 Yeah, hi everyone. I'm Michelle. I'm part of the team at Tamron Tree, an organization that has been working to redefine elementary education in India. I'm quite surprised actually that there are 70 people. Many of you are known to us. We've been working together but we have about a decade of experience in testing and experimenting with open educational technologies, particularly with marginalized children. At the ground level, we run an operation in Northwest Maharashtra in Dhanu where we run a school for tribal children from class 1 to class 10. And we've built a model of educational intervention entirely on the open source framework, right from the hardware to the content and the software. We are committed fully and wholly to only using open educational resources and we put this model in place. We have a model instance called mybigcampus.in which we experimented with our tribal children from class 1 to class 10. And we've now opened mybigcampus.in Pan India. We opened it last year but it's got a momentum in the lockdown where we are offering open and free elementary courses, that is courses for primary children from six years to 14 years and we've even extended to 18 years. We have been advocating and pushing in all forums, particularly in the modal modes, but in all public forums that the only way to build any kind of equity in India and education is to go open. The only way that we can actually provide good quality education to every learner, particularly given the inequity in our country is to use an open framework. Right from the first modal mode in 2016, which was held in Delhi, Tamrentry and my team have played a role to bring the idea of technology in education with a philosophical perspective with a political understanding. And I think taking off from where Martin said that, you know, modal and a lot of the other open source responses are the resistance. We are the resistance rebels where we are telling the society and we're telling the world that technology in education or technology in any sphere, whether it's media or it's music or it's filmmaking or it's my personal life needs to be driven and controlled by the community. So my presentation today is not the nitty gritties of modal, which there are many people who are going to share, but it's really putting a philosophical framework into us as educators, us as computer programmers as as people who run ed tech companies and us as learners and seeing that why and how can modal build and help build and help build an open education movement in India. I will try to answer some of the questions in the public chat and but I have only 15 minutes so I'll move ahead. A lot of these things we are aware of we've been talking about a lot of us are products of a really problematic education system we have the right to free and compulsory education in India, yet the goal of primary education has not been achieved. The data is very very skewed some people say that are 30 million children out of school some people said at 13 million children out of school. You will all agree with me that the quality of education today whether it's in a public school or in a private school, but particularly we are talking about the public schooling system, the context, the relevance and the you know I mean it's completely redundant you go to school from class one to class 10 you are you are in an atmosphere of road learning you are in an atmosphere of hierarchy the content that you are actually engaging with is completely sort of redundant. So some of the problems of the education system need to be addressed and acknowledged and what we find is that people keep saying yes we know this and you know yes we know this and apparently they get excited about technology, but they don't really understand that there is no clear understanding that the dissonance of the pedagogy and content with what is happening in modern times is very very high. So if we are going to apply a tech to replicate the same dissonance we're going to do the same road learning through a platform like model we're going to continuously do extensive grading extensive competitive examinations we're replicating the education system just on a digital platform. So what we what we spend time saying is that please try to acknowledge and understand what are the problems, along with the dissonance in the in the content and the pedagogy. There's also been since the 90s when India's opened up its market there's been an increasing commodification of education. So, once we opened up our markets, we also looked at education as a product, we looked at it as a as a product to be the student became a consumer. Now in our opinion this has created the biggest sort of, you know, problems in the education system because children like this in the picture you see from a village close by are simply denied access. And if they have access they have no, you know, they have no quality education. So, increasingly with the opening up of the market the commodification of education and then the ownership. So now the ownership is not just of the content it's not just a by juice will tell me how electricity is produced, but it's also ownership of digital infrastructure and platforms, and the technology that has become increasingly proprietary. These are issues that we must understand when we look at model in the larger picture because model is offering some solutions. I'll just go ahead. These are typical classrooms. I think a lot of you are aware of how, you know, Indian education system particularly in, I mean, even even the private education systems are still hurting they're still looking at classrooms as a delivery space. They are still, you know, had there is a student teacher hierarchy. This is a typical village school nearby where we where we operate and and essentially is becoming increasingly, you know, increasingly true that it is no point in sending somebody to school whether you're from a privileged or an underprivileged background. So, what we are saying is that us as a community of people in the open source or us as a community of practitioners as educators need to first situate education as a right and not a privilege. We need to see that the kind of structural and equity in a country like India it does the society is so fragmented. If we really want education to be, you