1. Sangamam Kanini Asha Chennai Technology and Education Effort

2. Why did Asha Chennai start supporting Govt. Schools?
An equal education is an essential prerequisite to an egalitarian society.
The mainstream schooling when made accessible to all, can cover the educational needs of 90% of all the children.
Government is the primary vehicle through which universal education can be delivered in a country like India. Every developing and developed nation that has achieved near 100% literacy has done this through public education.
There is a social consensus that good education should be provided to all irrespective of their caste, economic status etc. Our efforts to assist the schools has found support from the people as well as the concerned government officials.

3. Nature of Asha Chennai’s support
Provide teachers to schools where the teacher student ratio is inadequate.
Help maintain the school infrastructure properly and enable the existing infrastructure to be utilised effectively.
Train the teachers. Note this has been done only for the Asha teachers.
Provide educational and sports materials for the schools.
Technologies like the Computer and Internet have come down greatly in cost and have become available even in the remote corners of the nation. Leverage these to make the education more effective. This can motivate the children, the parents and teachers as well.
Make school a place for joyful learning by supporting Annual Days, Excursion etc.

4. Technology and Education – Till 2014-15
Asha has typically played a supporting role to the government teachers at the school.
Asha developed contents for Tamil Medium state board syllabus for classes 3 to 10 back in 2005 under the project ECTAL.
Asha through Inautix donated 60 used computers to the supported schools in It has since then maintained computer labs in these schools. Govt. of Tamilnadu has also been giving computers to many of the schools.
Asha appointed one computer teacher (with PGDCA) to go to some of our schools since 2008 to teach the children about the basics of computer science.

5. Gaps in Asha Chennai’s Support
It was found that our own training like the government’s training was not being used in the classroom.
We did not have any way to answer if the things we were doing were really causing any improvements in the learning levels of the children or for that matter the teachers.
The teachers we appoint were (and are) following the same ABL, Samacheer Kalvi and other processes in these schools. We werent studying enough to see if and how the training and contents we provide fit in with these.

6. Existing Classroom Processes
Teachers’ Skills
* In Math, teachers can just about do involved problems at 4th or 5th standard level.
* In English their grammar and ability to compose sentences is very poor (even at a 4th std level). Spoken English is also very poor.
Classroom Process
* Schools follow a combination of Samacheer Kalvi and ABL in the classrooms without clear instructions on teaching specific topics.
* ABL is not followed properly. Teachers unable to handle classes with varying skill levels. Teachers somehow show children have finished the cards for the ladder.
* English medium is being rapidly introduced all across Tamilnadu.
* No worksheets for classwork or homework beyond what is given in the textbooks.
* Govt. has provided materials for teaching English and Maths. Little use of these in classroom.
Assessments
* Summative Assessments are lesson based instead of being based on learning objectives. The intent is pretty good if you see the CCE manuals. Most schools are unaware of these.
* Coaching ahead of tests is pervasive even in primary schools.
* Formative Assessments are just based on the ABL cards.
* Little data analytics and feedback from these assessments.
Teacher Training and Self Improvement
* Existing training and materials do not provide the information on how the methods/materials are to be used in their classrooms. Thus there is a huge gap between intent and actual achievement.
* There is little use of the vast resources provided by the Internet for teachers to upgrade their own knowledge and skills.

7. Improving Classroom Processes
Teachers’ Skills
* Train the teachers with constant focus on immediate relevance of the contents. Methods mapped to lessons.
* Always match available classroom material with training methods.
Classroom Process
* Provide contents and tools for teaching Maths and English. Tamil and Science contents will be introduced later.
* Make relevant contents for a lesson immediately accessible in the classroom.
* Align our contents to Samacheer Kalvi/ABL.
* Help schools in scheduling classes (in particular related to computers) properly.
Assessments
* Introduce Asha skill level assessments which goes beyond the restriction of terms and text book. Collect student performance details for analytics.
* Introduce online assessments esp at FA level.
* “Gradually” improve the quality of the summative and formative assessments.
Teacher Self Improvement
* Every teacher and school to have a network enabled laptop. Asha teachers will be given a laptop. Govt. teachers will be assisted in using the school computers.
* Relevant contents for a lesson to be made easily accessible for study before class.
* Computer and Internet training for teachers.
* Online training in English for teachers.
* Forum for teacher discussions.

