Personal Blogs

In their publication of Minds on Fire: Open education, the long tail and learning 2.0; Brown and Adler (2008) presented multiple approaches, research projects and tool in open education in various parts of the world. I was very keen about the Digital Study Hall (DSH) in India. Anderson and Robertson (2012) revealed that the DSH approach started in the year 2005 as a collaboration between computer scientists and education professional who shared a vision to improve the quality of education in Indian schools. The project recorded digitally live classes by the competent teachers, collecting them in a large database. Thereafter, records of radio cassettes, video tapes and DVDs (audio-visual) materials were made and distributed to disadvantaged schools in rural and slum schools. This was done through a network of hubs and spokes, a mediation-based pedagogy and a technology for sharing community-generated videos.

The above was in attempt to solve challenges of limited number of qualified teachers, empowering untrained teachers with pedagogical skills and bridging the digital gap between the rural and urban schools. The content on audio-visual materials went beyond cognitive education as prescribed in the national curriculum at given class levels to addressing social vices such as abuse of human rights, poverty, poor health, and others. Chutana, & Rothenberg (2011), Deolalikar & Quising (2015) reported about the progress of DSH that by the year 2010, 2000 videos were made, 3800 adolescent girls in 41 schools had benefited. This confirms what Dadsden and David (2009) inform that the DSH project enables a flow of information, tools, people and texts thus minimizing the digital divide across the space which would impede people’s opportunities.

The project is still on-going as seen by the by the awareness march at the KGBV Bhagpat, Baraut, posted on the website on July 20, 2018 by the IDC18Team. Here, the students of KGBV along with their teachers initiated an awareness march in against the vices of child marriage and promoted girl-child education in India. In the same way, UNESCO (2014) also benchmarked the DSH model to monitor the progress towards Educational for all goals. In here, UNESCO learnt that if all women attained secondary education, under 5 mortality rates would fall by 49% in low- and middle-income countries.

The DSH project extended to other parts of Asia in places like Pune, Lucknow, Kolkata and Nepal. Benchmarking from the original ideas of DSH and learning from its challenges, a new project was initiated in a bid to increase learning materials to allow learners get opportunities of learning better through a hands-on experience. Chutana and Rothenberg (2011) writes about an accruing project called MILLEE (mobile and immersive learning for literacy in emerging economics). MILLEE envisaged that the lessons learnt in India will serve as model for enhancing literacy in other developing countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America. MILLEE banks on the effective mediation approach of the DSH which is referred to as the Outside the “education Box”.

We learn that with technological evolution, DSH project or approach that started way back in 2005, has opened mental windows of many scholars, researchers and innovators in the digital education world. Muyinda and Lubega (2010) present their experience about an ongoing research on the mlearning (mobile learning) in Uganda. In the December 2018, nurses in Karamoja one of the remotest areas in Uganda were seen on TV sharing their joys and challenges in studying online and writing an exam online instead of travelling to Kampala like they often did. Among the advantages they claimed this approach was cheap and just. Even in community health education, mobile devices have been used to disseminate information to the people.

In conclusion, with DSH, we learn not only the importance of technology enhanced learning, but we also learn that there is an inevitable educational revolution through technological revolution. We saw DSH starting with supplying audio-visual materials to poor and remote schools, in the due course, we saw the advanced and scaled-up project of MILLEE which even targets a wider geographic space. In the case of Uganda, we see a more advanced form of mlearning which used advanced technology of not only mobile learning but also internet. These are opportunities to extend education for all. However, if no deliberate efforts are made by responsible governments to extend internet connectivity and electricity to rural areas, the communities may not benefit from the education evolutions and revolutions.

References

Anderson, A, Robertson, C and Nabi, E. et al (2012) Facilitated Video Instruction in Low Resource Schools. ICTD ‘12, March 12–15, 2012,  pp.1-12

Bharucha, J. (2018) ‘Learning and social software: exploring the realities in India’, Journal of Information, Communication and Ethics in Society, Vol. 16 Issue: 1, pp.75-89, https://doi.org/10.1108/JICES-04-2017-0025

Brown, S & Adler, RP. (2008) Minds on Fire: Open Education, the long tail and learning 2.0. Educause Review. 43. Pp. 10 – 32.

Chutana, S and Rothenberg, J.A (2011) Technology at the Margins: How Meets the Needs of Emerging Markets. New Jersey: John Wiley &Sons Inc.

Deolalikar, AB, Jha, S and Quising, P.F. (eds) (2015) Governance in Developing Asia: Public Service Delivery and Empowerment. Massachusetts: Edward Elgar Publishing.

IDC18 Team (2018) India’s Daughter Campaign. Posted on: http://digitalstudyhall.in/idc2018/ Accessed on: [18^th/2/2019].

Muyinda, P., Lubega J., Lynch. K., (2010) Mobile Learning Objects Deployment and Utilization in Developing Countries. International Journal of Computing and ICT Research, Special Issue Vol. 4, No. 1, October 2010. 37-46.

UNESCO (2014)., Teaching and learning: Achieving Quality Education for All. Paris. UNESCO.

Vivian, l. Gadsden and Davis, E.T. (Eds) (2009) Risk, Schooling and Equality. Arizona: Sage Publications.