know, as a basic human right then we need to look at education as a right, and then figure out how the model fits into this. Now what does the open education movement say and sometimes I think that a few people forget the critical parts of the open education movement which is that it fundamentally is looking at how it can change the social relationships in the society. These children sitting in the image can participate in the global world not just by consuming high quality content, but by creating it by owning the means and the tools of production of how to create this content by owning the digital infrastructure. The open education movement definitely builds equity but it puts it puts into place very critical questions of ownership, very critical question of who owns the infrastructure who owns the digital resources who accesses it and who then uses it. It's collaborative I mean I mean all of you know this but I think sometimes in our work this you know this gets this gets forgotten. And for us, it can fundamentally alter the way we do education. And this is this is for us and in the last 10 years has been the critical point that we didn't use technology just for technology sake, we didn't think that this is, you know, like it's technology and it's wow but we we wanted to change education and technology became the tool, and the means by which we could change the way education is done. This again is possible because of open tools and platforms like moodle. Just before I get into that so when we're talking about how and how an open education tool or how an open education technology can actually change the way you do education. So for us at Tamrentry and the next session is being conducted by Chirag and he is going to share a lot of how we broke the education model. We were able to put in place. We started with blended learning but we were able to put in place a independent self learning mode of education with no classroom delivery content and you know direction of pedagogy being directed from the screen children deciding their own pace and teachers really becoming mentors teachers really saying that look the owners of learning is on you there is everything available today we can only mentor and facilitate your learning. So our vision of saying that people need to become self motivated learners. The world today is about how I learn not how I can teach and what I can teach but how I can really learn and we were able to fulfill these you know I mean fulfill these ideas and values because of a platform like model along with a host of other open source, you know open educational resources. And I think this is critical that the platforms like model allow you to dismantle the existing structures which are really very problematic. Now, what we're saying is that model can really a platform like model can really spread across India and some of the things some of the recent developments have been that post 2016 17 particularly a lot of private private players have come into India and there is a huge data penetration. That is, you know, I mean the mobile revolution as you all know is, you know, absolutely across the country. So, there are solutions that open education tools and open educational resources like model can offer pan India to both elementary secondary and all kinds of other educational institutions. So we are looking at, you know, things like Zilla Patricia school could have a local hosted server even on a Raspberry Pi so that, you know, in a particular classroom 50 children log into a local server if there are internet issues, along with a package of OERs right from, you know, your content tools like H5P or the big blue button or G company and we use a lot of other tools. You could really create a holistic experience for the child at very, very affordable costs. The other reason why the open education movement and model makes sense for a country like India in case anyone has a doubt is the affordability of it. So these are these are points that, you know, that we need to consider. However, what we've been struggling with for the last 10 years and this is why we come as advocates is there is no mindset to really be open, whether it's from the government or it's even from ed tech players, private players, programmers individuals need to see that there is potential and open is the only way to go. They need to believe in it philosophically and politically and then they also need to understand that there is revenue possible. Moodle is an example in itself, there are so many other wonderful global, you know, open education projects and open projects and other spaces that have proved that they are sustainable and revenue generating. For some reason, over the last 10 years, maybe because we are, you know, developing country, we have issues of, you know, our resources, resources are tight. But I think we lack imagination as a country to say that really, yes, we can go open and really we must adopt open education tools. There are many people in this forum who I've had discussions with over the last five years and there's been a resistance to, you know, release their products in the open domain. They're scared that, you know, the open domain will not generate the revenue. So I think we all together here need to play a role in saying that the future is open and we need to push for the use of open resources like Moodle. So, I mean, that's really one of the reasons we, one of the, you know, the broader outlook that Moodle must be pushed as one of the open solutions in a country like India for elementary and secondary education. And what we've done in the last eight to 10 years is that we've said that, look, this is possible with tribal children in a rural village in Maharashtra, where children from a young age are only using open educational tools as I said, whether it's hardware or it's software or it's any kind of content. And if this is possible in an area like this, then we definitely believe that Moodle can be Moodle and and the, you know, the whole set of open education resources can really be applicable across the country and be used to push that education as a human right. So, as I said earlier for us, the experiences have been phenomenal. We struggled a lot with the use of Moodle. We started off in 2011-12 and I think it was only in 2017-18 