OLE Nepal’s bimonthly newsletter for Nov – Dec 2010 (issue 6) can be accessed at:

http://www.olenepal.org/ole_newsletter/OLENepalNovDec10.pdf

If you wish to subscribe to the newsletter, please email newsletter@olenepal.org.

OLE Nepal office is once again abuzz with a flurry of activities; helpers hauling boxes of laptops, interns testing and preparing laptops, technical team preparing school servers with latest NEXS*, program officers calling schools to figure out the additional number of students who will need laptops and bags, training coordinator arranging training programs, people bundling up bags to be shipped to schools. Yes, we are getting ready for the next round of deployment of laptops ahead of the new school year that will begin in mid-April. The interns have taken over the meeting room, the biggest one in the building, and turned it into a staging place for the laptops. The room is a good 5 degrees warmer than the rest of the building with up to 40 laptops running at any given moment, being nand-blasted with the latest version of NEXO*. The interns have dnragged in two stand fans hoping to make the room a bit more bearable. Boxes of laptops line up against the wall with labels showing the names of the destination schools. Bundles of bags carry similar labels. In the other room the network team is preparing plans to wire more classrooms and connect schools to the Internet. The content development team is working frantically to meet the deadline set by the deployment team. The environment around the office is quite intense, yet exciting.

Interns busy preparing laptops for deployment

After having done this for the past three years, the process has become less chaotic than our first major deployment two years ago in 2009. (The 2008 deployment was a test phase where we implemented the program in 2 nearby schools totaling 135 students). Under the watchful eyes of our program manager Subir and our office admin Rabita, the preparation has been much smoother. Our interns and deployment teams are checking on their task lists before they head out to the schools. We even have two deployment veterans Aavash and Prakash coming back to assist us this year.

Laptop bags getting bundled together before being shipped to schools

Soon the laptops, servers, bags, power racks, and other equipment will be shipped to schools on planes and trucks. In many places, the last bit of the journey will include people carrying them on their backs. This deployment marks a special milestone for us. With grade five being added next month, we will have finally reached our goal of saturating grades two to six in all our program schools. We started with grades two and six in 2008, and slowly expanded schools and grades each year to reach this milestone. The content team will have completed the development all the educational materials (E-Paath) for grade 5 English and mathematics by the end of April. This has been a huge undertaking for OLE Nepal. The development of curriculum-based digital educational materials in various subjects for grades two to six has us three years, and the content and process have gone through a number of iterations in our attempt to continually improve based on feedback from teachers and students.

Laptop boxes ready for shipment to schools

OLE Nepal trainers, with help from government trainers, will conduct trainings in all districts on how to integrate laptops and digital content in classroom teaching. Teachers attending this training are English, mathematics, Nepali and science teachers teaching in grades two to six at the program schools who have not received any training from OLE Nepal in the past. By the time we complete this training session, we hope that all teachers who will be involved in laptop-based teaching will have received training.

Specially designed bags for laptops and books

But we are still far from our goal. We will now shift our focus to see how we can expand the program to more schools and reach more students while looking into the possibility of developing contents for more grades and subjects. With an implementation model that has been tried and tested over the years, along with educational content including our vast digital library, and a team of dedicated and talented trainers, educators, engineers and managers, we have the right formula to scale the program to more schools.

Locally designed and built laptop charging racks

* Nand-blasting is a cool technique to install software in multiple XO machines wirelessly from one source machine.
* NEXO is a variation of Sugar build maintained by OLE Nepal, customized for Nepal with local activities and content, such as E-Paath.
* NEXS image is a customized linux server used in the Nepali classrooms, which provides access to a local digital library, and services such as backup for the children’s work .

On 4th and 5th February 2011 OLE Nepal organised a writer’s workshop to create Young Adult (YA) novels for Nepali youths. The two day workshop took place in Nagarkot Farmhouse, Nagarkot and had twenty-one participants. The workshop was facilitated and moderated by OLE Nepal’s E-Pustakalaya advisers Churamani Bandhu, Dhurva Ghimire, Geeta Keshary, Hiranya Kumari Pathak, Rambabu Subedi and Vinaya Kasajoo. Prof. Dr Mahadev Awasti representing the National Academy’s Children’s literature wing was also present as a member of the Editorial team. The rest of the participants were young aspiring authors who had mainly written for children and occasionally tried writing for adults.

