Agriculture – Page 3

A business model for delivering information to smallholder farmers: RUNetwork

Founder of RUNetwork, Marc Bernard (left) explaining the model

As the hype for integrating new information and communication technologies (ICTs) into agricultural value chain projects increases, one of the common questions that ICT4D analysts often try to answer is, who pays for the service – the poor farmer, the project, the government, or a donor agency?

Payment for information services to farmers is one of the components of a business model for deploying ICT solutions to rural agricultural communities. A business model, however, goes beyond just the cost of the service to the user, to the sources of funding of the service, avenues for income generation, the value of the service to the user, the potential to scale beyond pilot stage, and the capacity to sustain itself after the initial funds runs out. Business models are seen as systems that organizations use to create, deliver, and capture value.

The clip below describes how Rural Universe Network (RUNetwork) uses a voucher system to answer some of these important questions in its bid to bridge the gap between smallholder farming and scientific research.

As you watch, try to identify how RUNetwork creates value to the users of the service; how the system generates revenue for operation; who pays for the services being provided; how is the system being scaled; and how is the service sustained?

The model was successfully tested in 5 different countries and scaled up to 14 communities all over Uganda. It is presently introduced in another 15 African countries in a collaborative project between the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA) and the Federal Office for Agriculture and Food (BLE Germany) with financial support from the African Development Bank (AfDB).

For more information on RUNetwork, visit here.

March 26, 2012/by actualize

Agriculture, Education, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

GraphoGAME: ICT-Enabled Game is Improving Literacy in Low-Income Countries

Photo Credit: TodayHeads.com

Remember “Hooked on Phonics“? The famous infomercials from the 90’s that promised an educational video series could improve children’s reading scores through phonic-based learning methods?

GraphoGAME, a digital-based phonics learning game developed in Finland, is proving to be just as effective for children in low-income countries and as easily accessible through an array of ICT devices. Developed at the Agora Human Technology Center of the University of Jyväskylä in collaboration with the Niilo Mäki Institute, the game has already been developed in numerous languages — Bantu Languages in Africa, English, Spanish, Chinese, Arabic, Hindi, etc. — to improve literacy where access to sources of high-quality education is limited.

GraphoGAME promotes literacy development by teaching children to form letter-sound associations instead of simply memorizing letter symbols and names. By using fun and entertaining activities, the child becomes engaged and progresses as the game becomes increasingly difficult according to their progress. It starts by introducing basic sounds and gradually progresses to complicated sound combinations.

The research team and developers didn’t design GraphoGAME to replace the role of teachers in literacy learning, but instead promote its value as a powerful learning aid when placed in an educational setting where there are challenges to literacy development. For example, it would be a valuable resource in classrooms where teachers use rote learning — often considered a barrier to meaningful learning and is pervasive throughout the developing world.

The idea for GraphoGAME was introduced in the early 1990’s after Finnish researcher, Heikki Lyytinen, conducted a series of studies on children with dyslexia to identify predictors that could anticipate problems in literacy education. Using these findings and with funding from the Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture, the research team developed the first version of the educational game for children in Finland, and in 2011 expanded the project to address illiteracy in other countries.

Image from GraphoGAME

To support the expansion, the GraphoGAME developers created a larger project called the Grapho Learning Initiative which is divided into four focus areas: GraphoGAME, GraphoWORLD, GraphoREAD, and GraphoLEARN.

GraphoWORLD is a network of university professors and researchers from around the world who are working together to develop non-commercial technologies to improve literacy. In order to address each country’s unique orthography (system of spelling) and general learning environment, researchers conduct studies and assessments to support the effictiveness of GraphoGAME within that particular country.

GraphoREAD is a promising research project on eReading platforms and the business models to support them within low-income countries. This is a valuable addition to the GraphoGAME project and the research team is working to ensure that high-quality reading materials are made available for children developing literacy skills.

GraphoLEARN is an entity that will be created after the GraphoREAD research is completed and analysed to support the production of the learning materials identified in the research.

There are a number of videos online that can offer a brief introduction to the format of the games and the educational philosophy behind them. You can also go to the GraphoGAME website to try some of the games yourself.