8. Sangamam Kanini
Sangamam Kanini was envisioned by Asha to effect the improvements to the processes mentioned in the previous slide and also address the gaps in Asha’s own support.
Provide laptops and internet connection to all regular Asha teachers.
Send computer teachers to schools with reasonable teacher student ratio to teach computer science and to teach curriculum subjects using computers.
Train teachers to use computers and the internet effectively in the classrooms.
Maintain computer labs at schools.

9. Sangamam Kanini
Develop specific contents and tools and also provide already available contents on these laptops for teaching English and Maths. Map these contents to the lessons in the textbook.
Develop and provide software for accessing these contents easily in the classroom.
Develop and conduct assessments for the students. Analyse the results from these assessments to track progress and identify areas of gaps in learning.
Develop/provide online worksheets for children that can be used offline as well as online.

10. Sangamam Kanini – Phases
Phase – I: Focus on schools where Asha already has teachers. Trial the contents and the methods we have with these teachers to help refine our process and contents. Baseline assessments at the supported schools.
Phase – II: Take up schools in an entire block of a district (50+ schools). Support the schools by sending computer teachers once a week who will assist the schools by teaching with the aid of computers and teach the government teachers how to do the same with the school computers in their absence. Prove the scalability and efficacy of our intervention.
Phase – III: Large scale deployment. Cover an entire district or more and show the scalability of the solution. Engage with SCERT to allign contents with evolving syllabus.

11. Where are we?
Phase-I implemented in at all Project Sangamam, and Poorna Vidhya schools plus Olcott Memorial.
Teachers at these schools were provided laptop and Internet connection.
Phase-II in – In addition to these schools, we have started sending 10 computer teachers to 40 additional schools in the Poondi block of Thiruvallur Dist. Curriculum for computer science and schedule for their work firmed up.
Asha laptops and School computers are being maintained at these schools.
Some computers and projectors donated to these schools.

12. Where are we?
Developed our own contents for Maths instructions and English lesson recordings. A good collection of free contents readied and supplied through all our computers. These have been mapped to the lessons in the textbooks.
Baseline assessments conducted in Feb Oral assessments in Nov Next written assessments planned in Feb 2017.
While Maths assessments yielded good information about the gaps, English assessments still need to be designed to the correct level.
Maths training continuing with matched materials at schools.
Online English training started.

13. Sangamam Kanini – Infrastructure
Asha Chennai now has over 60 computers of its own – 30+ laptops with our own teachers, 9 at Besant Theosophical, 8 at Olcott, 5 at various schools and for administration. 10 used desktops recently received and will be given to various schools.
We are maintaining all these computers plus over 40 school computers at various school labs. All these being effectively done by one system engineer, Muthu (an Asha Scholarship student)! We have purchased a scooter that he uses at Thiruvallur to go to remote schools.
All Asha teachers also have a Wifi hotspot with network connection. All the Sangamam and Sangamam Kanini teachers are also using this regularly for English training, accessing contents etc. All the school computers have Wifi dongles to allow them also to access the net through these hotspots.
Further computer teachers have a USB speaker, mouse etc. as standard packages.
Identifying suitable network provider for each teacher is a challenge, esp. for computer teacher going to multiple schools. Cost is also a factor. We are evolving a way to recharge these in time.

14. Sangamam Kanini – Infrastructure
As the laptops and hotspots age, they are developing more problems. Couple of laptops and hotspots will always be in need of repair given the number. We do not have spares and up taking regular teachers or schools’ devices and giving it to computer teachers.
A home office range printer is available at Thiruvallur. This is still not being used by the teachers for printing contents. Offline contents are also still being developed. Also need a scanner.
We have given digital projectors to bigger schools. Some others have one from the government. We have equipped one computer with good speakers etc. to be able to present a lesson on the computer to a bigger class.
We have evolved the Sangamam office for 25+ teachers to use their laptops simultaneously. Expanded the space. Expanded the number of electrical outlets. Couple of Jio hotspots provide free net access to all teachers for now (till March from what Ambani says!). Thanks to Srinivasan for all this!

15. Sangamam Kanini – Teacher Training
Ramanujan Museum and Centre for Math Resources (Mrs. Meena Suresh and Mrs. Kalyani) have been taking care of our Maths training. We are regularly having training sessions at the start of each term focussed on teaching them how to deal with lessons in the upcoming term. Tools used during these sessions are also available in their schools.
Rajaram and Venkat have been teaching them a little bit of higher level Maths.
English training was till now more haphazard as the learning levels of the teachers is far below what is required to teach effectively.
More frequent training was needed. So with Mrs. Jayashree Arun setting the assignments, we have been sending teachers weekly online assignments which they have a week to answer. Then the four mentors (Sundaram, Venkat, Rajaram and Srilakshmi) would correct these and respond back to teachers. So far 12 assignments have been sent.
We are also likely to settle into a once a term training in English focused on how to teach the lessons. The weekly assignments would need to continue for the foreseeable future.