View to inspire the writers from Nagarkot Farmhouse

As Young Adult literature is a new genre in the world of Nepali literature, the workshop began with the accepted definition of the genre in foreign countries then we discussed what Youth meant in the Nepali context and encouraged a colloquial understanding of our target audience. After summarising the materials OLE Nepal had collected during the seminar on 22nd December (http://blog.olenepal.org/index.php/archives/date/2011/01), a slide show presentation of newspaper articles highlighting problems and concerns facing YAs in Nepal was shown.

After discussing several famous YA novels a brain storming exercise was conducted where each participant recalled their adolescence and re-counted a moment in their life which was symbolic of being a YA. Many of the experience involved having suicidal thoughts due to low exam grades (grades being hidden due to tuition not being paid in time), going through a rebellious phase where one starts experimenting with drugs or steals a library book, tales of teenage love and heart break and even a memory of sexual exploitation. These memories were so lucid that they could be turned into short stories all on their own. Another point that these stories proved was that though times have changed, lot of the challenges faced by adolescents today remain the same at its core.

Facilitator Vinaya Kasajoo

Later after lunch participants were shown video clips of R. K. Narayan’s Malgudi Days and S.E. Hinton’s The Outsiders. The Outsiders is generally considered the first YA English novel after the genre had been clearly defined. While the Malgudi Days has a protagonist slightly younger than what is widely accepted as the correct age of the major protagonist in YA genre, it was shown to better understand how characters would look like in a South Asian setting. Further discussions were carried out on how these novels developed the nature of a first person narrator being an adolescent and how this adds authenticity to the genre of YA literature. Finally, the participants broke up into small groups and discussed what themes would be appropriate for their novels. Some of the authors also used the XO laptop to do some reading and visualise how their finished material would look like inside the little laptop.

Ganesh Ghimire of OLE Nepal introducing E-Pustakalaya

Having had a whole night to organise their thoughts, next day brought about a remarkable number of written stories and ideas. Character development, plot lines, style and tones were also discussed. Importantly, constructive ideas were presented to convert the abundant short stories into a larger, coherent novel. Creating a YA novel is vital as there are lots of shorts for young adults to read. However, it is only a novel which can steadily depict the changes and challenges an adolescent faces and teach YAs how to better navigate through these obstacles. This concept of ‘safe landing’ is vital for any work to be considered part of YA genre.

Setting up Projector and XO’s

Apart from having an adolescent as the main protagonist we expect to see the entire spectrum of fiction depicted by the participating authors. In concluding phase I of the workshop the participants were set a target of writing around 100 pages of literary material before the next phase of the workshop. With the shorts discussed the qualitative aspect of the work is in no doubt but a quantitative outcome will only be seen during the next phase.

Phase I of the workshop was highly productive in terms of inspiring the participating writers to want to write for Young Adults, brainstorming themes for their work and making certain that a good support system was created for the participants. Phase II of the workshop will occur in two months time where we hope to read some riveting stories.

As mentioned in an earlier post (http://blog.olenepal.org/index.php/archives/377), OLE Nepal has started the initiative to create content suitable for Young Adults. As a first step, a seminar was organized on the 22^nd December, 2010 in Kathmandu to discuss the various issues, problems, and challenges faced by young adults in everyday life. The seminar was attended by eminent authors, artists, teachers, students, social workers, parents and others related to the literary field.

The program began with OLE Nepal’s Founder and Executive Director Mr. Rabi Karmacharya welcoming the guests and giving a brief introduction on OLE Nepal’s pioneering activities in ICT-integrated education. This was followed by a short demonstration of the digital library, E-Pustakalaya. Then Prof. Churamani Bandhu, a prominent writer and a member of OLE Nepal’s digital library advisory panel, presented a paper on the state of young-adult literature in Nepal. This was followed by another panel member and prolific author, Mr. Vinaya Kasajoo, shedding light on the importance of young-adult literature, as well as on various issues such as youth psychology, emotional state, and socio-psycho-economic factors affecting the youth of today. Then the floor was opened to all participators to share their thoughts on what the writers should address on this new genre of literature.

