Oral Assessments at Asha Chennai Projects (Nov 2023)

Background

Asha Chennai has been conducting assessments at all the schools that we support every year ever since 2014! These assessments are based on Pratham’s ASER toolkit.
At Asha Chennai we are supporting 160+ government schools spread across Tamilnadu. Oral assessments provide us the metrics to tell us how our projects are doing and start measuring the impact we are having and fine-tune our actions so as to improve the outcome.
Here are photos from the Oral assmts.

Assessments over the years

Asha Chennai started conducting assessments in April 2015. In that 2014-15 academic year as well as 2015-16 academic year we conducted primarily a written assessment and conducted oral assessment only for weaker children. For children who were at grade level we conducted only the written assessments. The first oral assessments were conducted in Nov 2016 in the 2016-17 academic year. The following graph shows the number of schools where the assessments were conducted in the various years.

Both the number of schools and the number of children covered have significantly increased over the years. The big dip in the years 2020-21 and 2021-22 was because the schools were closed and the numbers here reflect the mini-schools we were running. In 2021-22 we conducted oral assessments in Oct 2021 at our mini-schools and then once again in the actual schools later in April 2022. The huge increase in 2022-23 and 2023-24 are partly because of our growth. But these also now include 8 and 12 schools resp. in UP. Further we have also started conducting these assessments for students in classes 6 to 8. This has also resulted in the increase in the numbers.

Oral Assessments 2023-24

Asha Chennai conducted the Oral assessments at all the supported government schools. The schools covered are listed below.
Project Sangamam (Thiruvallur/Kanchipuram Dists) – 91 Schools.
Project Pearl (Thoothukudi/Thirunelveli/Then Kasi Dists) – 28 Schools.
Project Thulasi (Viluppuram/Thiruvannamalai Dists) – 25 Schools.
Project Poorna Vidhya (Chennai/Chengalpet Dists) – 9 Schools.
Project Manigal (Chennai Dist) – 2 schools.
Project Cauvery (Thiruvarur Dist) – 12 schools.
Project Sangamam Rajatalab (Varanasi Dist of UP) – 11 schools
Total –  178 Schools.

Like last year this year too the teachers at every project were trained personally by Rajaram to ensure consistency. Over the years we have evolved a detailed set of instructions that makes the process as objective as possible. This was shared with all the teachers. The assessments were also carefully monitored by volunteers and lead teachers.

Sangamam – Thiruvallur/Kanchipuram

Thiruvallur teachers were trained on Oct 28th. The computer teachers of the project conducted the assessments. They were also assisted by the CS trainers and KaradiPath teachers where required. They were teamed up teams of 2 or 3 teachers. The assessments were conducted from Nov 6th to 15th at the Thiruvallur Schools.

Pearl – Thoothukudi/Thirunelveli

None of the volunteers could travel personally to train the teachers. Online training was held for them along with Thulasi teachers on 28 Oct,2023. The assessments were then conducted there from 30 Oct-2 Nov, 2023.

Thulasi – Viluppuram / Thiruvannamalai

The training for the Thulasi teachers also took place online on 28 Oct 2023. The assessments at all the schools were conducted from the Nov 6-15.

Poorna Vidhya/Manigal – Chennai/Kanchipuram

Rajaram trained the teachers in person on 10th Nov 2023 at Chennai. The Manigal teachers also joined the Poorna Vidhya teachers for the training. The assessments at all the schools were held from the 16th to the 26th.

Cauvery – Thiruvarur

As Rajaram was travelling to visit the Thiruvarur project along with the steward Komalavalli on the 3rd and 4th of Nov, we decided to start the assessment at that time with an in-person training. The training was held on Nov 4th at PUPS Nerunjanakudi. Rajaram trained the teacher on how to conduct the assessment. Then the teachers conducted the assessment for the children at that school. Rajaram observed the assessment and gave feedback to the teachers. They then conducted the rest of the assessments from Nov 4 -18.

Sangamam Rajatalab – