselves with out guidance. Anyone in the open-source world knows that volunteer management is a special vocation unto itself. That is why we are extremely lucky that Tony Anderson joined us in September. Tony retired from 36 years in the software business ten years ago and has been traveling the world ever since. He found the OLPC project so compelling that he stopped his magical mystery tour in Kathmandu to work on it. Since his arrival, he has focused on the School Server and organizing our deployment volunteers. As a professional engineer and natural educator, he has excelled at training our volunteers and focusing their boundless energy into productive ends.

Our deployment volunteers will work very closely with new full-time hires to OLE Nepal, Sunil Shrestha and Prithak Sharma. Sunil joins us as network engineer and brings a great combination of passion, technical skills, and experience working in rural Nepal. He particularly impressed us during his interview when he demonstrated how he had read our entire blog, wiki entries, and website. Prithak Sharma is talented system administrator with a number of years experience working at Kathmandu ISP’s.

At the end of writing this post, I have come up with a clearer formulation of our deployment strategy that has three tiers:

Tier 1: Local technical support provided by talented teachers, children, and interested community members. These people receive their training from the Tier 2 team.

Tier 2: Deployment Volunteers, primarily recent high school graduates who have received several months of training.

Tier3: The OLE Nepal engineering team which includes network engineer Sunil Shrestha, sysadmin Prithak Sharma, Sulochan Acharya, and myself.

I want to close by lettting everyone know how impressed I am by our deployment volunteers. They work very hard, ask for nothing in return, and their passion is genuine. I remember the first time I asked Pradosh if he would mind spending a month in a village supporting OLPC. He responded immediately, “Of course I don’t mind! I will love it!”