{"id":2127,"date":"2011-10-20T09:31:29","date_gmt":"2011-10-20T13:31:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/edutechdebate.org\/?p=2127"},"modified":"2012-09-27T10:39:02","modified_gmt":"2012-09-27T14:39:02","slug":"the-bottom-of-the-pyramid-needs-reading-ict-too","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/edutechdebate.org\/reading-skills-in-primary-schools\/the-bottom-of-the-pyramid-needs-reading-ict-too\/","title":{"rendered":"The Bottom of the Pyramid needs Reading ICT Solutions too"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>While you stand there smugly surveying your sea of shiny computers in your state-of-the-art school computer centre, please spare a thought for the billion or so people who never made it to school, or who dropped out after a year or two or three, and never even learned to read and write.\u00a0 <\/p>\n<div style=\"float: right; margin-left: 5px; margin-bottom: 5px;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/edutechdebate.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/10\/indians-reading.jpg\"><img src=\"http:\/\/edutechdebate.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/10\/indians-reading.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"indians-reading\" width=\"250\"  class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-2133\" srcset=\"https:\/\/edutechdebate.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/10\/indians-reading.jpg 313w, https:\/\/edutechdebate.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/10\/indians-reading-288x300.jpg 288w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 313px) 100vw, 313px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<div class=\"addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style addthis_32x32_style\"><a class=\"addthis_button_preferred_1\"><\/a><a class=\"addthis_button_preferred_2\"><\/a><a class=\"addthis_button_preferred_3\"><\/a><a class=\"addthis_button_preferred_4\"><\/a><a class=\"addthis_button_compact\"><\/a><\/div>\n<p><script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"http:\/\/s7.addthis.com\/js\/300\/addthis_widget.js#pubid=wayan\"><\/script><\/div>\n<p>Most of them are forever doomed to a subsistence existence below the poverty line in agricultural communities, or to eke out an existence in the mega-slums of our mega-cities.  These people have been written off by some observers as a lost generation for whom there\u2019s no hope.\u00a0 It\u2019s only a billion people.\u00a0 Better luck next lifetime.\u00a0 But we believe there is a way to change this through literacy.<\/p>\n<p><strong>History<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Seven years ago I stood in a field in Punjab, India, listening to the District Health Officer tell me that my Health Education program to reduce child morbidity was doomed to failure because my target audience would never be able to read my leaflets and brochures.\u00a0 \u201cBut the literacy rate here is 64%\u201d, I protested.\u00a0 He fell about laughing at my na\u00efve faith in government statistics.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Success!<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>So I packed my bags and moved to Delhi and built a computerised literacy program called <a href=\"http:\/\/taraakshar.com\/\">Tara Akshar<\/a>.\u00a0 We used a technique nobody had used before.\u00a0 The outcome was that 60,000 completely illiterate women, aged 8 to 80, were taught to read and write in a 55 hour course.\u00a0\u00a0 The combined drop-out and failure rate was less than 5%.\u00a0\u00a0 I believe these kinds of numbers are unheard of in any voluntary Indian education program.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Why it works<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The secret of our success was animated Laubach memory hooks embedded in a cartoon serial.\u00a0 Let me explain. Laubach was a chap in the 1930s who said you should teach letter recognition by drawing pictures in which two things happen:<\/p>\n<div style=\"float: right; margin-left: 5px; margin-bottom: 5px;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/edutechdebate.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/10\/image.png\" alt=\"\" title=\"image\" width=\"137\" height=\"203\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-2138\" \/><\/div>\n<ul>\n<li> The picture is of an object that begins with the letter you are trying to teach; for example, if you are trying to teach the letter S, then you could show a picture of a snake.<\/li>\n<li>The picture looks like the letter.\u00a0 So make sure the snake is in an S shape:<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The purpose of this is to give a great big clue to the reader as to what sound the letter represents so he\/she does not have to remember it.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s an obvious, really.\u00a0 So we have Ws that look like waves, and Bs that look like bats, and so on.\u00a0 We cannot understand why all early learning systems don\u2019t work like this.  We teach completely illiterate tribal women in remote parts of India to recognize all 30+ consonants of the Hindi alphabet in only 10 hours using this method.<\/p>\n<p>So we designed a picture using Laubach principles for each letter of the alphabet (all the consonants, plus both cases for the vowels).\u00a0 Then we went one stage further and animated the letter morphing into the object and back again.\u00a0 In other words, the letter S turns into a snake, and then back into an S.\u00a0\u00a0 Then we show the animation on a laptop.