Computer Programming to Begin in Primary School

I had the honour of working with the best brains of Bhutan on two major ICT projects under Education. We worked on Bhutan's first Education ICT Master Plan, which we fondly called iSherig, from June to Nov 2013. This will Rationalize and streamline ICT activities, systems and projects under Education Sector. It's submitted to the ministry for endorsement and implementation. 

And last winter I joined a team of 26 IT faculty in Gelephu to design the ICT curriculum framework. It's the first implementation step of iSherig that DCRD is taking. We spent nearly a month working on the framework that is expected to be timely and timeless, but the big event was not covered by any media and therefore let me briefly share about it.

ICT Framework Designers. If it fails we are responsible!

I know it's boring to read about government workshops, but I promise you there are many exciting changes you must note. As of now ICT literacy in school is provided by Chigphen Rigphel Project, which covers every student from Class VII to XII. The project will end in 2015. IT is provided as elective subject in Class IX to XII. In IX and X students are taught Microsoft Applications, and in XI and XII students learn HTML and JavaScript.

In the new Framework:

ICT Literacy will begin in Class IV and end in Class X. Computer Applications as elective in class IX and X is done away with however Elective remains intact in XI and XII. 

The curriculum content is broadly divided into four strands:

1. Computer Hardware and Applications
2. Internet and Services
3. Digital Citizenship
4. Programming

These four strands will stretch throughout class levels, which means even Computer Programming will begin in class IV. Did I scare you? Well there are child friendly, graphical programming platform for young children, that will lay strong foundation for the future programmers. 

By Class VIII students would have finished studying what is currently taught in Class X. They will be designing web pages using HTML, PHP and CSS. They will be recording, editing and publishing audio and video contents on internet. By then every child is expected to own a blog and maintain it as their digital portfolio. 

As we let loose our children on the Internet there are various risks that could jeopardize all the good intention therefore one solid strand is put in place to take care of this aspect- digital citizenship. Under this children will be educated on legal and ethical behaviour in use of technology, how to remain secure and to respect others. 

It was just the framework, now what goes into the textbook will be decided this winter. If you want to share anything about the ICT curriculum please leave your feedback or advice in my comment box. 

After So Many Wednesdays

I began a new club in my school called eLearning Club this year. The members were recruited from different levels and right on the first club day I fed them with big dreams. I presented to them what we are going to show to the school on the last day of the club, giving them the mental picture of the annual club exhibition day.

Members who presented on the Day, there are more outside the picture.

Over the many Wednesdays we met our ideas narrowed down to small projects and we divided ourselves into subjects groups to venture out hunting for materials. I let them know that there are endless resources on internet to bank on. By the second month Rigsum has launched their Sherig Collection and we didn't have to struggle much on international materials anymore.

However, we took inspiration from Sherig Collection and worked on our own tutorial videos and audio books. Some students produced impressive maths video tutorials. But we failed on recording videos of important Science experiments, this is something we will take up seriously next year.

Last Wednesday, the time finally came for us to show what we have done in so many Wednesdays and I reflected on the vision we had. We set up a projector, two laptops and a computer connected to 42" LCD screen.
Following are the works we exhibited.

1. Animated offline webpage, which contained all our works subject-wise. We had video tutorials, question bank, presentations,... on various subjects in website.
2. We had a presentation on our members' blogs.
3. We had set up a laptop as a station for the visitors to listen to the audio book recording of "Dawa, the story of stray dog in Bhutan"
4. We had digital comic books of many short stories taught in different levels of classes, and also had print version of some of them.
5. We had another station where we had installed Rigsum Sherig Collection for demonstration and distribution. 

By the end of the exhibition, after over 700 visitors came in and walked out with excitement I knew we have lived the dream we saw on the first day. My Club members were so happy themselves and perhaps they now know what they have to do to make 2014 Exhibition even bigger.

Kindly visit my students' blog and motivate them:

MY STUDENTS' BLOG

• Dhan's Ultrabook
• Teenager+
• The Real World
• Kalden Wangchuk
• Kinley Diary
• Thinley Jamtsho Journal
• JamSo DiaRy
• Tashi Jamtsho's Notebook
• Journal of my life!
• Biren's Dairy

