The Project Proposal
(sent as an entry for the Digitial Media Learning Competition of the McArthur Foundation)
The space between Chennai and Arizona / Illinois is zero. In Illinois a 21st Centrury Classroom is being designed. Elesewhere in America and Europe Advanced Digitial Learning environments, modules and methods and lessons exist. These are technologies and trends that are equally applicable with transformatory effect in a rual Indian Classroom.
Alexandria would bring in these technologies to enable an initial group of 1000 studnets to learn participatorily and share experience with the rest of the world. The project would collarborate with other groups by taking and providing intputs to create a model to bridge the gaps in quality of education in schools around the world.
Alexandria / Nalanda will have as infrastructure, a connected learning atmosphere, visualized as built 'around' a 21st Century Participatory Learning Library as Physical Space at Chennai. This 'library' would admit 1000 underprivileged students studying at insufficiently funded schools after a careful admission process to assess their commitment to learn. These students would be a heterogeneous group from different schools, different grades, of age group 15-21 and would include some well connected students from Premier Educational Institutions who are committed to the purpose of participative learning Carefully selected Teachers are to guide the participants in using the wealth of online multimedia tools and content, continuously bibliograph suitable resources, organize and facilitate expert interactions The facility will operate in a cost effective building with a scientific design, with digital facilities, connected classrooms, a Digital Internet Auditorium and a library of books.
The design of the facilities would be by learning and collaborating with MacArthur's ongoing projects such as Arizona State University's 21st Century Classroom and its Colloborative Learning Project , take inputs from the Consortium for School Networking, and from the Illinois Institute of Technology's Institute of Design's Schools in the Digital Age project, with inputs from other MacArthur projects and external projects. These are initial leads found at the proposal stage and the project would devle deeper for resources such as listed at http://learning.asu.edu/application.html
The idea is to Create a Digital Bridge to cover the 'fundamental divide' in quality of education between underprivileged students of low budget schools and the fortunate students of renowned educational institutions.
The project would work to percolate the technical advances down to a rural India setting. The dual objectives are 1) raise the 1000 beneficiaries to the level of students of an affluent school. 2) create a Digital Design for the Government to emulate.
The goals of the project in the first twelve months is to physically establish the learning center, admit 1000 participants, place people in required teaching/ assisting positions, draw up a list of International Resource persons for Internet Classes, begin work on bibliographing available online courses and websites that are suitable for participative learning for the given target participants, ensure that each of them are scheduled for 100 course sessions, review, report and share. During the first year, elaborate work would be carried out to expose the project to inspire others to follow this model, as also to explore further funding and support to continue / scale up this project, possibly with Government participantion in the form of land allocation and other support.
Participatory Learning
The project plans to significantly bring up the knowledge levels of about 1000 students who would otherwise complete their school education as inadequate school graduates, passed out, but way below in knowledge levels / comprehension / self-confidence from the levels of a school of International School standards.
The group would be a heterogeneous group of students from different schools, different school grades, a mix of 90 : 10 underprivileged average students to privileged bright students committed to the idea of sharing their knowledge. Alexandria would offer them a world class school atmosphere with built in exposure to proper methods of learning, Internet, Online Content and participative tools as also to high quality instruction / guidance.
The project would achieve results by offering an uncompromising participative learning atmosphere complete with computers with broadband connectivity, adequate guidance to expose them to well organized online multimedia lessons, specially organized Web sessions handled by teachers from around the world, local participative learning sessions to interact and understand the context of the school syllabus ( Students are taught programming languages or theories in physics without first making them understand the context on which this knowledge is to be used. This is one of the reasons why there is a wide spread tendency to memorize the lessons without understanding and take exams
India has Institutions as renowned as that of the best of European and American Institutions. But in a developing country with a population of 1.13 billion, not all institutions are so fortunate, so the majority of students, especially in a rural setting do not get good education.
The larger portion of the student population do not continue education beyond school level. Statistics indicate that only seven per cent of the country’s youth, in the age group of 14 to 25, had access to higher education. This is true of almost all states in India.
In the State of Tamilnadu, in the southern region which has a total population of 62, 405, 679 . There are 13, 702 urban schools and 34,658 rural schools. The proposed Participatory Learning project is to be implemented in a limited geographical region in this State.
Time Line
15 Nov - 15-Dec 31 Open discussions to further fine tune the project plan, identify supplementary supportive sponsors, explore the possibilities of Government Contribution in the form of allocation of land, explore the possibilities of leveraging this project to make it even more resourceful. Draw up a detailed plan for implementation, invite resource persons to join the think tank to arrive at solutions and call for volunteers to join the project implementation.
1 Jan – 31 March: Construct a building, set up the network and other infrastructure, consult teachers, identify and engage full time faculty and part time faculty, guest speakers, guest international teachers for online classes, identify beneficiary institutions, invite applications and select students with the primary criteria of commitment to participatory learning.
1 April – 31 Dec: First batch of 1000 beneficiaries provided facilities and classes; Schedules are drawn up to spread their sessions to maximize the use of facilities. Gradually connect them to relevant participatory learning groups worldwide and orient them towards interaction with the other groups. the Constantly explore ways of continuing the project on to the next two years, scale up the project, expose the project to inspire other organizations / corporations / Government.
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