March 23, 2012/by actualize

Agriculture, Environment, Land Management, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

The Dirt on Soil

The Africa Soil Information Service (AfSIS) makes one wonder how people coped before it existed. Africa Soil offers an enormous abundance of peer-to-peer information and services, namely data and maps that are georeferenced. The site fills a much needed gap because knowledge about the condition of African soils because it tends to be fragmented and outdated. AfSIS aims at giving the tools needed to maintain the health of the soil resource base as science and technological developments in remote sensing are providing new opportunities for low cost and efficient applications such as digital soil mapping, infrared spectroscopy, remote sensing, statistics, and integrated soil fertility management. Through such efforts areas of risk can be predicted and monitored.The Globally Integrated Africa Soil Information Service (AfSIS) is a “large-scale, research-based project to develop a practical, timely, and cost-effective soil health surveillance service to map soil conditions, set a baseline for monitoring changes, and provide options for improved soil and land management in Africa.”

AfSIS’s efforts of dissemination and training allow access to farm communities, public and private extension services, national agricultural research and soil survey organizations, the fertilizer sector, project and local planners, national and regional policymakers,and scientists. It is used in Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi, Mali, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Mozambique, and Ghana in partnership with several academic institutions. Through the success of the project , a global mapping effort has emerged.

Some impressive activities include:

producing digital soil maps and environmental covariates
developing, implementing and maintaining the cyber-infrastructure to operate this effort
developing a spatial database of soil management experiments
linking the soil management info to the digital maps
developing information dissemination mechanisms including websites, method manuals and guidelines, policy brief and a digital atlas
mainstreaming the soil health information system

March 23, 2012/by actualize

Agriculture, Environment, Environment, Natural Resources Management, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

Mobile Elephants

Save the Elephants is celebrated for its conservation work in Kenya, Congo, Mali, and South Africa. The four pillars of Save the Elephants are research, protection, grassroots, and education. Each of these pillars is taken seriously in a comprehensive way, keeping in mind that the ultimate approach to conservation is through local knowledge and understanding the elephant’s perspective.

Save the Elephants has used tracking technology since the mid-1990s. The Elephant Tracking Project displays movement patterns and corridors by using ESRI software that verifies GPS data. The tracking device also allows for a Quick Response Unit that notes any disturbances that might signal poaching. An integral part of Save the Elephants’ tracking and research is based off of data collected by GPS/GSM collars that send text messages every couple of hours that contain details on their location, air temperature, and humidity. Currently there are over eighty collars in rotation.

Tracking patterns can be viewed in Google Earth on a moving 3D backdrop of satellite photos provided by Digital Globe. On top of these tracking images of migratory patterns, stories and events are attached for interaction and educational purposes. Through such tracking, researchers are better able to understand why elephants do what they do and the complex social structures in which they live. Researchers can infer on how the relationship between human settlements and water resources affect elephant movements. By tracking these patterns, protected corridors have been established.

Photo Credit: Save the Elephants

An interesting project that Save the Elephants has taken on is geofencing. Traditional fences can be very costly and often ineffective in deterring bull elephants from raiding small-scale agriculture near human settlements. Geofences send an SMS message to an animal management team when a collared elephant passes through it. The team then can chase the elephant out of the fields and train it through negative reinforcements not to pass through the fence again. The program is being refined to teach elephants where they can’t go and to inform farmers of potential night-raids.

Another project is called SEARS (Spatial Economics and Remote Sensing of Elephant Resources). The organization created a vegetation map of Samburu to monitor migration patterns and the distribution of individual species of vegetation. Through layering the data, researchers can note the size and nutritional value of the vegetation. The goal of this project is to better understand why elephants migrate according to specific corridors and between specific regions. Save the Elephants notes how drastically migratory routes change when there are abrupt transformations in weather norms.

Save the Elephants rejoices in the explosion of communications and technology that allow the outside world to experience remote areas. The organization regularly engages with schools and provides media on their webpage.

March 22, 2012/by actualize

Agriculture, Humanitarian Assistance, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

Geeks and primitive fieldworkers: a tale of two cultures

MSF doctor kneels next to young girl with cast on her leg

Photo: MSF

By Médecins Sans Frontières

As a project manager for MSF (Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders), a medical emergency humanitarian agency, I attended this year’s South by Southwest (SXSW) festival in Austin, Texas, in the company of a friend and collaborator from Google who is involved in crisis mapping. We gave a presentation on some mapping work we had done together, and inevitably we discussed the differences and similarities in our geek (high-technology) and primitive fieldworker (humanitarian) cultures.

