Dr. Richard Rowe, Founder and CEO of Open Learning Exchange, has been featured as a guest blogger for Education Technology Debate’s December 2011 debate on “OER and Digital Divide: Do Open Educational Resources Actually Increase the Digital Divide?”

“Let me begin by suggesting a different question than “Do Open Educational Resources actually increase the digital divide?” Instead, let me ask: How can OERs be used to reduce the digital divide? Or more importantly, how can OERs be used to increase the opportunities for everyone to maximize their potential?”

Continue Reading How Open Educational Resources Can Increase Opportunites for Everyone

The Open Learning Exchange (OLE) has released the results of a year-long literacy study conducted in Rwanda using the “TeacherMate” handheld learning device created by Chicago-based Innovations for Learning.

“The results of the report are remarkable,” said Dr. Richard Rowe, CEO and Founder of the Open Learning Exchange in Cambridge, Massachusetts. “We believe this is the first time the introduction of a technology-supported learning system has shown substantial improvements in basic literacy in a developing country.”

OLE Rwanda conducted a pilot study of the TeacherMate Differentiated Learning System with 620 primary school students in Kigali. The project included monitoring control and experimental groups and testing students using the USAID/RTI standardized English literacy test for Rwanda. The results revealed that students using the TeacherMate had nearly triple the increases in literacy test scores compared with two different control groups: an average 36% increase in scores compared with 14% in each of the control groups.

According to Dr. Rowe, these findings are all the more impressive because “students had only 40 minutes per week with the TeacherMate instead of the recommended 100 minutes. Also, the teachers had no previous experience with ICT and they used the system for less than the full school year.”

A Rwandan student using TeacherMate

The use of the TeacherMate involves a total systems approach, not just one piece of the challenge. The Rwanda project included content aligned with the curriculum, high levels of interaction, frequent performance feedback for students, a Classroom Management System for teachers that supported customizing the learning process of each student, and the hardware that enabled this to happen. At approximately $50 per TeacherMate device, OLE has estimated the amortized cost of the program to be less than $5 per student per year. “This begins to be an effective approach that can scale quickly,” added Dr. Rowe.

As a result of this success, OLE is currently seeking financial support to continue the TeacherMate program in Rwanda and expand it to Uganda and Ghana in 2012. The second phase of the pilot will involve using the TeacherMate software on Apple’s iPod Touch devices in schools that have some access to the Internet, enabling OLE to use the accompanying Classroom Management System to track student progress wirelessly and to support the remote coaching of teachers. OLE will also be exploring the effects of increased home use. Kari Mruz, Project Manager for the Rwanda study, will continue as Director of this multi-nation expansion.

To download the full report, please click here. For more information about this study and to learn how to support this program, please contact info@ole.org.

The Danish IT Society (Dansk IT) has invested $67,000 in helping to launch the OLE Ghana LITE program. “We are delighted that our IT Society has become an important investor in the Ghana LITE program,” said Tony Franke, Director of the Danish IT Society. Kofi Essien, Executive Director of OLE Ghana, said: “The Danish IT Society investment has enabled us to develop and implement the full full-scale demonstration of the power of the Ghana LITE approach to learning.”

Ghana LITE (“Learning Innovation Teams for Education”) introduces new activity-oriented learning materials closely aligned with Ghana’s educational standards and examinations. LITE coaches work in classrooms with teachers and students to implement project-oriented learning involving children working in teams with their teacher who coaches them rather than lecturing. Each LITE school will have its own customized School BeLL (Basic e-Learning Library), a digital repository containing a terabyte of open educational resources (OER) that can be revised to meet local conditions and either printed for projected for use in the classroom. Schools will be encouraged not only to access the high quality content of the School BeLL but to create and publish their own content, including a weekly community newspaper. One key feature of Ghana LITE is the use of inexpensive HD video cameras for teachers and students to film themselves as they learn these new approaches to learning and to compare their work with models contained in the School BeLL.

The School BeLL is being developed as an Africa-wide tool for improving the quality of learning throughout the African continent. Anyone interested in participating in this development can sign up at Africa School BeLL Network

The 2011 General Assembly (GA) of the Open Learning Exchange, sponsored by Intel, was held at the Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City from September 26th to 29th. Entitled “Persuading to Scale: growing billions of great learners with powerful innovations,” the GA brought together OLE center directors from Uganda, Rwanda, Nepal, Ghana, and Mexico, as well as other partners and supporters of OLE’s mission to achieve Quality Universal Basic Education around the world.