16. Sangamam Kanini – Teacher Training
English assignment also doubles up as practical training on using computers and .
Asha teachers are being trained on using computers and Internet. They are taught how to use the contents we have provided. Computer teachers are also taught OpenOffice, Tuxpaint, etc. to be able to teach these to the students.
Broader goal is for them to be able to search, understand and manipulate (to their need) knowledge they find on Internet on diverse subjects.
Asha computer teachers and maintenance engineer should also aid the government teachers to learn how to maintain and use the computers at their disposal. This is also yet to happen in any substantial way.

17. Sangamam Kanini – Software
Every computer runs the Asha-Kanini application developed by Siddharth that presents content appropriate to the lesson. It is being used every day by all the teachers and has been quite stable.
Asha-Kanini application does not require network connection. Contents will be locally made available on the laptops. Only the contents in the form of a webpage and cannot be downloaded will not be available offline.
Usage data will be captured by the Asha-Kanini application and uploaded to the server. There are still some problems in this.
Handling of search based on tags, importance of a content, easier access through QR code scanning etc. are features to be developed.
Tools will be built to manage the installation and upgrade of Asha-Kanini software and contents on all the computers. Currently this is still quite a manual process.
Uploaded usage data can be viewed on the server. Some analytics is done to help understand how our contents are being used and whether our teachers are indeed doing the work they are supposed to be doing!

18. Sangamam Kanini – Software
Scripts developed to upload assessment scores to the server. Detailed analytics available on both the written assessment marks and the oral assessment statuses.
Extend Asha-Kanini software to also be able to conduct assessments or worksheets that the students can work on the computer. These will be auto-corrected and results from these will also be stored and analysed on the server.
Develop a new software to read text (esp. English lessons) in natural voice while highlighting the words being read aloud. This will immensely help the children speed up their reading skills. Siddharth is working on this.

19. Sangamam Kanini – Contents
Educational contents for computers are of different types.
Passive contents like videos or presentations on different topics. These are best used for reinforcing what is learnt in the class.
Active contents like games, online worksheets, simulations etc. which engage the children actively and in a way that interests the child.
Contents that are designed for the teacher like lesson plan, materials for conducting activities, etc. These I believe are the most important and can enable the teacher to teach better in her class.
Teacher have been made aware of these types and how to use them as well.
Asha-Kanini application will be packaged with contents that form all of the above types. Further it will also have links to good contents on the Internet.
Our goal will be to develop minimal contents. Only develop contents if something suitable is not available already.

20. Sangamam Kanini – Contents
Focus is initially going to be on English and Maths contents for primary school.
In English we have made available a recording of every lesson read out in good English diction (by Mrs. Rekha Balakrishnan).
To remove emphasis from the textbook lessons, reading comprehension passages / worksheets will be made available. These will have similar complexity as the lesson.
Phonics instructions for the basic 40 odd English sounds will be made available along with the introduction to these in 1st and 2nd standards. Instructions for using these will also be made available. To start with Starfall provides a good initial package.
Basic Maths instructions have been provided by Mrs. Meena Suresh. Identifies points that are often missed by teachers when teaching the lesson. Needs to be enhanced to reference the contents that are available.
Worksheets have also been provided for most lessons in Maths.

21. Sangamam Kanini – Contents
Resources like Khan academy videos (which are available in Tamil), NLVM (National Library of Virtual Manipulatives), PhET, One Stop English etc. have been mapped to the lessons of Tamilnadu state board text books and be made available locally (i.e. can be used without network connection).
Contents that are currently available at some of the government schools like Aziz Premji Foundation CDs, Toon Masti, Simply English, Hello English, even the recent CD with songs for all the poem in the Tamil textbook have been mapped to the lessons in the textbooks and packaged along with our application.
Several websites like mathgames.com, mangahigh.com, ictgames.com, vocabulary.co.il etc. have been mapped and made available through our app.
The credit for mapping and describing all the contents goes to our own teachers, in particular Santhasophya, Sailaja and Rajkumari.
The software will support any contents. Therefore as we feel the need we will be able to take existing contents and map them to the lessons in the curriculum.
Need to distinguish important from optional contents and check relevance of all contents provided.