that we got a confidence that this is how education must be done and this is what the platform is for. So we are at mybigcampus.in. This is how a typical, this is what a mentor does in our school. She mentors the student one-on-one. We broke the classroom structure completely with Moodle. The teachers come into the school and come into the learning space saying that I'm a learner today. What can I learn? What can I build? What new can I do? And what can I release in the open source domain? And critically, our byline is that learners need to be producers and not consumers of content. They need to be self-motivated independent learners and adopt the new way of, you know, the new kind of aspirations and the requirements of the society as there are. So, yeah, so for us really, you know, for us, we do two things. We, through the school, which is a testing lab at Dhanu, we release a lot of our content into mybigcampus.in into other spaces. And we, as pedagogy people, as educators and as people who are, you know, what we call ourselves a DIY setup, we learn everything ourselves. We set up our own servers. We figure it out and we experiment, we test and then we get feedback from the students and they once again experiment and he once again test. And in this manner, we kind of build a pedagogy and a learning practice that is applicable and relevant. So, I had promised that I'd keep the session very short so that there would be some opportunity for discussion. And one of the, yeah, one of the concerns has always been that, you know, open is not sufficient. You have to use proprietary content. You have to go into the proprietary world. But over the last 10 years, we found that this is just not true for every problem that we had, there was always a solution in the open. Whether it's helping our children read fluently, we use the readable allowed plugin, or it's scheduling meetings, you know, with children, there's a scheduler. So, it's just that educators simply look at software as a technological solution whereas we are looking at software as a sociological solution to a problem that is to a problem of education that needs to be dismantled. So, yeah, I mean, I'd like to end there. I think I have, I have been very concise, but I think I have some time. So can I open the floor for questions Diego Fiona? Yes. Any questions, Michelle? Can you write it in the chat, the public chat? Currently, just to share while we are at it. Currently, we have opened up platform pan India and this lockdown and children from all over the country, including our children, you know, located in these villages are logging in to my big campus dot in through their mobile phones and we use exactly this platform. We use the LMS on my big campus along with the virtual classroom or big blue button and we are delivering classes back to back. How do you measure the success of your method and so we don't measure our, I mean, we don't measure the success but we as I said, it's a space of constant reflection and constant looking at, you know, did we use this tool correctly? Was this content that we put in the model platform, you know, really working for children, this interactive video help? Was this H5P designed properly? Did it achieve the course objectives? Can I use database instead? You know, so in the next session we are going to use, we're going to be sharing how we actually do this. Chirag's presenting actually how our platform works. All our children in the school, we have 125 children in the school that use the model platform. We give quizzes, they use the mobile app at home and the mobile app has been successful. Yes, we are using it for children between seven years and 14 years and these are all Adivasi children located in villages in Maharashtra. Raspberry Pi is brilliant. We are in a low resource area. We have electricity issues and for the last four years we've converted all our classrooms with Raspberry Pi. We have about 60, 70 Raspberry Pi machines that are used and we've never had to do anything with them. We host our own OS on it. It's called Treebian and we are happy to, you know, share it with you. Treebian has been customized from Debian and it has a host of generic utilities as well as packages like Tuxma, G-Comprey and other kind of gamified tools. So it is possible in rural areas, Dr. Gopinath, I'm right now sitting in a tribal village three hours away from Bombay myself. And you will be surprised that tribal parents are willing to spend money and willing to buy laptops and Raspberry Pi for their children. They are willing to invest in a mobile phone so that the child has access to education. And it's not like the poor in our country don't understand the value of good quality education. They understand that the Zilla Parishad schools are not really providing anything for that matter. Yeah, we will release Treebian on our site. It was there earlier. I need to just put it up again. It's called tamrantree.org. We will release Treebian there and yeah, we are happy to share our experiences regularly. Students in Kashmir, we are happy to help Manmeet if we can. We don't need to move from here. We can help you set up a platform. You can use our platform. Mybecampus is now open. We install Treebian on micro SD cards, put them into Raspberry Pi's and we send them across. So we could install a Treebian. We could send Kurya, you a micro SD card that you could install in your school in Kashmir or Murali Dharan could use. I think I'm losing time Diego said one minute so I will give sufficient time to my colleague Chirag who's going to share a little more about how we use Moodle. You can email me at Michelle at tamrantree.net. We are happy to help people set up their own platforms, help with open education resources, help with installation, help with any kind of guidance. Our content is also available. So yeah, you can please reach out to us. We have a full-fledged grading and assessment system on Moodle. Yeah, Diego, shall I end? Yes, please. So we continue. This is going to continue in the next session. So if you join there, Chirag will explain a little bit more. Thank you very much. Thank you so much for such a nice audience and a big audience actually. Good, fantastic. Please leave this room and join us in the next presentation that will be in the other room, please. Thank you.