The Assembly opened with an introductory ceremony by faculty members of the Universidad Iberoamericana: Dr. Jorge Martinez, Ms. Marinela Servitje, and the Rector, Dr. Jose Morales Orozco. The keynote presentation was delivered by Dr. Marshall Smith, a graduate of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, former dean of the Stanford School of Education, number two in the Department of Education under the Clinton Administration, Director of Educational programs for the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and a senior adviser to Secretary of Education Arnie Duncan. In his address, Dr. Smith stressed the importance of developing “knowledge infrastructure” to support and assist teachers worldwide. To this end, he emphasized the role of Open Educational Resources (OER), programs such as Teacher Education in Sub-Saharan Africa (TESSA), and social networks in bolstering the infrastructure of developing nations.

OLE Center Presentations

Antonio Puron of OLE Mexico and Inoma presented his educational video games which he hopes to scale to millions of children throughout Mexico and beyond. “Fun” is the primary focus of the games, encouraging students to continue learning well after the school day has ended. He emphasized the need for the seamless integration of educational materials so children do not feel these programs are simply school disguised as entertainment. He argued that if the educational aspect appeared too transparent, buy-in among students would drop off considerably.

Rabi Karmacharya, Executive Director of OLE Nepal, presented the Center’s mission to improve the quality of basic education through the integration of ICTs. He discussed the implementation of the One Laptop Per Child program in partnership with the Nepalese government, teacher training efforts, and his focus on OLE Nepal’s digital library. He discussed OLE Nepal’s encounters with government corruption, hindering the ability of his programs to scale effectively.

Jacques Murinda presented on OLE Rwanda’s ongoing activities. He reported on the comparative TeacherMate and XO laptop study currently underway, the results of which will be available by the end of 2011. In his presentation, Jacques spoke of how the XO and TeacherMate programs fostered excitement, increased innovative learning, centered the teaching on students, and helped fill in gaps that teachers were not adequately addressing. He acknowledged that there were associated challenges, such as low levels of English proficiency, resistance to new teaching methods, curricular restrictions, and limited time in school. In order to counter these obstacles, he suggested adapting content to Rwanda, implementing programs that allowed students to use technology at home, and integrating the use of ICTs into the regular curriculum where possible.

Kofi Essien spoke about OLE Ghana’s efforts to improve education in his home country. His presentation focused on the challenges posed by different aspects of the status quo of education in Ghana such as stagnating enrollment figures, superficial CSR efforts, the limitations of government and CSO initiatives, and other barriers preventing effective education. He argued that the solution to these problems is to increase the demand for quality education among students, families and teachers as well as expanding access to educational materials. The core of his proposal centered on finding and educating teachers who are excited, confident, and effective in the classroom.

Vincent Kizza represented OLE’s newest center in Uganda. Vincent reported on the state of the Ugandan school system, which includes a high number of poorly educated children with high student-teacher ratios. He proposed tackling these problems by strengthening the accountability of stakeholders for learning outcomes, enhancing school supervision, policy revision, undertaking school improvement projects centered on improving the quality of education, and establishing clear educational standards that are currently lacking in Uganda. Vincent has also championed Open Educational Resources through www.wikieducator.org and reported on teacher training workshops he has conducted.

Chris Rowe presented OLE’s School Basic e-Learning Library (School BeLL) by guiding participants through its basic functionality, as well as explaining its’ necessity and uniqueness. At the core of the BeLL is the idea that it provides a two-way flow of knowledge, with content being provided not only by the administrators, but also being supplied and modified by users, thus increasing the utility of content as well as the sense of ownership at a local level. Chris emphasized that this model relies on good pedagogy and implementation at a local level as well as accurate metadata tagging in order to be effective. He also recognized that the lack of an effective method for localizing content remained a significant hurdle facing implementation.
Partner Presentations

Paola Robles, Project Director at Empresarios por la Educacion in Peru, discussed her organization’s challenges in increasing quality basic education in Peru and how entrepreneurs in her country are funding her organization to tackle these problems. Empresarios focuses on working closely with teachers and regional leaders, public/private partnerships, and local-level policy making to enable advances in Peru’s educational system that are not only sustainable, but also scale and can be replicated elsewhere.

