Edutopia - April/May 2008 - (Page 51)

Feysal Osman Education by shortwave Somalia Somalia has suffered more than sixteen years of violent civil war. More than half of its population is younger than eighteen, and these young people have grown up knowing only con⇓ict and hardship. Feysal Osman grew up in this place. He was twelve when he found work as a translator for U.S. soldiers in Somalia, a bene⇒t of having picked up a little English from the troops stationed near his community. He was lucky; some boys he knew were being recruited to ⇒ght with the warring factions within his country. Describing Somali youth, Osman writes in an email, “Most are out of school, either illiterate or semiliterate, with little hope for the future. Many are displaced and have witnessed and sometimes participated in violence.” What strikes him most, however, is their resilience and capacity to survive. Somalia has one of the world’s lowest student- enrollment rates, and there is extremely little public ⇒nancing for education. In addition, the country’s division into three administrative zones in 1991 created distinct ministries of education that operate with little coordinated planning. These factors, coupled with persistent outbreaks of violence, make Somalia a challenging place for teaching and learning. Osman works to improve the situation through the Somali Interactive Radio Instruction Program, run by the Education Development Center, an international nonpro⇒t health and education agency. SIRIP produces and broadcasts instructional segments on basic reading, math, and life skills such as health and con⇓ict prevention. The EDC broadcasts the segments ⇒ve times a week via a shortwave radio signal. As the program’s regional coordinator in southcentral Somalia, Osman promotes the broadcasts and related supplemental materials to schools and youth organizations in the capital city of Mogadishu and other nearby communities. He uses the broadcasts to support teachers, many of whom have no formal teacher training, have little in the way of instructional supplies, and are working with groups of 70 or more students at a time. The SIRIP programs use stories, songs, roleplaying activities, and other engaging formats; teachers facilitate interaction and extend the program’s themes. Now in its third year, the program has reached more than 200,000 learners and 12,700 teachers. Recent research shows that students learning with SIRIP are performing signi⇒cantly better in math and literacy than those students not participating in the program. Osman, whose own education includes training in information technology, education, and con⇓ict resolution, is clear about the huge challenges facing the teachers he works with: “Whether a nation succeeds or fails or remains mediocre depends very much on the qualities of educators a country generates,” he says. He’s sure Somalia’s peace “can only be achieved by approaching our problems and disputes with open, educated minds.” Heba Ramzy Egypt Claudia Zea Colombia Bridging cultures and continents During the 1990s, as Heba Ramzy learned how new technologies could transform education and transmit a country’s cultural heritage, she became determined to realize technology’s bene⇒ts for young people in her part of the world. For more than a decade, she has worked toward that goal, making an impact in her native Egypt, as well as elsewhere in North Africa and throughout the Middle East. As director of the Kids and Youth Programs for RITSEC, an information-technology nonpro⇒t agency hosted by the Egyptian government for the Arab Region, Ramzy developed and launched Little Horus, the ⇒rst Web site designed to introduce an international audience of children to Egyptian history and culture. In the year after its 1997 launch in English, French, and Arabic, the site was acclaimed by numerous international education organizations and attracted nearly 2.5 million visitors. Propelled by these initial experiences with educational technology at RITSEC, Ramzy worked in ever widening circles across her country and continent. “With every new challenge, more determination for success would sprout,” she writes in an email. “Relentlessly focused” is the way Ramzy describes her style. Consulting with Egypt’s Ministry of Communication and Information Technology, Ramzy cofounded the country’s 21st Century Kids Clubs, which provides community-based technology access and software training for children. At her next post, she established Internet learning centers at schools in Egypt, Ethiopia, Jordan, Lebanon, and Senegal. She introduced ThinkQuest in Africa and was one of the founders of SchoolNet Africa, a portal and networking initiative involving more than thirty countries. Ramzy has relocated to the United States to work as part of Microsoft’s Unlimited Potential group, where she develops partnerships with government agencies, nongovernmental organizations, and other entities to support education and economic development in the Middle East and North Africa. And though the shift from the nonpro⇒t world to a for-pro⇒t corporate environment has been challenging, Ramzy writes that it’s motivational to manage “a tremendously wide range of people divided by boundaries of culture and geography,” yet united in their hope for a better future. Learning as an antidote to violence In the early 1990s, when Claudia Zea launched Conexiones, a project-learning program for schools in her native Colombia, she was interested in its effect on technology ⇓uency, student motivation, and another area that might not seem so obvious to those outside her country: student aggression. At the time, Colombia was suffering from high levels of student verbal and physical aggression. Zea and her colleagues at EAFIT University (short for Escuela de Administración, Finanzas y Tecnología), in the city of Medellín, believed students needed a different kind of learning environment, one that would encourage their sense of responsibility to a small community of fellow learners. Zea knew the inclusion of new technologies would motivate the students, and so Conexiones became an online space for regional, national, and international collaboration on dozens of projects with social, ecological, and ethical dimensions. The result, Zea says in an April 2007 interview for the Argentinian portal educ.ar, was a marked decrease in the level of aggressiveness among children and in their aggressive behaviors toward teachers and family members. Conexiones engages more than 10,000 students and 1,000 teachers in more than 100 urban and rural schools across Colombia. As a result of its success, Zea was tapped in 2002 as a special adviser to the Ministry of National Education in the use of new technologies. There she led the launch of Colombia Aprende (Colombia Learns), a national education portal for students, teachers, parents, and educational researchers. Colombia Aprende includes a multimedia library, online forums, chat, email, server space for user-uploaded content, collaborative projects, and Internet delivery of Colombia’s educational television programs. Not content to limit her work to Colombia, Zea also is a leader in the Latin American Network of Education Portals (RELPE). Sixteen nations have signed on, with the goals of sharing knowledge, building a common library of Latin American curriculum content, and lowering costs by sharing technological development. e WORLD LEADERS Learn more about the Global Six at www.edutopia.org/daring-dozen-2008 EDUTOPIA.ORG EDUTOPIA 51 http://www.edutopia.org/daring-dozen-2008 http://EDUTOPIA.ORG

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Edutopia - April 2008

Edutopia - April 2008 Contents Up Front Feedback Dispatches Sage Advice Ask Ellen Head of the Class Cool Schools Design Reinventing the Big test The Daring Dozen Heart & Soul Pop Quiz: Jack Prelutsky

Edutopia - April 2008

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