education.doc

Rural Development of Education

Rural Development

of

education

MICHAEL

Time: 19/07/2012---18/08/2012

Contents

Background………………………………………………3

Solutions…………………………………………………4-18

Pictures…………………………………………………..19-21

Background
Through face to face communication with teachers, parents and students to learn about the educational situation of the village.

At present, the educational problems that exist in the village are as follows:

For school:
They lack of basic facilities, such as desks and tables.
They only have 11 computers. But including the teachers ,no one knows how to use computers .
They only have 7 teachers. Every teacher has to teach all the subjects.
There’s no playground for students to play outdoor activities.
Their library is also used as a classroom. Although they have 2000 books ,most of students don’t have the sense to borrow and read books.
Teachers have no independent office and restroom.

For teacher:
Some teachers live far away from the village. It costs a lot of time for them to get to school. Many of teachers can not keep the balance between their jobs and family.
Compared with others, teacher’s salary is high. However, some teachers are not very active in their jobs. One of female teacher said that she was disappointed with the school. Cause the students don’t put their heart into studying. Most of students can’t finish the homework. And the parents do not care of their children’s education.

For students& parents:
They are not very interested in studying. After school, they have to firstly go to the field to help their parents and they can only do their homework after finishing all the agriculture work. .
Most of students quit studying after the 10th grade(Girls usually give up studying after 7th grade).Cause most of families can not pay for their children’s fees .Many parents are uneducated so that they do not attach importance to the chilidren’s learning. Some parents even believe that sending their children to normal school is only a waste of time since their children won’t be able to get a job easily after graduate from those schools.

Solutions
In response to these situations ,we propose the following measures:

1. Improve teachers’ performance
Teaching is an honorable and noble profession in which individuals pursue the lofty goal of educating the youth of our society.
The importance of teachers’ performance is obvious. Firstly, students perceive big differences in teachers and those differences .are related to students’ achievement. But the situation now is that there’s no feedback of teachers’ teaching. However, it’s very important for teachers to see and analysis their own efforts ,and then discuss with their colleges what they are doing well and what they could do differently to improve. Secondly, the students’ will be really aroused only when teachers put their heart into teaching.

Here, we may define good teaching as instruction that leads to effective learning, which is in turn means thorough and lasting acquisition of the knowledge, skills and values the instructor or the institution has set out to impart.

So the methods are:
(1) Build reward system:
Through incentives to enhance teachers’ enthusiasm for work. Specifically, we can reward the teacher ,whose students’ test scores are relatively high. The reward can be the allowance, or other aspects of living allowance.

(2)Offer trainings for teachers:
It’s very important to give professional trainings to teachers. It would be better if we can offer teachers more opportunities to attend training sessions, to undertake research activities or to observe exemplary teachers using innovative methods in the classroom. The way of trainings can be follows: We can invite some mentor teachers to train the local teachers or we can train teachers by long-distance education. In a word ,to make them become more effective ,capable teachers.

(3)More communications with parents:
Encouraging teachers to communicate with parents so as to strengthen mutual communication and understanding. For example, teachers can held at least one parents’ meeting between each semester. Through the parents’ meeting, teachers can inform parents the students’ learning.

(4)Increase the number of teachers to reduce teachers’ burden:
Now there are 183 students but only 7 teachers in that school. All of teachers have to teach all the subjects. Teachers’ workload is very heavy. By increasing the number of teachers, not only to reduce the teachers’ workload, but also to improve the quality of teaching.

2. Long distance teaching---ICT, DSH, DE, DVD
Education is a crucial factor in any discourse on economic development and consequently there is much interest in the role of ICTs in education in developing countries. Evidently, the issue is not a simple as to be solved by placing computers in schools, as education pedagogy must be taken into account. Education in developing countries suffers from numerous problems such as a lack of funds and basic infrastructure, among other issues. A key problem among these is the shortage of competent and motivated teachers, especially in rural areas due to urban migration. Among existing rural teachers there exist problems of absenteeism, overwork, and a lack of subject

Improving the teaching performance and quality by introducing long distance teaching methods.
Provide the school with CD players, satellite signal receivers and multi-media devices which will enable the students to enjoy the best courses taught by the best teachers in other palaces without hiring them to come.
As we know, one of the most crucial factors hindering the development of basic education of rural areas is the lack of qualified teachers. Experienced and excellent teachers are more willing to leave the poorer regions or the countryside for developed areas and urban centers. The shortage of teachers compounded another problem, that of a shortage of teachers who could teach in special subject. Conventional subject such as Hindu have not been problem, but there has been a growing shortage of people who can teach in modern subjects, such as English ,computer science, music and physical education. Therefore, we should implement long distance education in the village. On the one hand, long distance teaching is more adaptable, cost effective, diverse, and open. On the other hand ,it is also the only means by which high quality education resources can be conveyed from the developed areas to the undeveloped areas. For long distance teaching, not only can we provide instruction in modern subjects, such as English and computer sciences, but also improve the professional development of teachers.

Specially, we can use Digital Video Disc(DVD) technology to facilitate learning. Each two grades are equipped with a set of DVDs, a DVD player, and television set. The DVDs contain lessons givens by nationally recognized teachers who specialize in language, mathematics, and other subjects. The cost of a complete setup ,including equipment, is estimated at 26000 Rupees. Firstly, it’s better to organize training sessions for teachers to help them to implement the distance teaching materials into their classroom instructions.

