Over the course of the past semester, I teamed up with fellow RPI IT
student, Lorena Nicotra, to develop a project that would promote
curriculum-driven technology use in primary schools in Tanzania. In
response to the problem of neglected computer donations in Tanzanian
schools, we wanted to come up with an idea that would help schools
make effective, intuitive use of technology in a way that would
supplement the existing curriculum.
Our Solution
The basic premise of our project was to develop a web interface that
lists Tanzanian curriculum objectives for standards one through four
in Mathematics, English, and Science. Under each of these objectives,
the interface offers several links to external online resources that
have been screened for relevance to Tanzanian education. Games,
videos, simulations, and audio are provided to offer a wide range of
resources that can augment an instructor’s daily lesson plans.
While the project is still in early phases, the progress so far can be
viewed at http://www.lpoirier.myrpi.org/ks.
Challenges
While math curriculum is very transferable among cultures, other
subjects vary a great deal. For example, in Tanzania, a focus is
placed on teaching sanitation, hygiene, first aid, and disease
prevention in science classes. The way that these topics are taught in
Tanzania is very different from the way that they are taught in other,
Western cultures, making it difficult to find online content that can
be used in this area. Luckily, we were able to find some resources
developed by USAID and its partners that addressed these objectives
particularly well.
Finding ESL resources was also difficult because most online content
is developed for teaching English to a demographic with existing
knowledge of Spanish or French. In this instance, it would have been
helpful to have a native Swahili speaker working with us. We did end
up finding several resources that were intended to support teaching
ESL to any demographic.
Successes
With an overwhelming amount of content and information available on
the Internet, it can be intimidating to mine through and find relevant
educational material. This bottleneck prevents teachers and
administrators from taking advantage of the wealth of online
educational resources. Our solution eliminates this concern by
plopping relevant learning content in a central location that is
extremely easy to navigate.
A second, and more important, value lies in its ability to provide
relevant content. As I highlighted in my Challenges spiel, it is
difficult to find relevant resources in Science and English. All of
the resources on our interface will directly address points within the
Tanzanian curriculum standards, however, so it can be verified that
all of the site’s content is extremely applicable to Tanzanian
education.
With easy navigation and applicable content, teachers are able to
direct their students to the site and immediately locate resources
that will address the day’s lessons. In this way the technology is
able to support the role of the teacher and reinforce a student’s
understanding of educational concepts.
I will be spending my winter break in Arusha, Tanzania, and I will
have the opportunity to introduce this solution to teachers and
students in a local primary school. The introduction is expected to
highlight areas of success and needs for improvement. Development will
continue as more resources are discovered and issues are identified.
If you have any suggestions for ways that we can boost this project or
comments on our progress, please feel free to contact me at
poiril@rpi.edu.