[Open-education] How can Open Education help children in Syria?

Wed Mar 19 23:29:43 UTC 2014

Firstly thanks to Andre for starting such an interesting and valuable 
discussion on the mailing list, and thanks to all those who have replied.

Megan has now written a blog post about the matter - Distributing OER in 
the developing world 
<http://meganbeckett.wordpress.com/2014/03/19/distributing-oer-in-the-developing-world/>. 

Bernard Nkuyubwatsi has also written a person account of his academic 
journey while growing up in Rwanda, I have published it on the Open 
Education Working Group blog - A Multidimensional Migration for Social 
Inclusion. 
<http://education.okfn.org/a-multidimensional-migration-for-social-inclusion-a-personal-account/> 
For me personally Bernard's post offers some very clear reasons why open 
education matters and reminds us that technology is an enabler, not the 
finishing point.

Bernard concludes by saying "I feel it is a ripe moment to support 
initiatives that are concerned by social inclusion and contribute to 
opening up education to learners who are eager to undertake a similar 
migration, regardless of the types of technologies they currently have 
access to. The job is now much easier since the content and even courses 
have been made open and more technologies have been made available at 
affordable prices. It is very important to take a human-centred approach 
rather than a techno-centric approach if social inclusion is at the 
heart of open education."

Lets continue to think about what we can do to help

Thanks

Marieke
On 18/03/2014 10:28, Pat Lockley wrote:
> Thanks Megan,
> I wonder if like the "curator" role we see mentioned then there is a 
> need for convertors or some such to enable this? Perhaps as remixers 
> for others, rather than remixers for their own teaching?
> P
>
>
> On Tue, Mar 18, 2014 at 9:27 AM, Megan Beckett <megan at siyavula.com 
> <mailto:megan at siyavula.com>> wrote:
>
>     Hi all
>
>     This is a devastating story. I would just like to point out some
>     of our experiences at Siyavula (www.siyavula.com
>     <http://www.siyavula.com>), as we are also working within
>     delivering open educational resources in a developing country,
>     which may be relevant to this conversation.
>
>     In South Africa, we have an enormous range of contexts within
>     which people are trying to learn. We interact with some schools
>     where every child has an iPad, and yet most schools are severely
>     under resourced, often without the basic infrastructure such as
>     walled classrooms and toilet facilities, nevermind an internet
>     connection.
>
>     *How then do we deliver educational content to these learners?*
>
>     As has been pointed out already in this conversation, two forms of
>     delivery are crucial to us in South Africa, and I would think this
>     would apply generally to developing countries. These are print
>     resources and mobile phones.
>
>     Yes, OER are often thought of as digital resources, but in a
>     situation where there is no internet connection or devices to
>     access the content, /printed textbooks/ are key. At Siyavula, we
>     make all of our content available on various digital platforms,
>     but we spend a lot of time producing the printed textbooks.
>
>     *Distributing print resources*
>
>     We are in the unique position in South Africa where our
>     government, the Department of Basic Education, has printed and
>     distributed our textbooks to all learners in government schools.
>     That is about 10 million books so far, at a cost of about $2 per
>     book. The feedback we have had has been over whelming, as many
>     learners never had any textbook before, and their teachers are
>     most often under qualified.
>
>     There are also other initiatives in South Africa to gain access to
>     resources without having an internet connection. For example,
>     Paperight (http://www.paperight.com/) enables any copy shop or
>     business with a printer and internet connection to be turned into
>     a print-on-demand bookstore where customers can legally obtain
>     low-cost books. Our resources are available through Paperight at
>     only the printing cost. Another initiative is Breadbin
>     (http://www.breadbin.co.za/) which sources and delivers digital
>     content via customised 'kiosks' throughout South Africa. People
>     just need to plug in a flashdrive, burn the content to a CD, etc.
>     *These are some ideas which could be pursued in other developing
>     countries to deliver OER*, where national printing and
>     distribution is not feasible.
>
>     *Mobile phones*
>
>     As Andre mentioned, mobile phones are by far the predominant way
>     of accessing content in developing countries. And we don't mean
>     smart phones, but low end feature phones. At Siyavula, we have
>     various versions of our content depending on what type of phone
>     you are using. So, you can view all the videos and simulations on
>     a smart phone, making for an enriched experience, but on a basic
>     phone, you just have access to the text and equations, etc are
>     converted to images to make it less data heavy. We have also made
>     our content available over a very popular chat room service in
>     South Africa, called Mxit (http://get.mxit.com/). We have over 800
>     000 learners reading our content over mobile phones every month!
>     This just highlights that these kids want to learn and they have
>     just not had access to the resources before.
>
>     *My take home message!*
>
>     OER, even that produced in developed countries, needs to be
>     optimised for this kind of delivery (especially mobile), if you
>     want your content to truly be as accessible and open as possible,
>     to the people who need it most!
>
>     Sorry for the long post! But, I just thought I would share some of
>     our experiences and although they may not help immediately to
>     impact children in Syria, I hope that OER producers and advocates
>     in first world countries will first and foremost consider the
>     constraints of developing countries when producing OER, as this is
>     where open education has the most potential to have the biggest
>     impact.
>
>     Kind regards
>     Megan
>
>

-- 

Marieke Guy
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@mariekeguy <http://twitter.com/mariekeguy>
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