Bridging the Digital Divide:

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Bridging the Digital Divide What is being done
about it? M K Senthil Kumar April 5, 2005
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INDIA REALITY CHALLENGES
325 languages spoken
165 Million Children in 1 Million schools
18 of world Population 2.4 of land area
Literacy is 65
35 less than 15 years
Rural India 600,000 villages 742 Mn people, 75
do not have tap water, 55 house holds do not
have electricity, 100,000 villages do not have
primary school within 1 km
Urban India Shopping malls, mobile phones, cars,
design wares, broadband, English language,
universities and colleges
1 out of 3 children in 5th standard unable to
read write
35 million in the age group of 6-14 out of school
Only 1 out of 3 completes up to 10th standard
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THE BASIC NEEDS A BARE LIST

• Enhance sources of livelihood eradicate hunger
• and poverty
• Access to and awareness about nutrition and
• health
• Universal elementary education for gender
• equality, empower women and environmental
  
• stability

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CAN ICT HELP?

• Accountability
• Transparency
• Greater responsiveness
• Efficient delivery

Governance
Quality access
Information

• Employment avenues
• Self Help Groups
• Women empowerment
• Gender equality
• Environment stability

• Expert medical services
• Land records
• Policy clarity and benefits

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CONVERGENCE OF TWO NEEDS

• Universalization of Elementary Education
• Community involvement in School management
• Availability of class rooms and teachers
• Learning material to ignite childrens
  imagination
• Usage time between 10 AM to 4 PM
• Basic Rural ICT services
• Availability of ICT infrastructure
• Trained personnel to staff the centers
• Usage time before 11 AM and after 3 PM
• ICT centers in school meet both the needs -
  School as pivot for ICT services to rural
  community

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SOME ICT INITIATIVES

• K-12 Programs / Smart school projects by
  Private organizations
• Local content creation by the schools
• State Education department ICT Initiatives
  implemented by
• private agencies on BOOT model
• Central Government Initiatives - Vidya Vahini
  program
• Village Knowledge Centers, e-Seva Kendrams
• Edusat Video content delivery / interaction
• Public Private Partnerships
• Microsoft Project Shiksha
• IBM Kids Smart
• Byrraju Rural Transformation project
• HP i-Community project
• Azim Premji Foundation Computer Aided
  Learning Program
• Many others

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DIGITAL BRIDGE IN INDIA - EDUCATION
What is being attempted today?
TV channels - Video supplement in class room
Special subject needs English - Radio
broadcast for large reach
1 way Video and 2 way audio - Teacher
Development
Edusat Dedicated satellite for education needs
Computers with internet Classes 8-10 around
5,000 schools
Computers w/o internet Classes 1-8 in
over 10,000 schools
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COMPUTER AIDED LEARNING OPTIONS
Computer Literacy Computer Aided Learning
Local Content Creation - Central content
creation
Teaching Aid - Student usage
Internet relevance Local Language content
availability
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FROM AZIM PREMJI FOUNDATION
Computer Aided Learning Classes 1 to 8
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PARTNERSHIP
Community
State Government
Content validation, Resource persons, Infrastructu
re Monitoring
Ownership Sustenance
Content, Teacher training Support
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OUR RATIONALE
LEARNING PLAY ASSESSMENT FUN EQUAL KNOWLEDGE FOR
ALL
Attract, retain, enhance quality of learning
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VIRTUAL VISIT
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FIRST LEG

• Educational workshop in 2001 recommended
• Technology assistance for hard to teach topics
• Competency based / Child centric interactive
  content
• Story, game, riddle based and Child friendly
  navigation
• Non-threatening
• Rural context, simple-crisp-local language
• Availability of 2 player games
• Activities with choice in difficulty levels
• Additional info for teachers,
• Additional learning tool for reinforcement
• Content types
• Curricular Content, Co-curricular content and
  Local Content

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SUBJECTS COVERED
Mathematics
General Sciences
Environmental Sciences
Social Sciences
Co-curricular
Languages
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CAL PROCESS
Research
Content development
Title
Concept
Script
Prototype
FTV
Release
Monitoring Assessment
Training Deployment
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THE CONTENT TEAM
Children
Teachers Child psychologists
Language experts Subject matter experts
Creative persons Instructional designers
Animators Developers
50 Member team (excluding children) 18-20 man
months 6-8 calendar months per CD
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CONTENT CREATION PROCESS
Identification of subject teachers
Stage 1
7
Workshop / Title identification / Scope
Definition validation
Stage 2
Work order release to developer
3
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Concept Note / Story board / Review
Continuous feedback loops and regular interface
with academic experts and child psychologists and
children
Stage 3
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Prototype / Language translations
Stage 4
98
The Block Arrows represent the elapsed time in
no. of working days
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Field Test Version
122
Total calendar days
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Stage 5
Release of Master CD by the developer and release
of replicated CDs to Customer by the foundation
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COMPETENCY BASED
Decimals
Work
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6
Place value
Energy
Parts of human body
Fractions
Citizenship
Parts of a seed
Local government
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13
Natural resources
Discover Karnataka
Health hygiene
Use of gender
How things work
Similar alphabets
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8
Commercial science
Sentence construction
n
No. of titles available as on March 05
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ON-SCHOOL MODEL
The ON-school model
Computer to student ratio 13 320 minutes of
quality computer exposure per month

Two periods of 40 minutes each per week
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OFF-SCHOOL MODEL
The OFF-school model
Computer to student ratio 15 90 minutes of
quality computer exposure per month


Three visits of 30 minutes each per month
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COMPUTER BASED ASSESSMENT
Competency based learning
Computer usage comfort
Computer Based Assessment Conducted in Andhra
Pradesh
60,000 children 1000 plus randomized questions
Performance data bank
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RESEARCH
Karnataka
Computer aided learning found to have beneficial
impact on children with learning disabilities,
mainly on their social behavior, attention span,
oral communication skills and motivation.
Study conducted by the Karnataka Spastic
society
Enhancement in performance of experimental
schools compared with control schools found to be
statistically significant for grades 3,4 and
5. 1000 students in 10 randomly selected
experimental schools of 200 schools
Andhra Pradesh
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CHALLENGES - PROGRAM EFFECTIVENESS
Power availability
Computer uptime
Cost of Infrastructure, OS and Application s/w
Languages
Monitoring
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REACH AS OF MARCH 2005
500
588
1287
(Punjab)
112
(Uttaranchal)
200
(Rajasthan)
517
(Gujarat)
28
(Chhatisgargh)
600
49
(Orissa)
(Maharashtra)
3818
(Andhra Pradesh)
540
(Karnataka)
467
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(Pondicherry)
No. of Schools as on 31st March 2005
(Andaman Nicobar)
1500
(Tamilnadu)
Program currently active 5148
Program being activated 5332
No. of teachers trained 10200
No. of Children covered 734K
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A not for profit organization
Operational since 2001
135 plus full-time professionals 600 plus in
field - project based
Vision Significantly contribute to achieving
quality universal education to facilitate a
just, equitable and a humane society.
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Thank You!
For more info www.azimpremjifoundation.org