The two cultures are, on the face of it, rather distinct.

Geeks live in highly connected environments, usually urban, surrounded by technological infrastructure straight from the most outrageous science fiction of decades past. They inhabit an intellectual world of abstractions: math, code, logic, creativity, and business; while their physical existence is supported by a seamless layer of luxury and connectivity. The food, and the coffee, is good.

Humanitarian fieldworkers live a variety of environments from luxury hotels or palatial mansions to mud huts or tents, with variable connectivity, but almost always with constraints. Even in the most modern of African or South Asian capitals the technological infrastructure is often wobbly; there may be high-speed internet but it usually features random periods of downtime. In the mud hut scenario, internet and telephone use generally involves a satellite rig, great expense, and substantial cursing at the fiddly configurations and on-again-off-again unreliability. Our lives are never far abstracted from the constant effort required to enable working conditions, and the intensely pragmatic work of solving immediate problems. That patient is in danger of dying NOW, that refugee camp needs clean water NOW, and if we don’t get the car fixed in the next few hours we’ll be spending the night by the riverbank eating dry emergency ration biscuits. Most of us have at one time or another shared a single broken-down laptop with several people, a leaky thatched roof over a mud floor, and a plate of sandy, oily rice that is as good as we’re going to get for dinner.

Despite these disparate viewpoints (abstraction vs. immediate physical pragmatism) and differing ecological niches (urban café vs. mud hut) there is an unexpected similarity; primitive fieldworkers and geeks share a culture of problem-solving. Nothing makes a geek happier than a tough problem that gets all the neurons firing, and nothing makes a fieldworker happier than a serious emergency that gets the adrenaline flowing (if that sounds callous, in our defence it’s not the suffering that we enjoy, but the chance to make a real difference with our work).

At SXSW we had the chance to share that cultural crossover with a broad audience of geeks, fieldworkers, and an assortment of others, all of whom shared an interest in the intersection of humanitarian work and technology.

My main take-home message was: we are not alone.

We humanitarians tend to take pride in our ability to deal with problems by stretching our ingenuity and using only what is available in the field. My friend from Google was astounded at what we do with spreadsheets, saying “I didn’t think that this could be done without software coding capacity”. We use spreadsheets as databases, stock management systems, maps, payroll systems, and sketchpads. This is, perhaps a strength but I am beginning to realize that we take it too far. There is an enormous community out there in the world, with increasingly robust electronic links to even the most remote field locations, who can help us. Open source code can be written to address problems that we would normally tackle with tortuous repurposing of spreadsheets; there are incredibly talented programmers delighted to donate their efforts, especially to interesting problems. Informal slums can be mapped by volunteers, either people who once lived in the country or even by people who have never been there simply hand-tracing satellite imagery. The astounding success of the Ushahidi project (follow the link to read about an open-source crisis mapping project that started in Kenya to assist people during electoral violence and has since been used around the world, including Washington DC, to map emergencies) shows the power of crowdsourcing or distributed voluntarism to assist people in crisis.

Humanitarians need tools and information, particularly during crises. The tech world is bursting with possibilities to provide just that, often free of charge and with an astonishing level of professionalism. I hope that this meeting of cultures continues to deepen and that the early promise of these innovations translates to real benefit to the populations in crisis that we serve.

Ivan Gayton

Ivan Gayton is a project manager with Médecins Sans Frontières, currently working in Nigeria. During the Haiti cholera outbreak in 2010, he worked together with a team from Google to develop tools to map the outbreak using freely available software (Google Earth). He and Google’s Pablo Mayrgundter continue to work on an open-source epidemiological mapping tool in their scant spare time. Other than an interest in seeing further cultural cross-pollination between humanitarians and techies, Ivan has no conflict of interest, and no financial interests whatsoever in the matter.

This and many other MSF blogs are available at PLoS – Speaking of Medicine http://blogs.plos.org/speakingofmedicine/category/msf-2/

March 22, 2012/by actualize

Agriculture, Education, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

TED Announces New TED-Ed Initiative: What Does it Mean for Development?