The reason why we choose the DVD technology instead of other techniques is that the DVD is the cheapest way which means it is also the most possible high-tech that can be used in rural area. Besides, other technology such as the satellite and Internet Online teaching will require lots of complicated high-tech supporting equipments which are very hard to use and protect especially in rural areas. What’s more, teachers can use the DVD whenever they want and the quality of the DVD won’t never change no matter how many hours it has been displayed. But the online teaching will always affected by the teachers’ states and the time. The following is the comparison between different multi-media devices for education.
Type
Example
Flexibility
Practicability
Teach&Learn
s/o
Radio
Television
Commonly, the simultaneous media’s flexibility are restricted. However, code-reading devices have improved their flexibility

Very practical
(Especially the radio) In developing countries, radio is widely used, but radio is not suit with recording devices.
In order to ensure the mutual interaction in teaching, all the unidirectional media need extra deployments.
a/o
Print
Tape
CD-ROM
DVD
Asynchronous media are very flexible. Their Flexibility is suit with the print media. Teachers and students will need more help form advanced devices if they use the modern media like CD-ROM and DVD.
The print media is being widely used today. But the reader must have been educated. To conquer this shortage, multi-vision devices are very useful.
In order to ensure the mutual interaction in teaching, all the unidirectional media need extra deployments.
Tape media have more advantages to the one-time radio media. The digitalize media make the higher level imitating interactions possible.
DSH：
In this analysis we will show that the DSH system provided resources for the Chinhat teachers to assist their teaching in the classroom. The analysis demonstrates that the participants used the system to access the expertise of other teachers and mediated these resources to their students. In this manner, the Chinhat teachers developed teaching through deliberate practice over several months.

On November 6th, Sudha started her English lesson with Grade 3rd by putting in a DSH DVD of alphabets from P-Q in the DVD player. She turned towards the students sitting on the floor and asked them to pay attention, When the students settled down, Sudha turned on the TV and hit play.

On the DSH video lesson, Shalini the video teacher, taught the students using participatory techniques such as group activities, front-of-classroom display by students, and different props used as learning materials.

Our data shows that Sudha paused five times in the 30-minute lesson and mediated Shalini’s instruction by reformulating her explanations.
Image showing the pattern of DSH mediation by Sudha
She adapted the activities and used the existing resources to replicate the DSH artifacts. Contextualizing language learning- “I am the king, I am the queen” Sudha and the students worked in the classroom with the DSH video lesson. They started from the letter P and got to Q. Sudha paused the video twice to mediate and the whole class participated in the learning activities structured around the letters. For example, for P, Sudha asked the students to get up and sing with her as she followed Shalini’s teaching on the video. This activity was repeated twice in the group and was complemented with boardwork on spelling and pronunciation. Each mediated activity took about five to seven minutes and then the video was played again.

About 20 minutes in the playback, the video teacher Shalini started teaching the letter Q. She brought two students up to the blackboard and gave them two pre-made golden paper crowns. She told the first student that she was the king and that the second student was the queen. Then she guided the students in learning Q through a song activity focused on the use of this letter.

The song had the following verses: “Roses are red, Grass is green I am the king, I am the queen”

Shalini sang these verses accompanied with explaining gestures, which were then picked up by her students as they repeated after her. For example, for “the grass is green”, Shalini made a sweeping gesture to enact the expanse and the location.

As Sudha’s class watched this video, Sudha turned to her desk and tore two pages from her notebook. She wrote “King” on one and “Queen” on other. After she finished, Sudha paused the video. She turned and said in Hindi “two students are going to come up and tell us that the king wears a crown and the queen also wears a crown”. The instruction was mainly conducted in Hindi and Sudha talked in English when mediating the DSH lessons. In this manner, the mediation provided Sudha with resources to practice her spoken English with the students. In our analysis, we have tried to maintain faithful transcription of the classroom discourse in data as well as the English translation.

As she talked, Sudha raised her hands over head to form a crown shape. In doing so, she adapted Shalini’s strategy to demonstrate a word meaning through multimodal gestures. When two students got up from the front row and walked over to her, she positioned them to face the class and picked up the two paper crowns that she had made earlier. Sudha placed the crowns on their heads. She pointed at the first student wearing the king crown and said, “I am the king” and then pointed at the second student and said, “I am the queen”. The students nodded to demonstrate their understanding.

Sudha pointing to the two students as she mediates the song activity
Sudha turned to face the class and sang the song for the letter Q. The students repeated after her in words and using gestures such as cupping their hands to indicate rose and swaying in their places to imitate the movement of the grass.
After they sang about the grass, Sudha turned to the first student and said, “I am the king”. The student shyly repeated in a soft voice “I am the king”. Sudha repeated in a louder, more emphatic tone “I am the king” and the student responded more confidently “I am the king”. She leaned forward, touched the other student and said, “I am the queen”. The student repeated, “I am the queen”. This activity was repeated
and then Sudha asked for the next pair to demonstrate.

Sudha used the DSH system to access the teaching expertise, mediate instruction, and conduct deliberate practice for her professional development. The asynchronous system allows teachers to develop their practice in-practice. The analysis of the DSH use by teachers shows that having access to other teachers in their classrooms allowed them to develop their own practice. In this manner, the DSH system can provide opportunities for the student teachers to convey their own interpretations of teaching as they mediate the expertise of other teachers. We believe that providing preservice teacher programs with a conceptually sound DSH framework would effect generational change in teacher practice and in turn student learning outcomes.

Sudha teaching the class before the DSH deployment
DE:
The uneven distribution of skilled teachers begs the design of remote teaching systems to connect urban teachers to rural children. Broadcasting educational content is a viable option but is neither individually focused nor necessarily interactive. Efforts have been made to increase interactivity by having content mediated by local teachers such as in the Di