Miguel Brechner of Plan Ceibal in Uruguay joined the meeting via Skype video chat to discuss his success at scaling the One Laptop Per Child digital inclusion program. He discussed his ability to garner support for Plan Ceibal and to persuade the government to adopt it into law, thereby allowing every child in Uruguay to own a laptop. This has had many positive impacts in Uruguay, including increased connectivity and use of the Internet at home, increased computer literacy, and increased access to online educational materials. Plan Ceibal has transformed in Uruguay what used to be viewed as privileges into rights.

Padmanabha Rao shared his experience scaling the R.I.V.E.R program, designed for a one-room, one-teacher, multi-grade school, to over 12 million children in India. Rao and his wife Rama were able to create a program that views teachers as “facilitators.” They reorganized the Indian curricula into small, interesting group activities without the use textbooks using a self-paced “learning ladder” to create milestones for each student as they work through the curriculum at their own pace. Localization, community ownership of education, and curricular dynamism are central to the R.I.V.E.R. model and have played a key role in its success.

Silvia Schmelkes, a Dean in the education department at the Universidad Iberoamericana, discussed the social and political implications of making changes to education, particularly in Mexico. She highlighted the effectiveness of involving the same people who designed a program in the implementation process in her analysis of the Transition Team 2000 project and went on to show how specific conditions such as a confluence of political and social pressures, local involvement with policies, continuity of policies, and visible results greatly increase the chances of success.

Braulio Torres presented as a representative of Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA) headquartered in New Haven, CT. This organization designs and evaluates programs to fight poverty with the goal of scaling. Braulio presented the organization’s initiatives in studying enrollment rates in Ghana. IPA conducted a scientific study of the impact of various programs on educational attainment and enrollment. In this study, they were able to show which programs were responsible for the largest gains and subsequently scale those programs.

Rodridgo Arboleda of One Laptop Per Child Mexico presented an overview of the OLPC program, the focus on digital inclusion, and its initiatives in Mexico and throughout Africa. He spoke about the impact technology can have on the lives of children, providing an “antidote to ignorance.” He also pointed out the specific advantages children have over adults in picking up technological skills and how this can enable them to become content creators in addition to consumers.

Sean Southey and Brenda Campos presented from Media Impact in New York, an organization dedicated to “Entertainment-Education and social change communications.” Media Impact focuses primarily on television and radio programs in Latin America, Africa, and Asia, using entertainment to educate viewers and listeners on health, environmental, and social issues. Their presentation highlighted several different examples of the power of messaging in popular media programs. This showcased the fact that if done properly, media programs can significantly alter public perceptions of social issues.

Fernando Martinez of Intel Mexico, the official corporate sponsor of OLE’s General Assembly, presented Intel’s significant contribution to ICTs in education, focusing on professional development for teachers. He believes that education is in need of a systematic transformation in the areas of policy, curriculum and assessment, professional training and development, ICT, and research and evaluation.

Throughout the GA, participants worked on drafting a “Declaration of National Policy Concerning Universal and Open Quality Learning.” The completed document, presented on the final day of the conference, will serve as a template for governments dedicated to increasing access to and the quality of education in their countries.

While separate from the General Assembly, OLE also facilitated and assisted in the promotion of a Sugar Labs workshop hosted by Pablo Flores and Walter Bender. Sugar Labs is a community of programmers who develop the Sugar software platform used on the XO laptops. This workshop immediately followed the conclusion of the Assembly and included approximately 30 participants from Mexico.

It is easy to feel helpless today given the multitude of seemingly intractable problems facing humanity: climate change, financial upheaval, wars, poverty, hunger, disease, and corrupt and dysfunctional governments. Thousands of organizations are addressing these urgent issues with varying degrees of success. But if we are to grow beyond lurching from one crisis to another, we must begin to solve the basic, root causes of these problems. With nearly two billion children under the age of 15 in our world, most of whom have little or no access to education, quality basic education for all is a necessary part of the broader solution.