Founder and Executive Director Mr. Rabi Karmacharya welcoming guests

Mr. Ganesh Ghimire describing features of E-Pustakalaya.

All participants agreed that there is a dire need for literature content that is created for young adults. Several participants suggested that topics such as one’s growing sexuality and experience with drug usage during adolescence should be addressed in stark contrast to the traditional approach in Nepali society of not discussing such issues. Many youths today are addicted to drugs such as marijuana, brown sugar, lsd, sniffing glue (huffing glue) and acid. This has come about due to consumer goods such as glue being easily available in the market and pharmaceutical products being sold without prescriptions.

The older generation seem to have been caught unaware of this development. They tend to regard cough medicines as only medicine and do not recognise the danger of their children ingesting such pharmaceutical drugs in large quantities. While Young Adults tend to be aware of a drugs ability to get them high they do not understand the dangers that come along with ingesting products which is easily found in their household medicine cabinets. Regarding sexuality, participants opined that since girls discover that their physical changes occur faster than that of boys their age, it is important to make girls aware that such changes are not unnatural. Without much information nor adults who they can turn to for answers, girls are more likely to be introverted as well as become victims of bullying and eve teasing. These changes, coupled with the existent gender discrimination girls face in Nepal, means that adolescence is the most difficult period for a girl to come out of without being mentally and emotionally scarred.

Prof. Dr. Churamani Bandu presenting his working paper

As marginalised genders’ get empowered it is also important that we prevent violent backlashes against them. Young Adult literature should deal with complicated issues such as third gender and importantly how they fit into our society. YA literature is a new genre thus, it has the capability to break away from the traditional boy-girl relationship or the old concept of what it is to be a woman or a man. It was also made clear that while presenting such social issues, literature should create an atmosphere which is not too far from reality. Old authors may not understand how new technologies and greater access to consumer goods have affected today’s youth. New age problems such as cyber bullying, perils of amateur pornography and sharing others’ private information on social networks need to be kept in mind.

Mr. Vinaya Kasajoo moderating the seminar.

Others pointed out that there is a real need for historical fiction. Many young adults struggle with identity crisis; on the one hand they believe they are adults, yet adults around them treat them as children. This coupled with a lack of historical knowledge tend to have negative affect on teen aspirations and spirits. Few teachers present in the seminar felt that knowledge of historical figures should be depicted in the literature so that young-adult readers not only feel a sense of patriotism, but also have proper role models they can look up to. Further, such historical content will help put the achievements of young adults in perspective.

Participants of the Young Adult Literature Seminar

Many of the social workers present pointed out that teenagers tend to be rebellious by nature. They tend to commit illegal acts by making graffiti in public areas, using firecrackers and attempting other acts of vandalism. This type of rebellion is caused by their frustration at not being taken seriously by adults in authority. It has been found that a well reasoned response go further than just telling teenagers what it is they can and can’t do. In this way literature should allow them to better deal with these emotions and show them alternative paths where they could direct these energy for constructive purposes.

The information and suggestions collected at the seminar will be used in the young-adult literature writing workshop that will soon be organized by OLE Nepal.

OLE Nepal’s newsletter for Sept – Oct is now available. The newsletter intends to keep its readers up to date on the organisation and its activities.

The full newsletter can be accessed at:

http://www.olenepal.org/ole_newsletter/OLENepalSepOct10.pdf

OLE Nepal’s newsletter for Jul -Aug is now available. The newsletter intends to keep its readers up to date on the organisation and its activities.

The full newsletter can be accessed at:

http://www.olenepal.org/ole_newsletter/issue4/OLENepalJulAug_10.pdf

If you wish to subscribe to the newsletter, please email newsletter@olenepal.org.

Figure 1: Gyanodaya Madhyamik Vidhyalaya, Lete, Mustang

Mr. Ananta Raj Acharya, the principal of Gyanodaya Madhyamik Vidhyalaya in Lete, Mustang, is an accomplished educationist. In his 22 year long tenure at the same school, he has had many success stories under his belt.

He managed to replace an old school building with a new grand building that was constructed with the help of the Indian Embassy. Recently, he was elated to see how his teachers were successfully integrating ICT in daily classroom teaching-learning practice. Mr. Acharya is determined to make the ICT integrated classroom a model for the whole district of Mustang.