Image from TEDEd/YouTube

The ever-growing universal digital library, full of open educational and adaptable resources which allows teachers and students from around the world to pursue opportunities in distance learning, is about to raise its standards for a new initiative due to be launched in April —TED-Ed. TED, a nonprofit famous for its award-winning TED Talks devoted to “Ideas Worth Spreading”, introduced its new “Lessons Worth Sharing” project last week and, according to its short introductory video, aims “to capture and amplify the voices of great educators around the world.”

By connecting exemplary teachers with animators, TED-Ed will produce videos — no longer than ten minutes each — capable of explaining innovative, thought-provoking, and challenging ideas through easy-to-understand visual representations. The TED-Ed initiative promises to bring the same high production values used in its TED Talks to create a valuable collection of resources, coupled with new interactive leaning tools, to improve education quality and promote life-long learning — that is, primarily in the US and English-speaking world.

Photo credit: Computers4Africa

So what does this mean for teachers from non-English speaking countries and the developing world? Though TED has not announced plans to translate each of the TED-Ed lessons, its TED Open-Translation Project has already provided subtitles and interactive transcripts for many of its TED Talks — currently 86 languages and counting — so it’s possible they’ll do the same for the lessons. And if they do and plans are made to use TED-Ed lessons within a foreign context, could the content be ‘open’ and easily adaptable to be considered culturally appropriate for different educational settings?

These are some of the questions that the ICT4E sector and the international teaching community need to start asking. With so much of the focus being placed now on how using digital devices like tablets and mobile phones will affect the delivery of educational information, the importance of improving the quality of that information is easily being pushed aside. So who better to raise the standards for this quality than organizations like TED who have made so many complex ideas like nuclear fusion and how cymatics work to be understandable and relatable, presented by experts in their given fields and directed to a diverse audience of learners.

This is a revolutionary idea when considering the ways in how to raise the poor quality of education in many schools throughout the developing world. Imagine how students’ — and teachers’ — comprehension of STEM subjects could be improved if the teacher-centered pedagogy used in many classrooms today was enhanced by supplementary videos explaining new ideas through understandable terminology and images for visually-inclined learners. Moreover, imagine the effects it could have on teachers’ teaching methods if they adopted some of the conversational-style approaches used in the videos.

Image from Khan Academy

Though TED-Ed’s teaching style and delivery method is unique, Innovators and creative thinkers in distance learning have already been exploring this territory of open educational resources (OER) and organized open education since the 90’s. The Khan Academy, a not-for-profit organization created in 2006 that has pioneered the free open educational video platform, has already created a vast digital library of over 3,000 online videos covering various subjects, though mainly in the maths and sciences. Having delivered over 131 million lessons, Salman Khan, founder of the Khan Academy, has impressive goals for the organization and aims to create “the world’s first free, world-class virtual school where anyone can learn anything.” Given Salman Khan’s stature and notoriety in the field of distance learning, he was featured as one of the speakers at the TED 2011 conference when the TED-Ed initiative was first announced to the TED community.

So what can we expect from TED-Ed in the future? If its lessons are as interesting, well-structured and thought-provoking as TED talks, students are in for a pleasant change from their usual lecture-based lessons. And hopefully TED-Ed will have a similar approach to that of the Khan Academy to contribute to and enhance the universal digital library while considering what it means for education quality around the world.

March 21, 2012/by actualize

Agriculture, Health, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

Two Guides You Must Read Before Using Mobile Technology for Behavior Change

Photo Credit: Larissa Frei

As the desire to utilize mobile phones in international health projects has increased in the last few years, organizations continually ask a similar question, “We want to use mobile phones. Now what?” But the decision to introduce or start a mhealth project needs to come after answering many questions before “now what?” especially when dealing with behavior change communication projects. Enter Abt Associates, FrontlineSMS, and Text to Change. Two guides have recently been released to help organizations assess whether or not mobiles are the right tool, and if they are, the process moving forward. One is from Abt Associates and is entitled mBCC Field Guide: A Resource for Developing Mobile Behavior Change Communication Programs. The other one was created in collaboration between FrontlineSMS and Text to Change and is entitled Communications for change: How to use text messaging as an effective behavior change campaigning tool.

mHealth is a sexy term these days but it is not always the best approach to creating behavior change. Simply using mobile devices will not instantly make your project/program better. But when designed and implemented with the end user in mind, they can be a cheaper and more direct tool to pass information along in order to change behaviors.

