ICTworks by Inveneo

For the past year, I have been participating in research on how software, cultural design, and creative production can be used to teach kids mathematics. There’s quite a bit there, so let me break it down.

The whole concept stemmed from the work of Dr. Ron Eglash, a professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Dr. Eglash’s work is centered on the idea that indigenous groups incorporate mathematical algorithms into their design work. This can be seen everywhere – transformational geometry in African cornrows, four-fold symmetry in Native American beadwork; there are even elements of rotation and trigonometry in Urban break-dancing.

The crafters of these artifacts may not label their work with math terms simply because they do not recognize it as math. However, the thought processes needed to create the designs are essentially the same as the thought process needed to solve any math problem. Crafters have an innate understanding of the mathematics behind their work; they need it in order to be able to construct their designs well.

The software that we develop simulates the mathematical thought process that goes into design, all while enhancing a student’s intrigue by relating it to their culture. It consists of different design tools, each representing a certain artifact from a region of the world. Students are challenged with virtually recreating the artifact by experimenting with values and positioning of objects on a grid. In doing so, they gain practice that helps them develop the instinctive mathematical thought process that goes into design work.

A recent focus of the research has been placed on kente cloth design in Ghana. Kente cloth weavers instinctively use certain algorithms to produce the geometric designs that you see in the cloth. Our goal is to simulate this algorithmic thinking in the learning software by having students enter coordinates and iteration values in order to place thread patterns on a grid. The students experiment with the different inputs, eventually producing their own virtual cloth.

In July, we will be traveling to Kumasi, Ghana for one month to test the software out with students in a local elementary school. We will also be interviewing kente cloth weavers to get a better understanding of how they develop their algorithms. During our time there, we are hoping to discover ways to improve the software – ways to make it more honestly depict kente cloth design and ways to better simulate the thought processes that go into it. Most importantly, though, we are hoping to gain feedback on how this approach to math education is benefiting student learning.

I joined this research group because I really appreciate this approach to delivering education through technology in developing countries. Rather than implanting educational software that has been useful in other parts of the world, it focuses on design in a culturally specific way. This makes learning a lot more meaningful for students. They can relate to it and understand why it’s important. At the same time, they develop instinctive mathematical thought processes that they may need in a career. I’m excited to see how it works out in the local setting.

If you're interested in hearing more about our research, please feel free to email me at lindsay.poirier13@gmail.com.

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When I started working on my ICT4E project a few months back, I thought I had all of my bases covered. It’s easy to fall into that groove. I learned quickly, however, that there are countless variables to consider when you’re designing for a different culture – some of which may not be blatant at first.

As I have mentioned in prior posts, my project involved allocating educational web resources relevant to Tanzanian primary school curriculum objectives on a web interface. This interface separated the resources into subject, grade (or standard in TZ), and curriculum objective. All of the resources were screened for cultural relevance to Tanzanian culture and for relevance to specific points within the curriculum. Since the site was being developed for an English-medium school, however, all of the site’s text was in English.

Don't forget the maths

After first writing about this project on ICTworks last December, a colleague commented on the post, making an observation. In my headings for the various subjects, I had used the word ‘math’ instead of ‘maths.’ In my entire English speaking life, I have never heard mathematics referred to as ‘maths,’ so why was this such an important observation?

As it turns out, Tanzania uses United Kingdom English – not American English, and in U.K. English, ‘maths’ is the correct term. This isn’t the only instance where language discrepancies may have become problematic. In Tanzania, their elementary schools are referred to as primary schools, and as you may have noticed above, their grade levels are referred to as standards. It was only through prior experience in the country that I came to learn those differences.

Language is local

The lesson here is to always have a local individual on your team when you are working on developing an ICT4D project. Even when you are developing in your native language, there may be discrepancies in how certain words are understood or interpreted. Using incorrect wording has the potential to confuse end users, and this can be extremely problematic, particularly when it comes to understanding written instructions. The text or language used in any project should never get in the way of its success.

That being said, it also couldn’t hurt to have an individual who speaks the native language on board. In my project, finding educational resources to teach English as a Second Language was particularly challenging for me since I could only speak very little Swahili (Kiswahili in TZ). I found several sites that used audio to support learning English vocabulary or videos to support object recognition in English, but all of the instructional text on these sites were in English – not particularly beneficial to those who were only beginning to learn how to speak it. I likely could have found sites with much better educational quality if I was working with an individual who could speak Swahili.

Language is an important cultural barrier when it comes to developing ICT4D projects, but by making use of human resources with local expertise, it doesn’t have to harm the quality of the project.

