 Hi everyone. I'm Michelle from India and I represent an organization called Tamron Tree. We've been working for the last eight to 10 years on redefining elementary education in India, basically using open source technologies. And I have about 20 minutes to share our work with Moodle and other open source tools in a large country like India and particularly what we've been doing in the last three months with the pandemic. To give you a little background, we are located in a small tribal hamlet in northwest Maharashtra where we run a school for the local indigenous children which runs from, you know, kindergarten to grade 10. And the only reason I mean one of the one of the main reasons we were drawn to using technologies is that we believe strongly that it's only through open source technologies that can education can really change. So the idea is to break the classroom structures, break hierarchies, build collaborative learning. These were some of the things that we desired to do and put before the society a model of open digital education. For the last 10 years we now have a model in place at the ground level where the school runs on open hardware, open software, open content. It's driven by the Moodle LMS. We do use the virtual class platform like Big Blue Button for hardware. We use single board computers like the Raspberry Pi and our children who are all first generation learners who don't have a book to read at home, learn using these open source technologies. We've been establishing to the world in a country that's, you know, fairly ambivalent about the use of technology with young children that young children and that two children from a marginalized background can learn using open source technologies. The reason we are committed to Moodle is predominantly because Moodle, Big Blue Button, H5P, Creative Commons, these are all the politically right open source technologies where knowledge is free, the codes are free and people can adapt, reuse, remix and you know collaborate to build this kind of a world. So we are deeply committed to open source. Our children have never used anything proprietary and we continue that model. As you are all aware or some of you may not be aware but the situation in India with public education is pretty dismal. A lot of children are still out of school. The model of education that India follows whether through public education or through private education is largely rote learning, exam driven, grade oriented, not concept and knowledge driven and often children are, you know, pass out of the system 15, 18 years of the system with very little skills or knowledge. We've been saying for the last so many years that, you know, the textbook, the teacher and the blackboard have all become irrelevant and we need to put in place new methods of learning new methods of teaching. In our case, the location where we are at and particularly in India for the marginalized communities, it's even further accentuated because there's intergenerational inequity with learning and even basic learning levels of English and maths have not been achieved with this traditional forms of teaching and learning. So as an organization, we are basically here to address the issue of poor quality education and we use a lot of open source technologies for this. As I said, so at the ground level, we run a completely open education model where we have about 125 learners, we research, we customize, we harness a lot of the open digital educational resources released globally, whether it's Moodle or it's, you know, as the other packages that go along with it. And we customize our courses, train our teachers to build their own content and you know, conduct all our learning and teaching only in the open domain. We've launched our entire model instance is on my big campus along with that we even prior to the pandemic we were using the virtual class platform and we've had we've been building openly licensed courses and content and releasing these in the public domain. We also, you know, build elibraries, we have our own operating system which we encourage other rural schools as well as public schools to use which is the derivative of Debian so we offer an entire sort of a range of open learning products and solutions. All our open education work is being catered to and driven to the age group of six to 16 years primarily in areas where which are under resourced whether children are having a very poor quality education and we strongly believe that for a country like India open education is the only way to build equity. The country is increasingly being dependent on profit making at tech companies to the solutions, but this is not going to be accessible to the largely poor and you know, underprivileged children of our country. So we are advocates of open education we push for open education and we also customize and provide solutions for that open education. Now what has been happening all these years is that often people founded unbelievable that you're using so much of technology with very young children six, seven, eight, and that too, or from a marginalized background. In March when India went into lockdown, ironically the pandemic proved to be a huge kind of opportunity for people like us who have been pushing for open education for the last eight to 10 years. So what we did is that we use this this time to release our platforms which is the moodle platform pan India. We offered all our primary and elementary courses free and open to any child any in any part of India. And we also launched a volunteer program telling people that you know it's learning and teaching is no longer about formal curriculum formal syllabus if you are passionate you have something to say to children you would like to engage with them. And you'd like to create you know some sort of a magic online why your engagement, join us. And we could see around us that you know teachers are rushing into use a set of tools there is no political context of which tool I should use why I should use this tool which platform, a school or an institution can set up. And, you know, I mean India still there in terms of its own usage of open education resources. Educators are still very skeptical on there have been several you know orders passed in the last three months that you know very young children shouldn't be put online they've been bands they've been all sorts of things in this entire mess. We've been slowly slowly building a school without walls where we've got volunteers who come in with us we've got children who we've never met before pan India who just registered on our site. And we've got a series of courses that we've been you know offering and we've been pushing for every volunteer to use open education we've been demonstrating that you know it's all about creating that magic on your own online it's been it's about creating your own content it's about creating your own videos and we've spent a lot of time in the last three months then understanding what would it would mean to become an online teacher or to become an online facilitator. And it's it's it's been interesting because we offered programs both which are curriculum driven by the Indian curriculum, as well as very generic courses on you know photography using your mobile camera or financial literacy. And obviously once you know children are coming online and the structure of the school or the structure of the institution is broken children need to be coming as self motivated learners who really want to learn that math or really want to learn that science. And what's been missing in the entire education, you know ecosystem for the last several hundreds of years is a children are just put into institutions and you