Mr. Acharya’s dream does not seem too farfetched when he has dedicated and competent teachers like Mr. Sambhu Prasad Bhat. Observing Mr. Bhat’s ICT-integrated class is as good as getting a crash course on how to use various resources to deliver an effective class. Mr. Bhat has clear and well-thoughtout plan. He would start with Grade 6 English textbook where children are explained about alphabetical order. While the children eagerly read what the book has on the topic, Mr. Bhat writes the names of few students on the white board. He asks the children to arrange the names in the Alphabetical Order. Children are excited to see their names on the board. It did not take long for the children to copy the ten names in alphabetical order on each of their exercise books. The children are then asked to open their E-Paati laptops.

Figure 2: Mr. Sambhu Prasad Bhat teaching English

Excitement fills the room as they find an E-Paath activity titled ‘Alphabetical Order’. Children finish arranging the words in the exercise section of E-Paath with ease and they put on a wide grin when they get it all correct. Mr. Bhat ends his lesson with an announcement, “We will learn how to use a dictionary tomorrow. Alphabetical order serves as the basis of how you look for words in a dictionary.”

Visiting schools that have implemented OLE Nepal and Dept of Education’s joint OLPC program in Mustang, one gets an impression that keeping children happy in the classroom is critical to effective and in-depth learning experience. The moment children are asked to open their E-Paati laptops, the classroom beams with happiness. Children patiently wait for the teacher’s instructions and they go to the E-Paath lesson as directed by their teacher. This immediately opens the possibilities of self-learning . Children read, listen and work according to the instructions given in the E-Paath lessons. While playing with the E-Paath activities , children are learning new things as outlined in in the national curriculum for their grade. In Mustang, E-Paatis are serving not only as a teaching-learning tool but also as a source motivation for the children.

The same is true for children in the district of Makwanpur. Shree Devi School in the heart of Hetauda has implemented OLPC program with pride. Teachers in the school have found E-Paath lessons helpful in many ways. They say that E-Paath has created a paradigm shift from a teacher-controlled classroom to a teacher-facilitated classroom. One teacher opines that E-Paath has enabled him to pay more attention to slower learners in his class.

Visitors at the school can witness children’s immense affinity towards their E-Paati laptops. They frequently ran after the teachers requesting for permission to take their E-Paati home with them. When inquired why they wanted to take the E-Paati home, the surprising answer was “to read a story that I have downloaded from the E-Pustakalaya[1].”

E-Pustakalaya seemed to be making a big difference in enhancing pupil’s reading habits at the schools. E-Pustakalaya is no less popular amongst Dadheldura’s three program schools as well. Janaki Joshi, a teacher at Jana Joyti School at Hamtad, Dadheldura says “I am surprised at the rate at which children are reading books.”

The ICT-integrated teaching-learning in the classrooms of Dadheldura schools is proving to be a big boon for the mostly barefoot school children. The love for the E-Paati laptops and the educational content is so great that the classes fill with excitement when children are asked to read, listen and play o E-Paath activities. One of the officials of the District Education Office in Dadheldura was pleasantly surprised how effective learning was taking place in the classrooms. “Had it not been for the OLPC program, these children would have had to wait another 10 or 15 years just to touch a computer” said Mahadev Prasad Joshi, School Supervisor of Dadheldura District Education Office. “They now have not just the computer but also something to enjoy, read and learn”, added Mr. Joshi.

Integration of ICT in classroom activities is providing children with greater freedom in their learning. Pupils have been masters of their own learning and teachers’ role has been changed to guiding children to learn the underlying meanings of what they see or read on the screen. The new found change has been pleasant for both the stakeholders. Parents are no less happy to see their children spending time reading contents on the screen. One of the parents, Tek Bahadur Dhami, of Jana Joyti said:

“Initially I thought that my son was wasting time reading something trivial for too long on the computer. When he began reading me the stories and rewriting the stories that he read, I realized that he was not wasting his time.”

The disparity in accessibility of educational resources amongst the of haves and the have-nots is unimaginably wide in Nepal. OLE Nepal and Department of Education’s joint OLPC program may seem like just a drop in the ocean to fill the divide, but it certainly is setting the precedence in successful integration of ICT and could be the answer to meeting the challenges of effective teaching and learning in the remote areas of the country.