Reason for the Guides

Abt and FrontlineSMS/Text to Change saw the need to have a guide that can lead practitioners through the necessary steps in order to see if and how a mobile solution could be used in the field. Each guide clearly shows the need to analyze on how a mobile intervention would fit into a program. They both do a great job pointing out that every situation is different and that a mhealth intervention must fit into the context and infrastructure of the region. But they are structured in very different ways and have noticeably different lengths (50 pages vs 7 pages). The Frontline/Text to Change guide is structured more like a checklist and mostly focused on text message interventions. The mBCC guide is longer and walks the reader thoroughly through the assessment process. But the guides show how to strategically think about behavior change communication projects.

The mBCC Field Guide

Abt Associates broke down the guide into 6 chapters with each chapter focusing on a specific topic. Each chapter lays out the necessary research and design that must be conducted in order to successfully utilize mobiles for behavior change. The chapters are in order of how one should follow the process (even though you can pick and choose chapters if you have already completed a chapter before reading). The chapters include Situation Analysis, Audience Segmentation, Behavior Change Objectives, Message Development, Tools & Technologies, and Monitoring and Evaluation. Each chapter also includes tools in the form of Excel templates that can be utilized to complete the assessment discussed in the chapter. With a high level of detail along with the structured worksheets, this guide is designed for those who are new to mhealth and are seeking a step-by-step walk through from the start.

Frontline/Text to Change

As mentioned before, the FrontlineSMS and Text to Change guide is more of a checklist of things to research and discuss before designing and implementing a mobile-based behavior change project. With a DOs and DON’Ts list, it covers context, content, developing campaigns, and monitoring and evaluation. This skeleton format is a quick read and is probably better suited for an organization that either has worked with mobile devices before or is somewhat knowledgeable about mhealth.

Both are very useful guides for the intended audiences. With mhealth still only mostly being used in pilot projects, we need to find answers to what changes behavior. The greater number of projects that use mobile devices for behavior change communication (when they are deemed most appropriate) means more data and evidence will be produced in order to show the true impact of mobile devices. These guides give the necessary direction to organizations to start leveraging mobile devices in health projects and discover what does and does not work along with why, which is the most important question of all.

As an ending note, the mBCC Field Guide was presented by Gael O’Sullivan, Stephen Rahaim, and Shalu Umapathy from Abt Associates during the latest mHealth Working Group meeting. They explained that the guide needed to be a “living document,” and they requested feedback about it from mhealth practitioners, especially those in the field. Please visit their website (http://www.mbccfieldguide.com/) in order to provide any feedback. To provide feedback to FrontlineSMS and Text to Change, please find used the contact information here and here.

March 21, 2012/by actualize

Agriculture, Mobile, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

Who wins: Rural Agriculture or Mobile Sector?

mAgri Panel @ GSMA Mobile World Congress

Is rural agriculture a big business opportunity for the mobile industry or the mobile industry is a big business opportunity for rural agriculture?

This is the question that I continue to grapple with as I browse through presentations at the mAgri event during the just ended GSMA Mobile World Congress 2012 in Barcelona, Spain, and also analyze the “charge” by the Chairman of Microsoft at the IFAD Governing Council Meeting in Rome, earlier this year. Below is the recap of the presentations at the event that seem to highlight the importance of these services to the rural smallholder farmer followed by the perspective from Bill Gates.

GSMA Mobile World Congress

Introducing the mAgri event at the Congress, the Managing Director of GSMA Development Fund, Chris Locke reiterated the importance of mobile technologies in improving food security by reaching rural farming communities that are otherwise, not served by the traditional agricultural extension services. He stated that with the continuous support from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and USAID, the goal is to expand the mAgri program to six more countries. “What we are really looking for is a delta in a data – a delta that shows that there is a significant mobile penetration among the audience we are trying to reach but the lack of access to existing services that are trying to give them valuable information to help improve economically and socially, said Locke.”