How do we achieve Quality Universal Basic Education? The evidence is clear that traditional education systems around the world are failing to meet the basic learning requirements of our children. Thus simply doing more of the same will not achieve the goal of a good education for everyone. Thousands of learning innovations are being promoted across the globe today, with varying effectiveness. However the benefits of these innovations often remain concentrated among a few, privileged groups, increasing the divides between us rather than reducing them. Even the most effective of these innovations for learning can be permanently sidelined by cultural differences, financial, technical, and political barriers. The challenge then is to help public, private and community leaders identify and bring to scale a mix of cost-effective learning innovations that enable all of our children to learn how to create healthy and productive societies in the 21st Century.

The 2011 General Assembly of the Open Learning Exchange, “Persuading to Scale: growing billions of great learners with powerful innovations,” will tackle this challenge with an emphasis on solutions. Participants will engage with leading educational innovators concerning ways they have attempted to scale their programs beyond a few. Each innovator will present a short, descriptive “trailer” of their solutions to this year’s challenge followed by small groups discussions raising questions for further exploration with the innovator. Throughout the assembly, participants will be encouraged to share their own experiences – their successes, failures and ideas about how to scale learning innovations in ways that billions benefit.

Some of the innovators presenting include:

Marshall Smith, a key founder of the open courseware movement, will share his experiences with scaling from the perspective of a senior U.S. government official and foundation executive.
Padmanabha Rao, whose RIVER program has been remarkably successful in reaching millions of the most marginalized children in India, will draw the roadmap he and his wife Rama have taken.
Rabi Karmacharya of OLE Nepal will show us how he has navigated Nepal’s frequently changing governments to reach highly marginalized children in some of the most remote areas of Nepal.
Miguel Brechner of Uruguay’s Plan CEIBAL will share how he succeeded in creating a government-supported and funded digital inclusion program outside the formal educational establishment.
Karine Gruslin will describe her successes in Peru in mobilizing Empresarios por la Educacion as a strong private/public partnership and her current efforts to align their work with the new government.

OLE International will present the latest version of the School BeLL (Basic e-Learning Library), allowing participants to explore how they can adapt this innovative library software for their own schools, communities and nations.

Participants will also have the opportunity to shape some of our time together by creating their own ad hoc interest groups by geographic region and topic. Additionally, they will have time to explore some of the learning innovations underway in Mexico and to participate in cultural activities in the city.

The GA Planning Committee, chaired by Antonio Puron, Executive Director of OLE Mexico, is seeking further suggestions concerning the content of the meeting. This can be done by going to the Early Registration page which is now open at: http://www.applywizard.com/5ed3.j5w2

Marshall (Mike) Smith received his doctorate from the Harvard Graduate School of Education and after several years of teaching became the Dean of Stanford University’s School of Education. He served as the number two in the US Department of Education during the Clinton administration and then as Director of Educational programs for the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. Most recently Mike has been a senior adviser to Secretary of Education, Arnie Duncan and has advised the US State Department on international education issues. Mike is credited with fueling the burgeoning open educational resources (OER) movement, both intellectually and financially during his time at Hewlett.

Seth Weinberger is an attorney in Chicago who for the last quarter of a century has committed significant amounts of his time and resources to the development of Innovations for Learning, a social benefit organization focused on providing innovative learning systems for children to acquire basic literacy and numeracy skills. The TeacherMate system, which OLE Rwanda is evaluating this year, was developed by Innovation for Learning. Seth and his wife attended last years’ OLE General Assembly in Kigali and visited schools there. He has asked Dr. Rowe to serve on the Board of Directors of Innovations for Learning with the understanding that there are significant synergies between the two organizations.

Billion Kids BELL.

The Billion Kids Basic E-Learning Library (Billion Kids-BELL) is a drupal-based repository available for no fee on the Internet and designed to include OCW related to basic learning from sources throughout the world. It has been created to enable educators, teachers and students to find highly rated open learning resources and to rate and comment on resources they have used

National BELL.

The National Basic E-Learning Library (National BELL) involves the same basic library system software and is deployed at the national level. It contains those open source materials that are deemed by the educational leaders of that country to be appropriate for their educational system. The National BELL may be openly available on the Internet or it may be established as an Intranet with materials that are limited for use in that country.

School BELL.

