 Yeah, hello. Good afternoon. I'm Michelle. I've come from about two and a half hours away from Mumbai, from a place called Dhanu. And after those two heavy technical presentations, I'm going to take you on a little different path, more towards things like politics, philosophy, sociology, because I think they are very much related to what we're doing here. And so little diversions, and I hope you're all awake. So I think one of the questions we need to ask ourselves is that why are we all here? What is the purpose of most of us, at least 80 to 90% of the people in this room are somehow involved in education? So why have we come for moodle mood? Why are we all involved in moodle? What does education mean for you, for me, for lots of children outside, for lots of adults? Is it a social good? Is it something that is going to help you self-realize your goals? Is it going to make you a better human being? Is education about access? Is education about equity? What is education really about? And I think most of the times we forget why we are here together, and this is why I really appreciate putting moodle in a sociological context in the morning that Martin did, and all of us need to do so. And I played that role in the last moodle mode, and I'm glad there are lots more people here, but I will continue to play that role. So the question we need to ask is why are we doing education? Is education a commodity? Can knowledge be bought and sold? How many of us are in the business of education? How many of us are doing education because we believe in the social values of education? How many of us look at access and equity when we talk about education? So also the other thing is that we seem to be the only people from K-12, which is what they call internationally, but basically primary level. And one of the things we've had in the past, and we've been experimenting with moodle since 2012, is that people are completely astonished and shocked and disbelieve that you would use moodle with six-year-old children or with toddlers, and people have so much screen time, you know, this is not required, they need hand-holding, they need mentors. So in the last couple of years, we have been using it with underprivileged first-generation tribal learners in a village two and a half hours from here, and we just like to share with you some of the journeys and the reasons we've opted for using in LMS and the reasons we think that you should think of when you're talking about open source and education. So I just like to frame the debate. Again, we keep forgetting, and you know, we all participate in the discussion saying, no, but teachers are good, and you know, in the lunchtime we were saying, but some of the teachers don't want to use technology, it's their choice, and so on and so forth. What we're looking at is this is the school, this is Zilla Parishad school in the Dhanu Taluka where we live, which is a primary school. Most of Indian education, whether public or private, is redundant today. Whether it's an IB school in Bombay run by Dhirubhai Ambani or it's this Zilla Parishad school run by the government. The curriculum is out of context. The learning is rote learning. It's only examination driven. All the presentations since morning are still only talking about quiz, still only talking about how to assess our students, still only talking about they will watch that video if they pass that exam. Okay, so the education system in this country is redundant. In most countries it is, but let's just talk about India. We need to accept and acknowledge that, and then we need to see that what are we doing as educators. This is a typical classroom, grade one to grade seven in the village. These are pictures you may have all seen, as I said, even a city school with air conditioning and you know, this screen is still at the same level. This just looks infrastructurally. This is a really nice scene of the teacher not being there in the class and a little kid taking the class. On the other hand, what's happening in the world outside? For the rural tribal child, for the urban youth, for us, for your children, for my children, for anyone on the street in India, in Bombay, in a village. This is happening. The mobile revolution has taken place. Every single person, you know the figure is better than me. The mobile revolution is a huge success in this country. The digital world has arrived in our village today. Till about two years ago, one year ago, data was an issue. Today, data is no longer an issue. The tribal youth sits on this phone and watches films because of GEO, correct? So this is the reality. The farmer's got a phone, the tribal kid has got a phone, the street child on Bombay has or will get a phone. And this whole position that data is not yet everywhere, people are not yet digitized, people do not have access, is only partially true. The problem is, as was discussed in the morning, who owns all of this technology? Who owns all of this knowledge? And how are we participating in building this new digital world? If we can see education, knowledge and technology in this light, then the whole reason of using an LMS like model changes, where we see the learner as a producer of knowledge. We don't see the learner as a consumer. This world is making every single person here a consumer. And this is what they want you to do. And we are saying that the open source world and in that open source world, options like model can change that. It can fundamentally change the way the children, the way you and the way me engage with the new digital world. Because the truth is, it is a digital world. As I said, you can see from this image, whether you're a poor farmer or you're sitting here, the digital world has reached your life. So what are we doing to education then? If this is what has happened, and even in the tribal boy in our villages watching a movie, then why should we go to school? What is the purpose of school? What was the purpose of us going to school, largely socializing and getting some values? How much should we actually learn? So education needs to change. The first