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We all know that technology helps shape the way we work, learn, interact, and behave. We have also seen countless social issues come out of our own technology –online predators, pornography, piracy.

But is it safe to assume that the same social issues that we witness in our own culture will arise when implementing technology in other cultures? Definitely not, and let me demonstrate why:

Have you heard the term, What’s your ASL?

I hadn’t up until a few days ago. I asked this question to my Facebook network, and all the responses were basically the same – this is a question that has commonly been asked in chat rooms for the past decade. Apparently, I just wasn’t in the loop.

ASL refers to age/sex/location. Individuals ask this when they enter chat rooms in order to get a sense of who is on the other end of the conversation. It has actually become somewhat frowned upon in chat rooms as an Internet cliché.

Now, have you heard the term, What’s your ASLR?

This is a question that has become popular among MXit users in South Africa. MXit is a free mobile social networking platform where users can instantly message friends or talk to larger networks in chat rooms. It was developed in South Africa, and for a long time, it was considered the most popular social media application in Africa.

ASLR refers to age/sex/location/race. Recently UNICEF performed a study that asked users why they included race when posing this question. The most common response was ‘to know all of the info,’ suggesting that they consider the knowledge of an individual’s ethnicity to provide a more complete picture. The second most common response was ‘for safety reasons.’

The survey also looked at whether cyber bullying was common among MXit users. Results showed that, of the 26% who reported that they had been insulted on MXit, 28% reported that the insult had been based on race.

What does this all mean?

It means that there are now more questions.

Is MXit promoting racial unsettlement in South Africa?
Is racial cyber bullying an issue for the youth using the platform?

It also proves that there are different social implications for technology in different cultures. The issues that arise in one country are likely to be very different from the issues that arise in another. Because of this, social impacts should really be considered case-by-case and culture-by-culture.

Predicting these issues before the technology is implemented is close to impossible, and identifying them afterwards is also very difficult. Still, social impacts should be considered at each step when developing and introducing a new technology within a society.

Before planning even begins, there are many questions that should be asked. In education – What are the current teaching methods? How have students traditionally learned? How will the technology affect this? In governance – What is the history of the people involved? What is the role of government in their lives? How will the technology affect this?

After this, the opinion of the end user should be involved in every design decision. No one will understand the end user’s culture better than the end user. S/he is a key player in the process.

Once a project has been implemented, social considerations should also be included in monitoring and evaluation. The success of a project is not just about whether the technology is working; it is about whether a technology is working in a way that is benefiting a culture. Negative social impacts can counteract positive technological improvements – or what we consider to be positive technological improvements. We should therefore constantly be evaluating, adjusting, and improving to make sure that technology has its intended effects.

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I recently made one of the biggest ICT4D mistakes in the book. Pay close attention, and see if you can pick it out.

When I was in Arusha, Tanzania last month, I was working with a primary school that recently set up a learning lab with 13 donated computers. The technology was not being used because the teachers were not sure how it could be leveraged for education. The computers were simply collecting dust.

The semester before the trip I wanted to develop something that would allow the school to use the computers effectively. I began searching for online educational content relevant to the Tanzanian curriculum and found all sorts of learning materials, games, and software downloads. Once I had collected a good chunk of quality content, I created a website and placed links to each of my findings alongside the specific curriculum objective that they addressed.

Did you catch it? My big mistake, I mean...

The school wasn’t connected to the Internet yet. How could I possibly have overlooked something like that?

To make a long story short, even though I was told the school would be connected when I arrived, there were some bureaucratic problems that slowed the process of getting Internet access there. About three weeks into my trip, the Internet was finally hooked up, but the wait had cut into the majority of the time that I had allocated for teacher training.

Moral of this story: Do not rely on the Internet. Offline content is key.

While Internet access is spreading rapidly throughout developing countries, it is important that ICT4D projects do not place all of their trust in its availability. There are still countless communities throughout world without access, and many of these communities have several obstacles preventing them from obtaining access. Even when rural communities have the infrastructure to connect, Internet subscriptions in these areas can constitute a large percentage of per capita income. Individuals simply cannot afford Internet access.

It’s important to note that access is not the only issue. Let’s imagine for a second that the school I was working with did have Internet when I arrived. This still would have been problematic since bandwidth in most developing countries remains limited – definitely not conducive to streaming online educational games and videos.

Relying on Internet content also makes projects less transferable. If I found that my idea was successful, and I wanted to scale it out to other schools, I would likely run into the same Internet issues elsewhere. In using the cloud as a solution, remember that weather is always local. Having offline content is much more reliable and practical.