Subrahmanyam Srinivasan, the CEO of IFFCO Kisan Sanchar Ltd (IKSL) then shared their experience in India through push and pull model of information delivery to their clients. Through an enviable partnership between IFFCO, Bharti Airtel, and Star Global Associate, m-powering utilizes mobile technology to provide agricultural information to over 3million revenue earning farmers in India and another 1million listening farmers.

The Global Product Leader of Nokia Life Tools (NLT), Bhanu Potta also emphasized the importance that Nokia place on educating rural farmers about production of new crop and animal varieties. According to him, these farmers are now switching from the traditional food crops to commercial and cash crop commodities and therefore need actionable, timely, locally relevant information in their local languages, and from trusted sources. The Nokia Life Tools provide farmers with market price information, weather updates, and news and tips on crops within their geographic location. A new feature that was released during the congress will enable interactions among the users and with experts through voice. NLT currently serves over 50million users in the area of health, education, agriculture etc. in India, China, Indonesia and Nigeria.

Mark Davies, CEO of Esoko then explained how access to agricultural information through mobile phone has improved revenue generation of smallholder farmers in Ghana. According to him, through the mobile services of esoko, farmers are able to better negotiate price with traders, avoid traders and go directly to the regional markets, delay selling their products until they can obtain the best price, and socially help address trust issues in marriages when women return from the market with their sales. With the challenge of scaling their services, esoko now serves between 10-20 thousand farmers in Ghana and also franchising their tools to other countries to deliver their own contents.

Finally, Marc Ricau, Vice-President Country and Partnerships of Orange AMEA outlined how the company is shifting focus from urban customers to rural customers in 25 countries (18 in Africa), since about 60-70% of the population in these countries live in rural areas and are farmers. According to him, they are developing and expanding network coverage in these countries and partnering with content developers to serve these rural farmers with mobile services and solutions for their agricultural needs. “Mobile services can bring development in these areas by increasing productivity of the farmers, said Ricau.”

IFAD Governing Council Meeting

Bill Gates at IFAD GC Meeting

From a different perspective, the Microsoft chairman recently charged three UN Organizations – the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the World Food Program (WFP) and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) to do better to serve farmers. “Right now, a digital revolution is changing the way farming is done, but poor small farmers aren’t benefiting from it” said Bill Gates. The billionaire philanthropist also criticized countries, food agencies, and donors that aren’t working together in a focused and coordinated way to provide the help small farmers need, when they need it.

So my question remains as to whether the digital revolution is an opportunity for the mobile industry or an opportunity for the smallholder farmer? In other words, who is benefiting from the this huge opportunity – the smallholder farmer or the mobile industry? Is the smallholder farmer really benefiting from all these interesting stories by IKSL, NLT, esoko, Orange and hundreds of ICT and mobile solutions being designed for agriculture? If yes, how and if no, why?

March 21, 2012/by actualize

Agriculture, Mobile, Mobile Money, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

Kenya’s Safaricom upgrading mobile money service

Kenya’s leading telecom provider Safaricom announced on Tuesday that it was upgrading its mobile money platform M-PESA to a newer version, hoping to make doing financial transactions wirelessly a bit easier.

Safaricom set to upgrade their M-PESA platform. (image: biztechafrica.com)

According to the company, the new system “will enable users to make instant payments for corporate services such as insurance.

“The migration, to be done in the next few years, will enable M-Pesa users to instantly pay electricity bills,” the company said.

Other mobile service providers in the country have called on Safaricom to allow them access to the platform, and have repeatedly said they would be willing to pay royalties to the company. Safaricom has thus far refused.

“It will also save customers inconveniences such as disconnections that occur as the current platform reconciles the transactions,” the company continued, adding that the new service will reduce the time it takes to make payments on bills.

“It takes 48 hours for payments made to Kenya Power, for instance, to reflect on the electricity distributor’s systems, while those to the National Hospital Insurance Fund (NHIF) take 76 hours,” the company added.

The new service will also provide users the ability to use the mobile money platform to pay for items online instantly, with a balance being reduced with every purchase, instead of having to be forced to wait until payment clears.

Safaricom also added that in order to reduce costs, part of the M-Pesa servers in Germany will be relocated to Kenya in order to improve “the reliability of the mobile money platform and cut down on overheads”.