and fundamental change is we don't need any content delivery anymore. The second is that we see and we think that education and everyone here in this room should see the learner as a producer of knowledge. Which is why I was very happy that some of the presentations said that there's not enough content. Yes, there is not enough content. When we started an LMS, everyone said, why are you starting an LMS? There's so much alphabet, ABCD, videos are there, numbers videos are there, Khan Academy is there. That is not content that is generated by us. That is not content generated, but our learning community sitting in that village making content that is relevant to me. We do not need a textbook today. We do not need an expert. We do not need a teacher. We need mentoring and we need facilitators. Okay, so are we looking at changing the education system in any way? Are these any of our aims? Okay, so learning communities as collaborators of knowledge, as people who can bring new knowledge. The second thing that everybody is saying and has become accepted, but I don't know how much of it is happening is, it's possible today to do an individualized learning plan. It's possible today to teach X, Y and Z completely differently and put them at different parts. Are we not doing that in the schools? It's again possible that the entire idea of non-linear and interdisciplinary learning, which we all believe in, we all believe that English cannot be taught as a language. It needs to be taught interdisciplinary with geography, with science. The world outside is not compartmentalized. So you need to be taught and engage in your learning material in an interdisciplinary manner. Is this a change we want in our education? We all seem to say yes, but we again go back to using an LMS like model to structure things exactly the way the real world was structured. We definitely need to break the hierarchy between teacher and students. Why are we saying we can't engage with students? Because they don't want to engage with us. We are not inspiring enough. Technology is more inspiring. The digital world is more inspiring, right? So the hierarchy is broken. The teacher needs to change the role and become a facilitator. Yes, there are some brilliant teachers in our country. There are some brilliant, brilliant mentoring, but young people need to have a different relationship. Earlier education was like you had one guru who had all the knowledge and was imparting it to all these disciples. That's no longer true. Today I am sitting in a remote village and interacting with all of you. It's a many to many world. We can all build world together. So the teacher-student relationship has already broken and needs to break further with a sensible redefinition. Teachers can only be facilitators. Is what we are saying that education needs today. And of course you need a change completely changed set of skills that you need to learn, whether it's in elementary education or in higher education. You will all agree with me that students who go to BSE and computer applications, we get lots of applications, bachelor of computer applications. When they come to our campus, they can't do anything. They can't put a land set up together. They don't know any. They entirely learn on the job. So the entire education system is not giving you any skills. It's completely far removed. I think in those changes that I talked about that we believe in, then we realize that one of the things that can help us to do this is that the whole attempt at digitization and the open-source world in this digital space can help you realize these values, can help you realize this dream. And the open-source world in many as was shared earlier, whether it's open music, it's open health, it's open video, it's open audio is saying the same thing about building this new world. We want to give equity and access to everyone equally. Millions and millions of children in this country have denied basic equity and access to quality education. We all agree with that. The only way to bring that equity is through open-source, because open-source is the only movement that actually believes in it. The government has tried, you can see from the images, it has failed. Open-source and some of the solutions and as I said, change the fundamental relationships in society. If a child in my school can build a video game on scratch, if he can code, if he or she can animate, if he or she knows what an algorithm is, if he or she can navigate the real world in real time, then fundamental relationships of society have already changed for that child. He's not scared or she's not scared of the new world. There is already social, economic and cultural disadvantage, but wherever we can provide, we provide. Our online LMS is called mybigcampus.in. I have a few screenshots, not too many. You can look at it. So that's the philosophical basis which I find, unfortunately, in many, at least in the last mood and mood was also missing and it gets missing. Some of you work with government or private sectors and probably as some of you have rightly said, also victims of your own systems and processes. But unless and until you can not, you can actually change your own institution or your own system, then you are replicating the same education model that has already failed. We know it has always failed for all of us. Like Kalpana share in her team, there is not a single technical person, there is not a single technical person in our team. So what are we studying, what are we doing and what is happening? Mybigcampus is administered currently to 130 children in the age group of 6 to 12. We are a recognized school by the Maharashtra Government of the NCRT syllabus. So we take the NCRT syllabus in its spirit and in its content in terms of the textbooks and we look at how we can contextualize learning. The school is in English. So our LMS is in English and children master the basics of English by the time they are 6 and 7 in terms of being able to at least read basic stuff but we use a lot of audio because they are all first generation learners. Using the NCRT