“Talking to those for whom you are designing it” Have we ever asked a child what he/she wants to study, be it any subject, any class, or any grades? It sounds a little bit different and difficult, why? Mostly because it has not been the practice, maybe we are not sure about our children, they can ask for something which we don’t want to teach or maybe we wouldn’t be able to provide. The traditional way of doing things is easy, it gives clarity during the path, it is certain and uncertainty is known because the process has been done so many times. The non-traditional way of doing things is not so common among us, the idea of out-of-the-box thinking sounds great but working on this philosophy has many challenges of its own. We talk to teachers before doing anything for them, that’s the core of our philosophy, while we start designing the program we were talking to a group of rural teachers and the question was- how do we teach computer science to students who have never learned or used computers? The experienced computer teacher told us, we should teach them what is a monitor. What is a CPU? What are input and output? Etc …. the young and new science teacher told us “Sir your way of computer teaching is amazing, we should let the children go to the pool and support them in the process, they will learn how to swim by themselves with the process”.
We are working with the school education department, Government of MP on digital literacy where we will be creating computer science content for students, training teachers, and on-ground support to selected CM RISE Schools. While designing any program the core of our organizational approach is we collect responses and voices from the ground, and similarly to design and implement the digital literacy program effectively our first step is we are conducting explore sessions in sample schools with students from grades 6,7 & 8. These children are from marginalized communities, and 90% of these students have never learned or used computers before.
While doing diagnostic and research for the program we understood the approach for any computer science curriculum design throughout the states is introducing basics of computers, typing, painting, etc, we wanted to change the approach, we wanted to follow the difficult path, the path of “out of the box doing”. We went to these students and teachers, to explore, to understand their views on computer education, we wanted to hear from students what is it in computers they want to learn, what is it which is exciting for them, etc, is it really the typing and painting?
These locations are rural, hardly having internet in schools, these kids come from a background where 95% of them do not have computers at home. We wanted to try something which is operable without the internet and children can use it at home as well. We started with a block-based programming platform called Scratch Jr., following the I do, we do, and you do process we conducted a 1-hour session and introduced limited 3-4 blocks and functions on the platform. To our surprise or not at all to our surprise, students who had never used computers were struggling with the mouse for the initial 10 minutes and the last 15 minutes was the slot when these students started using the blocks and functions which were not even used or taught during the session. More than 50% of students started using 6-7 blocks in comparison to the 3-4 blocks which were introduced. These students only told us they want to learn to make games, cartoons, and search on the internet and not what we think or teach in classrooms, what is monitor, what is CPU, etc. We need to understand that learning rides on curiosity, excitement, and eagerness to learn.
The interaction with students has been to the level where a group of students came to us and said that “sir aaj apne 3 periods pdhae aur hme lga ki bs ek period hi khtm hua”.
After interacting with almost 225 students from grades 6,7 & 8, we got to know from them that-
• 100% of these students liked the sessions and want to learn about computers.
• More than 90% of students said that the session was easy for them (mind that 90% of these students have never used a computer)
We have not closed our explore sessions yet, we will continue to learn and understand from these students, what and how they want to learn, and we hope whatever content comes out after these sessions and learning will be effective and efficient for a child’s learning. Learning about the monitor, CPU, and input-output is not at all a bad idea, learning typing and painting is always going to be useful in life for these children but is it the best way to teach a subject to those students who have never learned it before? This is what we want to know from those who are going to learn it.
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