Dzongkha Teachers and Computers

You have no idea what it means to dare teaching twenty Dzongkha teachers how to use computer but I am not new to this challenge. This batch of language teachers we have in Punakha Center mostly began their career before many parents fell in love and some talks about my grandfather being their contemporary. Now imagine how I would look standing there doing this job of teaching them.
We were never trained to handle this nor the course was designed to suit them. The computers are just the ones we are using-everything on the machine is in English and even the text book and the presentation slides are in English. The problem is not with them, they are highly educated and very confident and ready to learn. The issue is with the computer- they'd heard a lot about this super machine but they are upset that the machine is just another stupid box that won't understand Dzongkha. I assured them that computer can be programmed to display everything in Dzongkha but the problem is I was not trained enough to do so much and rest didn't have the passion. (Point to be noted, My lord lol)
The best adjustment we can do for them was to install Dzongkha Unicode on their computers so that they could at least used computer to type text in Dzongkha. It's a simple two part process; first install Dzongkha Keyboard and then install Dzongkha Fonts followed by a few steps to Add Dzongkha Keyboard on Language Bar but to do it on so many computer took me and my partner Tshewang Rinzin one precious hour.
That's the beginning of another problem; there are a few teachers who never went to Dzongkha Unicode training and therefore they need another course to understand what we just did. Without Dzongkha characters printed on the keyboard it takes ages to get a word on the screen. (Point to be noted, My lord lol)
By afternoon we made some progress with some people and rest are waiting for me to bring them the printed copy of Dzongkha Keyboard tomorrow. But like all the batches we met we had fun being mischievous and with Dzongkha teacher like them I never forget to share my dirty jokes and make them cough their doma out. During the breaks I listen to their wisdom and bother them with my endless questions on history. I am looking forward to eight more days with them!

Note: This is not intended to class whole species of Dzongkha Teachers in Bhutan as alien to English language or computers, I am just talking about this group of senior teachers who didn't go to English medium school and therefore resulting in the gap. Dzongkha Teachers now are highly versatile, they have mastery over Dzongkha and does equally well in English- and to surprise the hell out of all my vice principal,Lop Melam, who is also a Dzongkha Teacher is an expert in both computer hardware and software including Mac stuffs.

My GNH Model

This is how an ICT (Information and Communication Technology) teacher looks at GNH model (see the picture). Imagine socio economic development without banks, or banks without the new technologies. Imagine environment conservation without hitech devices. Imagine preservation of ancient texts and their promotion without computers. Imagine government that doesn't employ computer technology.
There is too much to imagine, and we know we can't imagine any of these without technology. But so far we haven't spelled out the role of ICT in achieving GNH, and when something is not specified then it's hard to work on it. ICT needs to be given due importance right now and here.

ICT is the supporter to all Four Pillars of GNH and Light to all Nine Domains. 

iPad Apps for Bloggers

An iPad was all I had in my dream for years and to achieve it I had considered selling one of my kidneys (not to be taken seriously, just a figure of speech). Thank god my sister in-law knew it before I really went crazy over the idea. She asked her brother working at Apple to gift me an iPad 2 during my birthday last year. I was sleepless for nights before I received the package and nights after I got my hand on it. After a week I thanked god I spared my kidney; there was nothing much I could do with it.
With free Apps I was limited to using trial apps, childish games, and frustration was building on. It gave birth to a new dream of owning a credit card so that I could buy Apps from Apps Store. I didn't mind my daughter using it roughly anymore.
It was only after I knew about Cydia, thanks to my friend and Apple Jack Tshering Tenzin, that I fell back in love with my iPad. I suddenly started worshiping my device after it was Jailbroken. Thanks to hackers, we get access to paid apps without paying. It became my teaching tool, Classroom organizer, text book, rough book, my music guru, Karoke, DJ set, my Playstation, and of all the best things it became my blogging tool.
I double rejoiced the discovery of the blogging apps because for months I was looking for them, and on many occasions I wrote to Blogger and Google to come up with Blogger Apps- as if they would listen. They only had Blogger App which was meant for iPhones. Though compatible with iPad the resolution was not welcoming.

Blogger – FREE: The Blogger app helps you publish posts to your Google Blogger blog. You can use the app with more than one Blogger account, and add location information and images to your posts. Pictures can come from the app itself, or straight from your iPad photo gallery, and you can use the post list to view or edit previous posts or drafts.

After the Jailbreak I got the following two apps for free and what more is happiness for a man who loves blogging on the go.

Blogsy – $4.99

Blogsy is designed to make blogging on the iPad easy. It supports multiple blog platforms, including WordPress, Blogger, Posterous, TypePad, Joomla and Drupal, and also supports content from YouTube, Flickr and Picasa. The app enables you to create and edit posts, add media content, publish to your network, and create rich-text emails. It’s drag-and-drop methods make adding images and hyperlinks to posts much simpler than it is even on a desktop. There’s very little you can’t do using this app, the only restriction is that you can only use it with existing blog accounts.

BlogPress – $4.99

Similar to Blogsy, BlogPress supports multiple blogging platforms, and gives you a range of features to use. The app supports text, image, video and audio content from the likes of YouTube, Flickr and Picasa, and you can format posts using the app’s comprehensive layout editor. Integrated with Facebook and Twitter, BlogPress also helps you manage your social sharing, enabling you to tweet or post to followers and fans when you have published new content.