22. Sangamam Kanini – Assessments
Goals of the Assessment are –
Understand how our school children are doing in absolute terms and relative to other broader samples (schools in India, Tamilnadu etc.). Also enable us to compare a single school to broader samples including our project schools. This would help us focus our efforts on weak schools, learn from best practices etc.
Chart the progress of our schools in terms of how they are improving or becoming worse over the years.
Help identify the gaps in the learning. Identify specific areas of weakness that we can then try to address through our training and the materials we give to the schools.
Large scale assessments in India is in its infancy. ASER by Pratham and National Achievement Survey by NCERT are the only nationwide ones we are aware of. SLAS by SCERT is unfortunately of poor quality.
Asha is doing the following in terms of assessments:
Oral assessments based on ASER that meets goals 1 and 2 above.
Written assessments mapped to the curriculum that assesses their mastery of learning objectives instead of knowledge of textbook contents. Meets goals 2 and 3 above.
We are maintaining consistency in conducting/grading of assessments to ensure good data.

23. Sangamam Kanini – Assessments
We conducted full blown written assessments (1.5 hrs per paper for 5th standard) in Tamil, English and Maths in April It was a disaster!
Rampant coaching before and assistance right during the tests.
Written tests for 1st and 2nd Std kids was not feasible.
Children struggled to write 3 tests in a single day.
In Feb 2016, we limited assessment to a total of 1 hour for a single class.
Written papers - Maths for 2nd std and above, English for 3rd std and above.
Younger children and children who struggle with the written tests - oral assessments based on ASER. However results not comparable with ASER.
Thoroughly conducted where we trained and monitored the teachers (Sangamam and Poorna Vidhya). Not at Senji, Olcott, Pearl etc.
English assessment was very difficult. Maths yielded good information regarding the gaps.
In :
Full ASER based oral assessments at Sangamam and Pearl schools.
Written Assessments - Same as last year for all schools (incl. Sangamam Kanini).
Computer Assessment (?) for schools where we sent computer teachers.
On the whole good baseline data available for us to measure progress.

24. Sangamam Kanini – Computer Education and Management
Managing computer teacher was and remains a challenge. This will be the main challenge going forward in terms of scaling as well.
What should they teach? Our answer: 50% time teaching computer science. 50% time teaching curriculum subjects using computers.
Schools size ranges from 12 to 200. Computers range from 1 per 10 students to none at all. How do they handle classes and their time?
How do we monitor the attendance and punctuality of computer teachers?
Travel constraints (distance, safety, lack of transport …).
What should they do when the school schedule doesn’t permit them to do their regular work?
What should they do when there are insufficient teachers for regular teaching at school?
Thanks to efforts from Srinivasan, we have some control over travel constraints, attendance etc.
Defined a rudimentary curriculum for computer science.
1st and 2nd std – Play games that familiarises them with keyboard, mouse etc.
3rd Std – Tuxpaint.
4th and 5th Std – Open Office (Writer, Calc and Impress).
6th to 8th Std – Programming using Logo (if they have already learnt Tuxpaint, OpenOffice etc.), Internet (Search, , Social networks etc.).
Computer project for all 4th and 5th Std children from January to March.

25. Questions to Ponder
Assumption 1 – Can these interventions have a positive impact despite external factors – peer group with low aspirations, illiterate parents, community, poor nutrition, lack of pre-school education etc.
Assumption 2 – Can these interventions have a positive impact despite internal factors – Rigid structure imposed by SABL, Poor teacher motivation/skill, Screwed up implementation of SABL (already deficient in many ways), Screwed up implemtation of CCE.
Couple of disturbing findings from Oral Assessments:
Greater outperformance in English and Tamil than in Maths despite the fact that we have done most in terms of training, materials etc. for Maths.
Nagalapuram with functioning Balwadi for several years did not show any better performance among 1st std students!
Are we still in favour of govt schools over models like private schools with vouchers, charter schools etc.?
Is our goal of using technology to empower the teacher misplaced? Are we better of looking at models of completely technology driven learning (without the teacher)?

26. Questions to Ponder
At the other end -- பத்தாவது வகுப்புவரை புளியங்கொட்டையை வெச்சுண்டு சொல்லிகைகொடுக்க முடியாத கணிதம் ஒன்றும் இல்லை. Then what are we doing with computers?
What would be a worthwhile goal for our project?
Learning attainment based on ASER?
X% of the students have mastered Y% of the learning objectives?
Usage of our contents by teachers (esp. government teachers in our absence).
Is our technology choice of laptops alright? Or should we look at alternatives like Raspberry Pi base computer or one of the cheaper tablets?
How do we approach the govt. for further scaling up?