syllabus we digitize our courses and completely change and contextualize them to the way they should be contextualized. Most of the activities and resources in Moodle we try to build in a participatory manner whether it's a blog or a forum or the H5Ps and one thing we can say very confidently is that children can use and navigate the digital world and an LMS. It's a blended learning environment so children sit in a classroom with one child to a machine and a teacher conducts the courses. Now what happens actually is that a group of children and we don't have a class 1 class 2 model, the models are broken so a teacher and some of the teachers are here and you can chat with them later. I have 20 children who could be in the range of 7 years to 9 years so that means grade 3, grade 4, grade 5, grade 6 and they are given individual work usually on the machines and they engage with different courses. We have been able to follow an individualized learning model because of an LMS like Moodle each child can do what they are doing and then the teacher has to go as a mentor to the child and see. Some of the questions we were asked before we started and many people still ask us that should primary education and I think there was a student or a person here who said that is there any use for digital education is there any relevance has it been proved he asked a question like that so we would ask this as well that should learners as young as 7 really learn to navigate an LMS is it beneficial and why what do you do with the examinations and this whole SSC business who decides the course content and how do you train your teachers we have struggled and faced all these challenges in the last several years the reasons we also took to technology is that in rural areas and in most schools the possibility of finding talented good teachers is very less so you must understand that this whole business of having teachers available the teachers that are there in the government system are unmotivated, prejudiced absolutely resistant to any kind of change so it's very very difficult to find good teachers one of the reasons was that if we want to bring the whole world to the tribal child and you want to cater to an individualized learning plan an open source option or an LMS is your only option we now believe that learners as young as 7 can be facilitated in a blended environment to navigate an LMS and they enjoy learning the learning is faster it is helpful so we have proved that there is no issue of a 7-year-old child actually navigating an LMS for us we are a private school we will be giving the class 10 exams as an NIS and we do take all the Maharashtra exams but the state syllabus and the examinations are an internal process so it is not such an issue with us for a government school they would have to think cost content is all decided in-house based on the NCRT syllabus and then is digitized and training of teachers is also done in-house so these are just some of the images of our space I don't know how much time I have we were earlier on machines on laptops we now are very proud to say that not just an open source software we also have open source hardware in the form of single board computers so we use raspberry pies we have about 30 raspberry pies on the campus so we are also open hardware and open software it is our dream to be able to say that we are entirely open source a child on our campus has never seen a windows machine teachers are told only to use OERs and our restricted YouTube videos are not considered e-learning we restrict that kind of views and we also have set up on our campus an e-library server again on open source where we have made 2000 books all in creative comments available to a child so a child who is in a classroom can read a book anytime from a selection of several books we have set up a server so just to show you like the ncrt textbook would talk about food would talk about just to tell you what about content people are worried about content how do you digitize a textbook so one of the chapters in the ncrt class 6 science textbook would be what is food where does your food come from what are the sources of food what are the sources so one of our team members has developed an interactive map where a child can sit alone and click as an html based map and does some geography does some cuisine it has all the types of cuisine from different states so this is part of a lesson in the module in the model we use forum a lot to do just what what textbooks would do and better write five sentences based on adventure riding motorcycles stuff that they like and this is how we encourage English language learning, speaking, writing you use contextual images you make them participate in forums or in blogs and that's how we get them to write this is again a contextual lesson we grow rice in that area and in the science course we are teaching that basically rice is from a plant source or rice has got carbohydrates and we can have an interactive question page and move on so we develop all our own content in some level of contextualization we've used the h5p plugin a lot had lots of problems with backing up but we've still used it a lot another thing we found very fascinating and children take to it that we use the image galleries and we use images to teach children to write so they look at an image and they're supposed to comment on it and then are able to so basically you're learning in a real time manner just like you would pass a comment on an Instagram picture or a Facebook post the child is also using digital means using a world which is he's just about to step into the comments on one side are all the children's comments and teachers participate in the same what are some of the challenges we have faced or I think that any institution who wants to move towards open source and LMS is that basically you want you need to know why you are opening for any kind of education technology what is the reason for using ed tech which we forget over here why why an LMS why we're getting excited about model what is the reason for your excitement are you just