OLE’s School Basic E-Learning Library (School BELL) involves establishing a basic public library in remote villages. It employs a stand-alone server that does not require Internet access. It uses only 12 volts of power that can be drawn from solar cells or a manual or pedaled charger. The School BELL downloads from the National BELL thousands of open basic education courseware aligned with the national educational standards, including textbooks and related video, audio, photos. With the option of a printer and projector, in addition to wi-fi, the School BELL provides the entire village with a public library that can include not only basic literacy and numeracy materials but anything of interest to the village.

Personal BELL.

The Personal Basic E-Learning Library (Personal BELL) will be an Android-based software package that runs on any Android device. It will contain the personal library (textbooks, workbooks, videos, etc.) of a learner, downloaded from the School Bell or other sources as they become available. The Personal BELL does not yet exist but it is in OLE’s development plans. OLE is seeking to find individuals and organizations interested in developing and helping to deploy this software.

Looking back at 2010 one can see that the Open Learning Exchange began to achieve significant momentum in a number of ways. 2011 promises to be even more dynamic.

Richard Rowe and Jacques Murinda

OLE Rwanda hosted the second OLE General Assembly in Kigali in October. Opened by Rwandan Education Minister Charles Murigande, the assembly actively engaged over 40 representatives from Asia, Africa, Latin America, North America and Australia in addressing the theme “What Works? Exploring Approaches to Quality Universal Basic Education.” A set of guidelines for assessing educational innovations in developing countries will be one of the results of these discussions. The clear outcomes of this assembly included breakthrough deliberations on ways to determine program effectiveness and new agreements to share ideas and resources. One could feel a growing collaborative spirit.

Under the leadership of OLE Rwanda Executive Director Jacques Murinda, several new innovations are being implemented. OLE Rwanda has installed the first School BELL (Basic E-Learning Library) on a pilot basis. This is a low cost standalone digital library designed to enable remote rural villages to have a robust library of basic learning resources that can serve the adults as well as their children. In addition, Seth Weinberger, founder of Innovations for Learning and creator of the TeacherMate, has provided 250 TeacherMate devices to be used over the course of the 2011 school year for basic literacy and numeracy in the early grades. Kari Mruz, administrative assistant for OLE, has assumed leadership of that project. Also, supported by two Danish companies, Systematic and Danfoss, a curriculum development and teacher training project is underway for schools using the laptops distributed by One Laptop per Child. The juxtaposition of these two projects will enable OLE Rwanda to undertake the first study comparing the relative cost effectiveness of these two approaches to accelerating learning. The first results of these studies will be available late in 2011.

OLE Nepal's Rabi Karmacharya

OLE Nepal, under Executive Director Rabi Karmacharya, carried out a comprehensive and independent evaluation of its laptop pilot in rural Nepali schools and moved toward a greater focus on curriculum development and teacher development, working closely with the government to create open educational resources specifically aligned with the Nepali early education curriculum. OLE Nepal is now negotiating the next phase of its work.

OLE Mexico, under the leadership of Antonio Puron, is developing our newest OLE Center and creating a series of interactive games for learning basic math and language. Initially available on the Internet, these games will become available offline as well on the national and local Bell libraries.

OLE Ghana's Kofi Essien

In addition to these active OLE Centers, we are responding to several new requests from social entrepreneurs eager to establish OLE centers in their countries. This includes Malawi, Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo, India, Peru and Bolivia. We expect these, and others will emerge as strong OLE Centers during 2011.

A key part of OLE International’s strategy for accelerating Quality Universal Basic Education throughout the world remains the development of a multi-faceted tool kit that OLE Centers and others can use to develop and adapt appropriate learning materials and make them available to all children, especially those who are most marginalized by poverty and geography.

We have focused in 2010 upon bringing the Billion Kids Library software into a form that it can readily be installed as a national library and in developing the School BELL (Basic E-Learning Library) as a stand-alone facility that can be installed in remote village schools. Both of these options need further development but are now in a form that national centers and volunteers from around the world can continue to develop and customize the software to the unique requirements of each location.

So, as you can see, OLE is experiencing some remarkable momentum as we begin another year. As we persist with our irrational dream of somehow enabling a billion children to acquire a high quality basic education, we greet 2011 with a growing sense of possibility.