Lucky for WordPress and Tumblr users, they always had the best best apps for free:

Tumblr – FREEThe Tumblr app comes with a range of features. As well as being able to write and publish posts, add images, and other basic functions, you can schedule posts for a certain time, create customized tweets to alert followers to new material, and manage more than one Tumblr blog at a time. The content editor allows you to publish text, audio, video, quotes, images and links, so the content you’re posting doesn’t have to be restricted by the fact you’re using an iPad. You can also view and reply to Tumblr messages, and see which of your iPad contacts also uses the blogging platform.

WordPress – FREEThe WordPress app works with iPhone and iPad and enables you to manage your WordPress blog. As well as create, format and publishing posts and pages, you can also add images and videos to your work, moderate comments and view blog stats. With a content editor that has many of the basic features the desktop version of WordPress carries, you can create professional-looking blog content on the go.

 

Courtesy: Picture along with the whole Apps Information are retrieved from ZeroPaid.com with thanks.

 

 

Talking about PaSsu in Singapore

I don't remember what I was doing on 5th Oct last year but back in Singapore it was Singapore International Foundation Dinner. Of course, I was not supposed to attend that dinner or was I invited but what makes it of interest to me is what Ms Euleen Goh, Chairman of SIF spoke that evening. It was a long speech though but three paragraphs were on a Bhutanese boy who feared computer once and went on to become an ICT teacher- which is me.

It came to my notice when my teacher Ms. Loh Kwai Yin, who is also in the story, posted it on her blog. She posted the whole speech. But I choose to show only those three paragraphs where I am mentioned, lol.

Original speech can be found in 

http://www.sif.org.sg/media-room/speeches/19/sif-appreciation-dinner-2010.html

But I got it from http://lohky-bhutan.blogspot.com/2010/12/when-i-googled-my-name.html

05 Oct 2010

SIF Appreciation Dinner 2010

Speech by Ms Euleen Goh, Chairman of SIF at Partner for Good - SIF Appreciation Dinner 2010 at the Grand Ballroom, Hotel Intercontinental

...

Thanks to you - our volunteers – such stories of success and new hope abound all over the region. In Bhutan, a teacher - Mr Passang Tshering - shares how the SIF's IT-in-Education project helped him get over the fear of computers. When he first sat in front of a computer, he was 16. What would normally be an exciting event for any other youngster, proved to be a frightening experience for this boy. Why the anxiety? Well, he believed then that the computer was so intelligent it could read his thoughts!

This same young man is now, at the age of 28, the head of the IT department at Bajothang High School in Bhutan. All because, PaSsu (as he is known to friends), was selected to be trained by IT teachers that the SIF sent from Singapore five years ago. Today, the former techno phobe teaches his students through web applications such as SharePoint, Google documents and wikis. He also has his own blog, and Facebook, Youtube and Twitter accounts.

PaSsu was invited to Singapore this February, as part of a study visit by Bhutanese teachers under the Bhutan wired project, co-sponsored by SIF and the Temasek Foundation. It gave him the opportunity to catch up with his SIF trainer from half a decade ago: Ms Loh Kwai Yin, now head of department of information and communication technology at Singapore's School of Science and Technology. Not that they hadn't been in touch all this while; both had kept in close contact through the internet and continue to share ideas and resources. 

From Singapore Magazine (http://singaporemagazine.sif.org.sg/2010/04/a-season-of-firsts/)

 I appeared in news papers, blogs and even speeches in Singapore. But what they don't know is  I have no good memories from the tour in Singapore, except meeting my teacher Ms. Loh. It was  a torture and I blame nobody except my own unpreparedness for the outside world. I went out as a Bhutanese and came back a sick man.

How to answer wrong questions correctly?

Don’t go deep into my topic, it is not some ‘how to’ tips on answering wrong questions correctly. It is rather a plight of an ordinary man who finds difficulty in answering straightforward questions. I am disturbed by some questions in computer studies practical paper and computer application practical paper from 26^th and 27^th November 2010.

In class XII Computer Studies practical paper: HTML Form elements such as Text box, Radio button, and Text Area were invisible. The question stated that the webpage should look like the screenshot given below (in page 4 and 7), and if students did exactly the same they are in trouble, their 50 marks in JavaScript section will remain a dream.

In class X Computer Application paper: Question 1, sub part 4 had come out of the blue. Students were asked to design a Database Form based on the Table called ‘Marks’, while there was no such table in the entire question- question was on Student’s Health record.

Further, Question 2, which was to prepare PowerPoint presentation on the working of ‘StdResult’ in question 1, but question 1 was on ‘Student’s Health Record’, thus the confidence in whole 15 marks question is lost.

I just hope students figured out the errors and wrote the answers as expected- students are smart. However, these errors were easily avoidable if BBE had reread the question just once before it was printed.

For wrong answers students are punished, whom to punish for wrong questions?