know said that this is how you have to learn and this is what you have to learn. And online learning simply doesn't work like that. So we've been working with our volunteers to you know to build, build up an environment that you need to be a mentor where the child is genuinely inspired by what you have to see. You have to come online with something that you are passionate about and then over and above that we've been training volunteers to actually build their own content using modal use platforms like the blue button to conduct the synchronous classes as well as build offline asynchronous, you know digital content. People have been very resistant to building their own content. Often people just want to take ready videos or you know don't want the pains to actually learn how to set up an assignment or a forum discussion or a quiz, believing that someone else is always an expert in this and I'm not really you know good enough. So we've been encouraging a DIY culture and we've been encouraging an open culture and you know I mean we've had some very, very interesting and you know phenomenal experiences. We've also been telling people that you know at the end of the day it's not the platform or it's not the tool that or the technology that counts. We strongly believe that we need to be owners of our platforms and technologies which we have in our case overcome we use everything open and we've got all our digital infrastructure in place. But at the end of the day when you're online and you know when you're developing these courses and when you're building educational interaction, it's the pedagogy that counts whether you were in a classroom or now you're online. What is it that you can do that can get that can inspire that can create a collaborative learning space that can build on somebody's knowledge and that can ensure that the child comes back to your class. So, we've been building systems we've been building you know templates for teachers and online volunteers. And over time we I mean a lot of people drop out of the program because we simply don't accept. You know, ready content or just delivery from the textbook, because this is exactly what we've been trying to dismantle all these years. And you know so for us the entire usage of the open source platforms are just the path. I mean that's just the technology changing education is still a large sociological project. And now the entire tools have changed the thinking have changed the children coming on to the platform has changed. How is it that we can actually do something different in order for us to actually do something different we're going to have to throw out dismantle and you know really reject what has been done in the past. And this is this is the time consuming work whether it's volunteers who are you know coming absolutely fresh or it's teachers who are now expected to suddenly come online and you know deliver the same kind of thing they're delivering but in a completely different atmosphere. So, you know, the lockdown has opened up for us children who we would have always liked to meet in the past, but had could were never able to establish that you know digital online learning is possible a six year old sitting you know 1000 kilometers away from where we are today is today coming on our platform. An adult volunteer sitting in you know the UK for instance is now taking class with Indian children working with us developing pedagogy understanding open source tools, learning new tools. And it's been it's been a really exciting experience in that sense we've done more than 2200 hours of teaching we've had more than 20 odd courses that we've actually been able to implement and we've had more than 50 volunteers. So this is just a sort of a brief, you know, overview of how we were able to use every open platform that's available right from model to big blue button to all our content which is built within the core of model or ads. Ads seems like h5p to really put our courses forward. However, the work that needs to be done in a country like India is huge. Every day we see a tech companies coming up with solutions some of them offering it completely free, free not in terms of ownership obviously but free in terms of use, and the overall political education of teachers in India to differentiate between what is open and what is not and why open is the correct thing because education is a social good is still a long long way to go. The OER movement is picking up in India but, you know, at the end of the day, it's the dominant work is still being done by the proprietary at tech companies. There is a great need in India to push for open education to push for platforms like Moodle integrated with all the other open source applications and tools for children in India, and we are, you know, we're a spec, you know, we're a we're a dot in the in the ocean. It's a very large country and often convincing people why open is important or why an LMS like Moodle can do wonders for your institutions is is is the largest struggle. We continue, you know, using our open platforms, and we continue, you know, pushing for it so I mean in this in the lockdown we've had a wide range of children from across India, who have, you know, a lot of these come from the state we are in which is Maharashtra because we are kind of known in the state but we've had children from all across the country. And, you know, in that sense it's been it's it's and we're continuing to build a platform like this that can be open that can be free at any at all given points of time, where children from you know, six years to 16 years can you know, access use or use open source courses use content that is in the open source and really be working to build an open education movement in India. I didn't prepare for longer than 20 minutes and I think I finished in 15, but I would be available for comments on the forum, you can you know, post your questions, and we can share some of our, you know, struggles and journey in building this open education movement. Tamron tree in India is probably one of the only schools that uses, or that is built entirely on open on the open source model using model and the other, you know, platforms, and it has been a very long journey and a lot more needs to be done in the years ahead. So I look forward to your questions coming through the forum and I'm available throughout the five days would be fun to get in touch and share some ideas. Thank you. All right, we have one question from the forums. Thanks very much for that presentation. The question was from Dan McGuire. I'm curious to know how much the content from the 22 courses is openly licensed and how one could get copies of that openly licensed content if it is available. So Dan right now, I mean it's all openly licensed all our courses are in the moodle instance which is hosted at my big campus dot in and we could give you a login and you could take it or we could download it and, you know, upload it into your moodle instance if you like their science and maths driven courses largely but there's also English. And yeah, I mean we could use and they're they've been basically used created for grades one to eight. So they're all openly licensed. I mean right now they're still embedded within our ecosystem within the moodle instance but a lot of the resources could be released freely. Yeah. All right, I don't think we have any other questions Michelle. Thank you very much for your presentation. That was fantastic. We're now going to have a short coffee break before the next presentation in here which is powered to the learner presenting an online learning arrangement from the students point of view by Christine Dufla. Thanks very much. Thank you.