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| My motivation for taking this course |
Hello!
My name is Kristin and I moved to Rwanda earlier this year to work at a girls secondary school as a teaching fellow. While I came to teach English, it quickly became clear that the biggest deficits in the education here was in ICT. Students rarely used the computer lab, had no time for independent research or internet time and did not associate technology with education outside of computer class. However, just a few weeks ago, the school got a raspberry pi with RACHEL content on it. If you don’t know what RACHEL is, I implore you to check it out here. Since receiving it, I have been eager to create Rwanda specific content so it can be of even more use to the students and teachers here. I knew the first place to start would be to learn more about open content and creativecommons, so here I am!
My name is Kristin and I moved to Rwanda earlier this year to work at a girls secondary school as a teaching fellow. While I came to teach English, it quickly became clear that the biggest deficits in the education here was in ICT. Students rarely used the computer lab, had no time for independent research or internet time and did not associate technology with education outside of computer class. However, just a few weeks ago, the school got a raspberry pi with RACHEL content on it. If you don’t know what RACHEL is, I implore you to check it out here. Since receiving it, I have been eager to create Rwanda specific content so it can be of even more use to the students and teachers here. I knew the first place to start would be to learn more about open content and creativecommons, so here I am!
But this post is supposed to be a reflection on my experience of creating a blog. I actually already maintain blog (as linked above), so it was a piece of cake for me. The hardest part was deciding a url. My tip to anyone else to who may wish to do this is to click around and try everything. Almost everything is reversible if you don’t like the change you just made (short of deleting it completely) and it is very hard to break it. I have noticed the biggest thing that holds people back if they are not comfortable with technology is they are afraid they will terribly mess something up. But that is very unlikely!
Hi Kristin - pleased to meet you virtually. Yes - -Rasberry pi and RACHEL are amazing initiatives and good exampled of relevant ICT innovation in learning for development. There is another cool, albeit similar initiative from the Commonwealth of Learning called the classroom without walls which is able to set up a local wireless LAN for low-cost mobile devices and can therefore simulate online interactions. See: http://www.col.org/progServ/programmes/KM/Pages/Aptus.aspx . Of interest, the technologies we are using to produce the #OCL4Ed course site are designed to produce a local snapshot of the OER materials to leverage the potential of these kind of low cost local "connectivity" solutions for OER distribution.
ReplyDeleteYou must find your work as Educator in Rwanda extremely rewarding! Glad to have you onboard and welcome!
That looks very interesting! I think people underestimate the penetration of mobile phone use in Africa and its potential to solve many problems.My work has definitely been a learning experience for me as much as the students!
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