using it as an extension of the same system or do you see this as a possibility of radically changing the way your college or your institution or your corporate office is run the way people learn so we look at it is that you need to change the way you look at education and then use technology the power of that is far superior than just replicating what you're doing setting up model is only the beginning of the journey you know there are a lot of people here who would come and set up your model for you and then that's it and that's the reason why a lot of colleges have model installed they've paid lots of money for the model installation which is also a joke model just lies there because no one knows what to do after that so some of the challenges are people need to understand themselves their education their imparting their philosophies about the education and then move ahead setting up model is just the tiny bit it's a day's job there are lots of IT and resource constraints we've had them to we've taken years and years to scale up to about 40 machines some large institutions don't have but people like us have taken a long time to build up an infrastructure that works we have bandwidth issues so we've got a local model server we have one on the net we have a video server so the children don't actually use the bandwidth we have an eLibrary server so a lot of IT and resource constraints are some of the challenges the biggest challenge and I think everyone has said this and shared and only repeat is that teachers need to be the course creators you're not always going to find somebody shared we wish we could but we've offered lots of people all over the world create a course for us do this for us it's not always easy people need to know the children or the audience that they are working with and it's only after working with children for 6-8 months that you may be in a position to develop a course so we've been pushing our teachers to upgrade their own skills and become course creators but one of the serious barriers to at least in elementary and I'm sure in higher is that teachers need to upgrade themselves to become course creators or if you're in such a sub-specialised field then you find subject matter experts and then train the teachers so that's what I've said these are just some of the images we also teach computer coding and we do the scratch programming in school and we've found that kind of interdisciplinary along with the LMS is really helping children build their learning that's our classroom that's our school farm and that's the last slide so I'm not sure if I've forgotten anything but I thought we'll keep it concise and I'm available for the discussion, thank you I think that's all I have Excuse me madam Hello madam I totally agree with what you have said everything is correct and it's a need of our to see that teachers are trained well and content has to be created by the teachers only one question I have is the your school is a residential school no it's a day school children go home and accessibility how you are giving they come in rickshaw motorcycles after school hours how they access the content so we have a project called a wireless mesh project they don't access this content once they go home after the class no but we have a project where we are linking many of the homes with the servers that are located in our school being an iOS you are able to manage it otherwise it is not possible no I disagree we are not here we have reached grade 7 we will reach grade 10 we could do SSC also we still have a choice we haven't yet decided being giving the time type of slots for all the subjects being an iOS you are having a freedom no no sir I'd like to all of you have a Maharashtra even if we were to do an SSC syllabus if we were to do an SSC syllabus and we may consider doing that because we have only reached grade 7 you could still do an SSC curriculum and have an LMS and have children in a blended environment and pass the SSC exam passing an exam is not the focus of why that child is coming to our school if he needs to pass the exam we will make him pass the exam the purpose of the education is not the SSC but we are responsible to give that child the certificate we have that much responsibility that I agree madam the question is the system where to run apart from the system where to run so that's what I implemented for 9th and 10th standard I have found the time constraints when I sit down the moodle when I ask the students to do they will be missing the time for the other subjects particularly I implemented 9th, 10th, 11th, 12th it was not working because of the time constraints no time constraints to teach or time constraints for the child to engage with the curriculum time constraints to complete the curriculum no so we have another way of working right so we just want to change the system we think that SSC is all rubbish we think NIS is rubbish no no one minute so by the time the child is reached 9th or 9th and a half you could you change the system so that he passes or she passes and the time spent is totally organized in a different way but that is just for passing the exam I have to do something but my life is here you can do it so it is a commitment that the school and an institution need to have because you are not able to we also are responsible that the child has to be trained these are all from poor background they need that English certificate so if you can make sure that the education is relevant at all points the child will pass the SSC exam I am not talking about the passing of failing just I am just talking about the time constraint either it is accessibility if it is given accessibility outside the classroom it will be easily possible that is the question as a result I ask you either it is residential in our case two problems one is there was no internet at home second is there is not enough digital devices in the house and third is that the child has not got any mentoring at home they are first generation learners so they need to be older to be able to engage but yeah I think I have answered your question