Technologies for Cooperative Learning in Rural India

人们对利用新技术帮助发展中国家改善其公民的生活质量很感兴趣。 然而，如果不仔细分析现有的社会和文化规范和基础设施，基于技术的“解决方案”就有失败的巨大危险。 这笔赠款将资助印度和美国的技术专家、教育工作者和学习科学家之间的合作，以设计、实施和评估远程学习系统，帮助资源匮乏的乡村小学从城市环境中更好的人力和内容资源中受益。 该项目的基础是YouTube，NetFlix和文件共享的组合：对优秀教师在课堂上展示与乡村学校相同的教学内容的良好教学方法进行录像，这些录像片段将自动汇编，并通过DVD和邮政系统分发给乡村学校，在那里，这些视频被用于现场教师培训和当地教师的中介指导。地球上有超过10亿人是文盲，这在很大程度上是由于大多数贫困儿童生活的农村缺乏训练有素的教师。 在农村地区，几乎不可能找到受过培训的小学教师，尽管这些技能对于当今经济中的向上流动至关重要。 当然，远程教育远不及小学一级的合格教师，至少在目前的技术条件下，但许多学生没有这种奢侈。 该项目的目标是以具有成本效益的方式改善现有的教育基线，使用可以扩展以匹配问题范围的解决方案。

There is a great deal of interest in using new technologies to help developing nations improve the quality of lives of their citizens. Yet without a careful analysis of existing social and cultural norms and infrastructures, there is a great danger that technology-based "solutions" will fail. This grant will fund a collaboration between technologists, educators, and learning scientists in India and the US to design, implement and evaluate distance learning systems that help resource-starved village primary schools in rural villages to benefit from the better human and content resources available in urban environments. The basis of the project is a combination of YouTube, NetFlix, and file sharing: excellent teachers are videotaped in the classroom demonstrating good pedagogy teaching the same subject matter as is taught in village schools, these video clips will be automatically assembled and distributed using DVDs and the postal system to village schools, where the videos are used for on-site teacher training and mediated instruction by the local teacher.Over a billion people on the planet are illiterate, in large part due to the lack of trained teachers in rural villages where most children in poverty live. Finding trained teachers for primary school education is nearly impossible in rural areas, despite these skills being essential for upward mobility in today's economy. Of course, distance education is nowhere near as good as a qualified teacher at the primary school level, at least with current technologies, but many students don't have that luxury. The goal of this project to improve the existing educational baseline in a cost-effective way, using solutions that can be scaled to match the scope of the problem.