Joseph Mayton

March 21, 2012/by actualize

Agriculture, Education, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

Can Video Instruction Improve Education Quality in Low-Resource Schools? 7 Important Lessons from India

Photo Credit: www.popsci.com

If education quality is largely dependent on the teaching capacity of educators, wouldn’t integrating video instruction from expert teachers into low-resource schools’ curricula seem like a good idea?

Digital StudyHall (DSH), a program that has pioneered Facilitated Video Instruction for primary school education in low-resource settings since 2005, might seem revolutionary to the improvement of education quality in theory. However, a team of researchers from the University of Washington and the StudyHall Educational Foundation recently completed a two-year study in government primary schools in Northern India which concluded that might not be the case.

The Facilitated Video Instruction in Low Resource Schools report detailing the study and research results was presented at the International conference on information and communication technologies and development (ICT4D2012) last Tuesday in Atlanta, and offers valuable insight into the core challenges that prevent the project’s scalability and sustainability, as well as a few lessons that the whole ICT4E sector could benefit from.

Over the course of two years, researchers observed and compared the use of DSH in eleven schools on the outskirts of a large city in the North Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, one of the most populated and least developed provinces in India. With the approval of the Indian government and while adhering to the national curriculum, the team introduced video recordings of high-performing teachers into low-performing classrooms and conducted quantitative and qualitative studies to measure the impact of this educational intervention. The team also held technical training seminars for participating teachers and helped establish electrical connections to support the TVs and DVD players.

Setting out, the researchers expected to see positive quantitative results in student competencies and noticeable improvements in the participating teachers’ teaching skills. However, within this cultural context, a number of variables such as student test scores heavily influenced by cheating and a large number of student and teacher absences during harvest seasons, prevented the researchers from collecting reliable quantitative data.

Though the researchers saw positive improvements in some of the participating teachers’ pedagogy during DSH and throughout the rest of their teaching — based primarily on their ability to use the interactive teaching methods displayed by the model teachers in the videos — other teacher’s were not receptive to working with DSH staff and two schools had to drop from the program due to theft of equipment.

So while the report ultimately concludes that the project is not sustainable in this particular context, at least not without substantial support from outside organizations, here’s a few lessons we can take away from this project:

Teacher buy-in is essential. The major contributor to successful programs in the study was having at least one motivated staff member who was passionate about teaching, as well as having support from strong school leadership.

It is critical that all of the participants — teachers, principals, students — view the educational intervention as valuable relative to available options. This should help to ensure sustainability and reduce incidents of equipment theft.

Photo Credit: Teach for India

The main obstacle to scalability is the educator’s view of their profession and personal teaching capacity, as well as their commitment to education. Teachers must value their role as an educator in order to have incentive to continue to grow professionally and use effective teaching strategies.

Educational context matters. The content and format of the lessons should reflect the cultural context in which they are used. In other words, is it appropriate for the target audience considering what teaching methods they are already familiar with? In a context like India’s where the teaching profession is respected in the community but is divided between credentialed teachers and paraeducators, what are the impacts of introducing a teaching aid that might undermine the efficacy of a teacher’s previous training and teaching skills?

The improvement of the participating teacher’s pedagogy is essential and progress should be continually monitored. Teachers should show progress in using student-centered teaching methodologies to be considered effective. For example, do they ask questions and initiate discussion? Do they check for student understanding?

Programs of this kind should supplement a teacher’s instruction, not replace it. A teacher can learn just as much as the students can from educational videos — especially if they have not received the proper training for teaching their assigned subject — but without improving the teacher’s teaching strategies, the project’s overall goal cannot be achieved.

Photo Credit: www.mtestsite.com

Socio-economic issues can indirectly be addressed within video content. The report notes that the students in the videos were all girls and came from poor, urban backgrounds. The participating students responded well to their video peers, sometimes interacting with them, like clapping for their video peers who answered a question correctly, small details that can have positive lasting effects. (A recent blog entitled What Sesame Street Can Teach the World Bank by Michael Trucano, offers additional lessons in developing this kind of valuable video content)

The DHS researchers anticipate that as the ICT4D field matures, there will be increasing emphasis on larger evaluation studies. Until then, facilitated video instruction programs need more program refinement and teacher buy-in to be considered a worthwhile investment.

March 16, 2012/by actualize

Case Studies

Contact Details

Quick Links

About

Expertise

Impact

Join

Sign up for Updates