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1Yahoo! Confidential
FOSS In Education Indian Context
Sai Sreekanth M
December 01 2005
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Primary Education in India
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Primary Education Context
• Pratham’s rapid assessment of learning outcomes, June-August 2004
• About 10% of students in age group 7-14 are out of school
• About 45% of students in Govt. Schools in age group 7-10 cannot read, 13% in age group 11-14
• About 60% of students in Govt. Schools in age group 11-14 cannot write, 25% in age group 11-14
• 75% of Govt. School students between ages 7-10 cannot do simple arithmetic
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Primary education context
• Increasing focus on ‘what is thought at school’ rather than on ‘are children in school’
• Effective delivery of education is key
• Quality and quantity of teachers, education material, resources are very low
• Evidence shows that Computer Assisted Learning has improved learning
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Primary education – Govt. School Computerisation in the country
• Several School Computerisation programs– Vidyavahini from central govt, several state govt.
initiatives (mahiti sindhu)
– Education content is largely curriculum content, quite pedantic, boring
– Most students use GIMP, office applications
– Learn how to use computers, learning outcomes have not been significantly impacted
– Near Zero funds for operating expenditure
– No working/usable internet connectivity
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Open Source in Schools
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Role of Open Source
• Open source not an ideological choice
• Affordability is a huge issue – Most infrastructure is granted, copied
• Anything that is available is useful
• What is needed is Open Access, Open Content, Open Source, Open Minds??
• Humungous amount of free, open source applications that are relevant for effective primary education
• Open source addresses one part of the problem
• TCO of software alone is lower not free
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Myths
• Open Source Software is difficult to use
– Evidence of usage in Bridge school, minority school and government schools in Kuppam
– No active teaching required
• Need trained resources
• Regional language content is essential
• Content suitable for local curriculum is essential and not available
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What works well in Schools
• Several applications do not need any active teaching– Ktutor – typing tutor program– English learning tools – Jumbles, hangman– Math tools - Percentage exercises, Graph plotters, – Chemistry – chemical lab simulators, periodic tables,
chemical bonds, – Opensourcephysics.org – Celestia for astronomy– Geography – GIS, maps and atlas tools– Image processing, productivity tools (open office)
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Useful resources
• KDE Edutainment suite
• Celestia
• Edubuntu
• Wikipedia, archive.org,
• Gcompris, childsplay
• Anangramarama
• TuxMath Scrabble
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Needs in Education
• Education tools– First Invest in tools than in curriculum content– Do not have language constraint if done well– E.g. Create a indic language hangman, jumbles,
scrabble, crossword,
• Good tools for Indian language computing – IMEs, Rendering
• Reference material such as dictionaries, thesaurus etc in Indian languages
• Indian content, books, literature• English language learning content, tools
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Indian language content and applications
• APF content
• Unicef Sisu Samrakshak, Meena series
• Tata literacy project
• Content from education departments
• IGNOU, EMRC
• Archive.org, wikipedia, digitallibraries
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Needs in Education
• District/Taluk level Computer assisted education centres
– 20 to 40 seat computer centre with broadband connectivity
– Open to schools, students in the region
– Supported and run by industry
– Resource centre for schools in the region• Distribute applications and content
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References
• www.iosn.net - foss in education primer• www.pratham.org – rapid assessment • www.infodev.org/education - ICTs in education, knowns and
unknowns, briefing notes• www.edubuntu.org – ubuntu distro for education • www.freshmeat.com – listing of open source software• directory.fsf.org/ - directory of free software• edu.kde.org – kde edutainment project, several useful applications• www.ofset.org/freeduc-cd - live CD for primary schools• fsd.unesco.org/directory – UNESCO free software directory• www.asymptopia.org – foss math applications• http://fci.wikicities.com/wiki/Education - Specialised education
distro for india