The good news is that there is tons of content that can be downloaded from the Internet in order to accumulate offline content. Wikipedia allows you to download entire libraries of information, and I found plenty of open source educational games that proved to be very helpful to the instructors at the school.

So how did I fix my project?

By the end of my trip, the entire focus had shifted from allocating online material on the website to installing offline content on the computers. This proved to be a much more reliable means of technology use in the school.

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As teachers at a primary school in the Kisongo district of Arusha, Tanzania huddled into their computer lab, they quietly scoffed at me. What can a twenty-something American girl have to say in a meeting with all of us? I tried to remain upbeat and ignore the fact that I couldn’t understand what was being discussed in Swahili amongst the group.

“So I wanted to meet with everyone today to show you some computer software that can be used to support the concepts that are being taught in your curriculums.”

Blank stares. This was one tough crowd.

“Well there are lots of free tools on the Internet that you can use to help reiterate some of the concepts that you teach in the classroom.”

Crickets. Now I’m getting nervous.

I decided it might be best to open a program and demonstrate, so I opened Sebran, an open source educational software package, developed in Sweden. This would be a good start because it could be run in Swahili. I then loaded a math game that tasked students with counting the number of pictures on the screen and selecting the corresponding number.

“This game should be helpful to students in Class One who are just learning how to count. They can see several objects and then relate them to a number.”

I clicked on the first answer to show the teachers how it worked. Heads perked up. Ah, now we’re getting somewhere. I clicked on another answer. Now the teachers were closing in around the screen. One more answer. Now I had one teacher thieving the mouse from my grasp. They immediately started answering on their own and exploring the other games that were available through Sebran.

“Do you have anything to help with Class Two English?” “What about Class Five Science?”

I went on to show what I had collected and then explained how other educational tools could be located on the Internet. They all remained intrigued and attentive for the remainder of the meeting.

Guess what. This story took place in a primary school where each Standard had weekly ICT classes. Let me repeat that: Every student in this school sat in an ICT class every week. Guess what else. The ICT teacher, the one that instructs the students that sit in the weekly ICT class, was present at the meeting and was just as fascinated by the software as the rest of the teachers.

So if we have students that sit in an ICT class every week, being led by an instructor that has no prior knowledge of how to make use of educational software, what are the students doing in the ICT class?

Well I can somewhat tell you because I just so happened to stumble upon Class 5’s final exam in ICT from the previous year. It included questions such as: “An aluminum rod antenna is the type of __________.” “Most television sets use __________-power.” Or my favorite: “[True or False] Children are not supposed to watch television.”

And why is Class 5 being tested on these things in the ICT class? Because it’s what’s in the curriculum! The Tanzanian ICT curriculum lists objectives related to how a computer, radio, or television operates. Students are expected to know how to type up and save a document and how to transmit a message via radio. With instructors faithfully adhering to these policies, they don’t ever consider how technology can be used as a tool for facilitating instruction in other subjects.

I will admit that basic ICT literacy will be vital to students as they prepare to enter job markets where technology use is emphasized. But what is the ultimate goal of incorporating ICTs into education? Is it simply to teach kids how to use a computer? I hope not. What is the point in teaching kids how to use a computer if they are not using it for anything constructive to their learning?

The main goal of incorporating ICTs into education should be to improve or enhance the quality of a student’s education. This involves developing pedagogies for integrating the use of technology with the curriculums of other subjects. When used appropriately, technology has the potential to reiterate concepts learned in the classroom and allows students to think about these concepts in a different way. Furthermore, students are able to see a connection between technology and its applications.

Being able to offer this type of learning to students is dependent on several factors. First of all, the policies must back it. Teachers teach to the curriculum. They have been trained to teach to the curriculum, and with little prior ICT knowledge, there is little incentive for them to steer away from the curriculum. If teachers are going to use ICT as a tool for learning, then the policies should reflect that.

Second, teachers must have training. Teachers need sustained instruction, not only in basic ICT literacy, but also in the ways in which technology can be leveraged as a learning tool. A teacher will not take a classroom full of students to work on computers when (s)he is not comfortable working on it on his/her own. The ones that do this often find that they are unable to come up with productive activities for the students.

ICTs have the ability to effectively support student learning. It should be the main focus of ICT4E practitioners to veer policy development and teacher training in a direction that promotes technology as a learning tool. Doing so will provide students with better education and understanding of how technology can benefit various aspects of their lives.

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