OLE Nepal's first demo of learning activities is out just in time for Dashain. Download them from here (43 MB). To run the demo, you must first download and install the Squeak plugin, which is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux. Please download, comment, and enjoy.
This is the main page for all activities. Currently, we have Grade 2 activities for Mathematics and English. We designed a very simple starting interface to ensure that children, parents, and teachers feel comfortable. The subjects listed are Nepali, Math, Science, English, and Library.
The word in Devanagari script at the top is "E-Paati." OLE Nepal's General Secretary created this term. "Karipaati" means blackboard, and we use "E-Paati" to refer to any kind of computer, such as a desktop, laptop, or PDA.
OLE Nepal’s unofficial slogan right now is "From Karipaati to E-Paati." We believe this slogan expresses that using laptops in schools is simply the next logical step in education. We prefer the term E-Paati over laptop or computer because both are seen as luxuries in Nepal, whereas Karipaatis are considered essential to education. We hope to convince the Nepali public that in today's world, E-Paatis are essential to a quality education.
For the next 10 months, we are focused on developing learning activities for Grades 2 and 6 that align with the Nepali curriculum. We are working closely with the Nepali government to ensure that these activities match the learning objectives for these grades. This will help integrate our activities into an eventual government pilot of the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) initiative.
Our Education Director, Dr. Saurav Dev Bhatta, instructed the development team to create multiple learning activities to teach the same concept in different ways. The math activities test the same kind of problem in various formats:
These activities are designed to feel familiar to existing Nepali textbooks while incorporating interactive and constructionist learning principles. So far, both Nepali children and adults have responded positively to them. Our goal is to create activities that encourage learning while making teachers, officials, parents, and students comfortable with the transition to digital education.
We have not officially licensed these activities yet, but we expect to release them under either the BSD License or the Squeak License, both of which allow open-source distribution. All activities developed by OLE Nepal will be open-source.
However, we have not yet determined the licenses for some of the images used in these activities—some may be proprietary (sourced from Google Images). This is only a demo version. After Dashain, we will review and ensure that all images used are open-source.
We welcome contributions and feedback from the community. As a 10-day Nepali holiday begins today, much of our development team is out trekking in the Himalayas until October 29th. We look forward to hearing your thoughts and improving our learning activities!