07. Pan-Commonwealth Forum 7 (PCF7), 2013
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Browsing 07. Pan-Commonwealth Forum 7 (PCF7), 2013 by Subject "Collaboration"
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PublicationChildren's learning Programs and Community Radio: A case study of collaboration( 2013-11)Sesame Workshop aims to make education a more relevant and enjoyable experience to the millions of children around the world. As part of its initiative in India, Galli Galli Sim Sim began its television broadcasts in 2006. The show with its four muppets : Chamki, Boombah, Googly and Anchoo entertained the children while simultaneously imparting significant educational messages and learning skills. Considering that television penetration in India is still in a growth phase, there are many pockets, which do not have access to television especially, cable television. // The SCHWAB Radiophone Project therefore enabled the broadcast of the Galli Galli Sim Sim show for a year, over ten community radio stations across North India, to reach children in rural areas of the country. With mobile telephony becoming popular, the Sesame initiative has integrated access to the GGSS radio show via mobile phones thus enhancing access to the show. // Community Radio stations are a new phenomenon in India the oldest Radio station being less than ten years old. The CR stations function at a local level with minimal resources and basic equipment to create participatory programming. The Radiophone initiative provided a unique opportunity for stations to access centrally produced program with extremely high production values from Sesame Workshop and create a local adjunct to the program through local participation and engagement. // Ideosync, India conducted an impact evaluation for the Radiophone initiative. The evaluation research used ethnographic methodologies (among others) to study the change at each station and its listening communities as a result of the Radiophone initiative. The findings reveal interesting outcomes that were not necessarily part of the initial objectives of the initiative. Participatory and ethnographic research approaches have helped document CR stations' internal process strengthening and capacity building that resulted as a bi product of the collaborative initiative. // The research presents an analysis of the data emerging from Diaries written by community researchers working at the CR stations to discuss how the combination of a centrally produced Development Radio program and Community Media play out in the Community Radio space. The paper further proposes a new discourse for opportunities that could contribute to strengthening of small local media institutions. // Paper ID: 462 -
PublicationEmpowering rural disadvantaged pupils using Community Radio( 2013-11)Radio broadcasting is a powerful tool that enables communication to many isolated rural villages and towns in developing countries. For many of these rural communities, radio broadcasts are often the only effective way to solicit important information to a large audience. // Most recently in Uganda, and Nakaseke in particular, community operated educational programmes are being broadcast to remote localities in an effort to reach students that have limited access to educational resources. // Innovation: Collaboration with Teachers and other Education Managers. // Education as one the station’s main programme foci and considering the low literacy levels and poor academic performance of pupils in the impoverished district, the radio embarked on an effort to find a solution to the challenge. This was through collaboration with education managers at district level and teachers. // The radio provided space and availed airtime for the show and the teachers formed an examination board and came up with a question bank, where examiners chose questions for the day. // Lots of challenges were experienced in the process ranging from training teachers in the use of the technology i.e; equipment handling, modulation, recording and other areas to facilitation. In-house trainings were conducted and the spirit of voluntarism and ownership was slowly developed and now teachers feel part of the station. // With this collaboration and division of roles, schools are registered, seeded and drawn into groups after which competition starts. The program runs live once every week as three schools are hosted, each represented by two pupils in a live question and answer session, conducted by a panel of examiners. The winning school advance to a next round and the process continues up to the final stage. // According to assessments and evaluations conducted every year by the station, district education authorities and the Teachers’ Union to determine the progress of the sector in the district, the competition has helped in; • Promoting confidence among the learners • Raising the academic standards in the district. • Increasing the number of first grades. • Enabling teachers to evaluate their teaching • Exposing the pupils to an educational environment beyond the classroom. // Paper ID: 25
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PublicationOpen Course Creation by Learners: A Way Forward in Agriculture Education( 2013-11)Reaching out to the potential learners in agriculture with quality content is a great challenge and thereby requires innovations and technology in content development, management, and delivery. Use of innovations and technologies in generating and delivering the learning resources and creating the learning environment is increasing to enhance the reach and effectiveness of education. This development is leading towards Technology mediated learning. A consortium of Indira Gandhi National Open University, Tamilnadu Agricultural University, Maharashtra Open University and ICRISAT has implemented a project on “Innovations in Technology Mediated Learning: An Institutional Capacity Building in Using Re-usable Learning Objects in Agro- Horticulture”. This was supported by the National Agricultural Innovation Project (NAIP) of India. The focus was learners’ centric e-learning in agriculture in the form of Reusable Learning Objects (RLO) on the philosophy of Open Educational Resources (OER). A Content Management System called “AgriLORE” was created which allows for collaborative creation and unrestricted use of learning materials in agriculture. AgriLORE (www.agrilore.org) is a place for creating, sharing, searching and easy accessing of learning objects /courses related to agro-horticulture crops which can be of great use to the learning community. The tagging standards based on IEEE Learning Object Metadata have been implemented for ease search and retrieval of information. // About 500 RLOs were developed and are available at AgriLORE on six crops with five major themes. Each RLO has a profile that determines its relationship with other RLO. The relationship between concepts and RLOs are based on a granularised structure and constrained vocabulary that are used in Crop Knowledge Models. An aggregation tool which allows the learners to group the RLOs into courses based on their requirement was implemented in to build a larger curriculum. Development of courses through meaningful grouping of RLOs to provide the educational resources needed to fulfill credit requirements in a certification process is an important innovation attempted. Full paper will provide details on the OER-RLO repository design and RLO authoring and validation processes. // Paper ID: 68