\u00a0 We ended up with about 50 animations of the Hindi alphabet, and make each one a character in a multi-episode story.<\/p>\n<p>Every day, our students come to class, and watch the latest episode of the story.\u00a0 Then we test them using video-game style quizzes on the laptop, and then they do 20 minutes writing practice while the computer shows an animation of how to write the letter.\u00a0\u00a0 Then we show the episode again, and test again, and writing practice again \u2013 no activity takes more than 20 minutes.\u00a0 And we use flash cards, and we use posters, and we use special playing cards, as well as writing books and reading books.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"550\" height=\"403\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/BX05L-sn9Dg\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>After each 100 minute lesson, we send them home.\u00a0 They all turn up the next day because<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li> It\u2019s easy, they don\u2019t have to try to remember anything<\/li>\n<li>It\u2019s fun<\/li>\n<li>It\u2019s a social event<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The Indian Government has now run very successful pilots of the program and recognized it as \u201cbest practice.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Of course, letter recognition is only one of several facets of teaching reading and writing.\u00a0 After letters, we go onto syllables, then words, then sentences, then onto our reading books.\u00a0 Our English language version has a full-blown phonics section of course.<\/p>\n<p><strong>After Literacy<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Literacy by itself makes a huge difference to self-esteem, the balance of power in the family, the length of time children stay in school, and almost certainly the birth-rate.\u00a0\u00a0 (And that\u2019s why it\u2019s probably an excellent way of reducing carbon emissions.)\u00a0 But to be really successful, all the follow-on courses to bring people back into the learning mainstream are required.\u00a0 We have now built courses for numeracy, ethics, how to eradicate shyness, how to participate in an organization, how to follow instructions, how to study, how to improve memory and many more besides.<\/p>\n<p><strong>English and other languages<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/taraakshar.com\/TaResults.html\"><img src=\"http:\/\/edutechdebate.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/10\/tara-akshar-numbers.png\" alt=\"\" title=\"tara akshar&#039;s impressive numbers\" width=\"550\"\/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The efficiency of this program is so high that it easily offsets the cost of the technology.\u00a0 My ambition is to get it used in every country with a literacy problem.\u00a0 Which is probably everywhere but about 3 countries, I believe.<\/p>\n<div class=\"embednewsletter\">\n<h2>Don&#8217;t miss a moment of the action!<\/h2>\n<p>Subscribe now and get the latest articles from Educational Technology Debate sent directly to your inbox.<\/p>\n<form action=\"http:\/\/feedburner.google.com\/fb\/a\/mailverify\" method=\"post\" target=\"popupwindow\" onsubmit=\"window.open('http:\/\/feedburner.google.com\/fb\/a\/mailverify?uri=EducationalTechnologyDebate', 'popupwindow', 'scrollbars=yes,width=550,height=520');return true\"><input class=\"text\" id=\"email\" name=\"email\" type=\"text\"><input value=\"EducationalTechnologyDebate\" name=\"uri\" type=\"hidden\"><input name=\"loc\" value=\"en_US\" type=\"hidden\"><input value=\"Sign Up\" class=\"img\" type=\"Submit\"><a href=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/EducationalTechnologyDebate\"><img loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~fc\/EducationalTechnologyDebate?bg=003366&amp;fg=FFFFFF&amp;anim=0\" height=\"26\" width=\"88\" style=\"border:0\" class=\"fburner\" alt=\"\" \/><\/a><br style=\"clear:left;\" \/><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>While you stand there smugly surveying your sea of shiny computers in your state-of-the-art school computer centre, please spare a thought for the billion or so people who never made it to school, or who dropped out after a year or two or three, and never even learned to read and write.\u00a0 Most of them [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1071],"tags":[452,1129,1122,1127,13,1121,1124,1067,1126,1074,1123,1125,1128,1130],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/edutechdebate.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2127"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/edutechdebate.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/edutechdebate.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edutechdebate.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edutechdebate.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2127"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/edutechdebate.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2127\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2685,"href":"https:\/\/edutechdebate.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2127\/revisions\/2685"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/edutechdebate.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2127"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edutechdebate.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2127"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edutechdebate.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2127"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}