News from Gowri and the Future of Communication

www.rainbowprimaryschool.com 23 July 2008

So I was driving to a winery with my friend Ward. We were discussing his friend in East Africa, a school headmaster who regularly researches and sends along suggestions to Ward out here in California. The headmaster doesn't use his own email address, just the internet cafe's email address. We talked about how this kind of casual, catch-as-catch-can internet use in the third world will really help our work!

The next day, I got a note from Gowri teacher who is struggling to serve as the temporary headmistress while Usha Madam is visiting her son. It was from an internet center, sent by the owner of the center for Gowri (who never really got comfortable typing).

"today M.E.O (Mandal Education Officer, Sharma Mohanchary) visied (sic) our school and charts,reports,dairys (sic),big books, visied (sic) registers,food,all good.

M.E.O sharma sir.

all teachers making lesson plans,activities."

How cute is that!! Love Gowri teacher! (You can see her class in the video in the previous posting.)

Ward was right. Information will get out even with just a little tiny bit of opportunity!

Comments

MobilesForGood: EDU

Together with the students, parents, and teaching team, we did it. Ten years of the Rainbow Primary School. Our school is a government-funded, local-language (Telugu) school that serves 230 children every day absolutely free. We celebrated by opening an after-school center last month with the best education NGO in the world, Pratham. For the past five years, I've worked on research projects and helped NGOs that have an interest in developing mobile tools for learning. Globally, there are three populations of students that need to close the education gap. 1. 52 million children globally not in school at all. Most are out of school for one or more of these reasons: conflict/no public services (fragile state), lack of legal papers, migrants, or they are female. Migration is a big issue in our area around the Rainbow School. 2. 200 million children globally are in school, but suffer from poor in-class teaching. These students cannot read at grade level. The most common reason

Gray Matters Capital and the Rockdale Foundation

While all is very well at the Rainbow School, I'll pause to highlight a "sister organization" supporting budget private schools in India. Gray Matters Capital and the Rockdale Foundation have an annual symposium in Hyderabad, called "Enterprising Schools." Buddies of mine from here in Palo Alto, the Hewlett Foundation and IDEO, are heading out there next week. More info is on www.enterprisingschools.com My IDEO fellas organized a whole list of very low-cost teaching aide ideas to present at the symposium. Ideas like using old newpapers to teach literacy. They put the list up on the website under "STEAL THIS IDEA" - click here for the list! (in pdf form) BEST WISHES for a successful symposium, I miss you all in Hyderabad!

On Monday, August 18, I was so happy to return to see the Rainbow School. The teachers have made a plan to shift from Telugu to English medium. My friend at Pratham, one of the largest education NGOs -- serving 5 million children in South Asia and Africa -- agreed to help my teachers. My co-partner, Kalpana, is taking the lead on a facilities upgrade. She will oversee an upgrade to the preschool and main building. Kalpana and I have found donors in India and the United States. The children were sharp, completely up on their marks. The teachers were creative, driven, relentless. More to come!

Rainbow Primary School

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