Open Learning ExchangeUniversal Basic Education 2015

Watch new opportunities for learning unfold for 9-year-old Bimala and her classmates in Nepal, captured in a short documentary, The OLE Nepal Story. Poor Nepali schoolchildren “have this hunger for knowledge and all that is really stopping them is the lack of opportunity,” says OLE Nepal Executive Director Rabi Karmacharya.

The video illustrates OLE Nepal’s progress in providing that opportunity. It follows OLE Nepal’s work designing digital Nepali learning activities, delivering them to schools on low-cost laptops, and training teachers to improve basic education in some of the world’s most remote schools. Also featured are collaborations with such powerful partners as the World Food Programme and the government of Nepal.

The OLE Nepal Story is emblematic of the work of OLE’s global network in a growing number of developing countries. As OLE Founder Richard Rowe puts it: “There are roughly 1 billion children in the world today who are not getting a decent basic education. So we began to create a network of nation-based organizations that are committed to using technology and using the energy that they find within that country to really make a difference to all children.”

Watch the video here or go to dotsub, where anyone can transcribe and translate this video to help spread the word.

Worldwide today, one out of every six people is illiterate – a crisis of mounting consequence for global peace and well being. An unacceptably high number of children around the world still are not getting quality basic education – with only five years to go until the 2015 Millennium Development Goal for primary schooling for children everywhere. A root cause of this tragedy is that teachers are often isolated and alone, left in front of classrooms without the tools and support they need. This is where Open Learning Exchange seeks to make a difference.

OLE is mobilizing educational innovators in developing countries to help teachers and administrators adapt new low-cost learning tools and online content to meet their children’s needs.

In 2009, OLE continued to hone its strategy to help countries achieve Quality Universal Basic Education (QUBE). Its three pillars are:

• OLE Centers function as catalysts with their governments. National governments have the main responsibility to provide QUBE, but they need help to know what works best. OLE Centers in developing countries demonstrate scalable educational innovations, document their effectiveness and then work with governments and other partners to provide the improvements to all children.
• OLE advances quality in education. Its approach to learning integrates the three elements essential to any significant improvement: people, content and technology.
• OLE is a global network. It helps connect social entrepreneurs across countries so they can spread their ideas and share their successes and failures with colleagues.

By the end of 2009, OLE International had helped establish OLE Centers in Nepal, Rwanda, Ghana, Namibia, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Bolivia and Mexico.

Leaders of OLE Centers met for the first time late last year, at a Global Assembly in Kathmandu, where OLE Nepal also demonstrated the QUBE strategy in action. The Center is managing a pilot with One Laptop per Child for math, Nepali language, and English instruction for nearly 2,000 students in 26 schools. Its team works directly with government staff to create these digital learning materials and train teachers to use them. A full impact analysis is in progress, with preliminary anecdotal evidence of increased student attendance, interest, and understanding. Negotiations are under way for the government to expand the program across the country.

Importantly, as with all of OLEs resources, these course modules will also be free and open over the Internet for anyone to download, translate and localize for their teachers and students.

OLE has made its progress to date with support from Oxfam America, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, Open Society Institute, Danish IT Society, governments and private foundations and individuals. It is also working in tandem with the UN, the World Bank and other important groups toward the UN’s Millennium Development Goal for education (MDG 2).

In 2010, OLE will build on progress to date with steps including the following:

• The Billion Kids Library of open, basic curricula is expected to go online in early 2010.
• International panels are now being assembled to identify learning tools and other educational resources for each core QUBE theme (such as “understanding the rights and responsibilities of every human being”).
• A formal impact evaluation of OLE Nepal’s current implementation in Nepali schools will be completed in 2010.
• OLE Rwanda will deploy its first primary school resources in early 2010.

Last summer, OLE CEO Richard Rowe elaborated his theory of change in the current state of global education in an essay posted jointly by UNESCO and InfoDev. “Our biggest challenge is to align and balance the three key components of change – content, technology and people. When that is done, the UN’s Second Millennium Development Goal and Quality Basic Education for all will become much more than a dream. … We will be on a path that will make it possible,” he said at the time.

Today, “given OLE’s progress in 2009 on the global OLE network, individual OLE Center startups, new partnerships, and open access to learning tools, we see 2010 as a watershed year for OLE, with hope for new momentum in global education,” he said.

Oxfam America has extended its financial support for OLE into 2010. As an international relief and development organization, Oxfam America describes its mission as “creating lasting solutions to poverty, hunger, and injustice.” Its belief system of empowering people to overcome poverty and injustice, take control of their own lives, and build a just and safer world is shared by the Open Learning Exchange.

OLE’s Quality Universal Basic Education (QUBE) strategy aims to ensure that every child gets an opportunity to develop an intellectually and economically strong life. As such, it defines basic education as enabling one to:

• Read local newspapers, magazines and books
• Complete job applications and obtain employment
• Write letters to friends and employers
• Manipulate numbers and keep accurate financial records
• Engage in productive work
• Improve agricultural, nutritional, health and environmental practices,
• Participate in art, music and culture
• Promote cooperation and manage conflict effectively
• Contribute meaningfully to one’s family, community and nation
• Understand the rights and responsibilities of every human being

“Oxfam America has been a founding supporter of OLE, and we could not be more gratified that it continues with us in 2010 to advance our shared goals,” said OLE International CEO Richard Rowe.

ABOUT OLE
The Open Learning Exchange (www.ole.org) is a global network that helps connect and equip social entrepreneurs in OLE Centers around the world, enabling them to demonstrate educational innovations, document their effectiveness, and work with governments to scale them to reach all children. It is a US social benefit organization, based in Boston, Massachusetts.

OLE Rwanda is collaborating with its government’s National Curriculum Development Center to provide children in primary schools with mathematics learning tools translated and localized from the Shuttleworth Foundation’s Siyavula program for digital educational resources. Between February and June, the math resources are scheduled to be rolled out in pilot schools for children in their first three years of primary education.

Class time in Rwanda

 Ultimately, the plan is to provide access to these and other adapted Siyavula materials across the country via the Internet, on DVD, and in printed form, depending on each school’s needs. Along the way, the Rwandan developers are also identifying innovations to be strengthened, filling gaps, developing teacher training to use the materials, and establishing frameworks for monitoring and evaluation.

 The digital resources will help Rwandan educators reach many more children with learning tools than could be taught with more expensive math books, according to OLE Rwanda Executive Director Jacques Murinda.

 “If we educate Rwanda’s children we empower them to face the future and improve their lives – and the state in general,” he said.