Technologies for Cooperative Learning in Rural India

人们对利用新技术帮助发展中国家提高其公民的生活质量非常感兴趣。然而，如果不认真分析现有的社会和文化规范和基础设施，以技术为基础的“解决方案”将会失败的危险很大。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，设计、实施和评估远程教育系统，帮助农村资源匮乏的乡村小学受益于城市环境中可用的更好的人力和内容资源。该项目的基础是YouTube、Netflix和文件共享的结合：优秀的教师在课堂上被录制下来，展示了良好的教学方法，教授与乡村学校相同的科目，这些视频剪辑将被自动组装并使用DVD和邮政系统分发到乡村学校，在那里视频被用于现场教师培训和当地教师的中介教学。地球上有超过10亿人是文盲，很大程度上是因为大多数贫困儿童生活在农村缺乏训练有素的教师。在农村地区，为小学教育找到训练有素的教师几乎是不可能的，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水平的合格教师，至少在目前的技术条件下是这样，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进现有的教育基线，使用可根据问题范围进行调整的解决方案。

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.