OLE Leaders Hold First Global Meeting – declared a success!
OLE Leaders from Nepal, Rwanda, Ghana, Dominican Republic, Haiti and Bolivia held their first meeting today with members of the OLE International team. They enthusiastic about building this network of Centers committed to Universal Basic Education by 2015.
Rabi Kamacharya, Executive Director of OLE Nepal, opened the meeting by describing in some detail their current pilot project. OLE Nepal is conducting a demonstration project in two rural Nepalese schools where they have provided the 130 students in the third and sixth grades personal laptops that they use in school and take home with them every day. Rabi reported that one of the biggest surprises of the pilot was the fact that, so far, over the nine months of the pilot, none of the laptops had been lost or stolen and few have experienced any technical failures. Both schools have been provided access to the Internet, which greatly enhances the value of the laptops.
Rabi reported that, in addition to the students, the teachers, parents and elders of both villages are highly enthusiastic about the pilot and have offered to invest some of their own village funds to expand the program to more of their children. The students bring their laptops to school every morning and place them in a recharging dock OLE Nepal designed and built. School attendance is up and they expect to see improved scores on the standard tests that will be given next March at the end of the school year. They expect improvements to be especially marked in English where, for the first time, teachers and students can hear and understand oral English as native English speakers speak it. OLE Nepal is busy developing more curricula for the primary grades in cooperation with the government’s national Curriculum Development Center and is exploring ways to expand the program next year to more schools. The Danish IT Society, the Danish International Development Agency (DANIDA) and private foundations are supporting OLE Nepal.
Leaders attending the meeting included Rabi Kamacharya (Nepal), Jacques Murinda (Rwanda), Mariel Feliz (Dominican Republic), Jean Saint Vil (Haiti), Yama Ploskonka and Claudia Munoz-Reyes (Bolivia). Members from OLE International included Robyn Gordon (Regional Coordinator), Joseph Rappa (Chief Education Officer), James Krzywicki (Chief Operations Officer), Tom Coats (Development), Christopher Rowe (Technology) and Richard Rowe. They used Skype audio conferencing as a low cost way to share their experiences and learning. Each of the OLE Center leaders submitted a written report on their Center’s status and plans, using a GoogleDoc wiki that was set up for that purpose. That enabled the meeting to focus on discussions among the leaders about matters arising from those materials. Subsequent reports here will summarize the developments of other OLE Centers.
At the end of the meeting the OLE leaders said they found the meeting of great value and expressed the desire to have additional such meetings on a regular basis. They also asked OLE International to plan a face-to-face OLE Leaders’ meeting as early as possible in 2009. Plans for such a meeting are underway, subject to our finding sufficient funding for such a meeting. [submitted by RRRowe]
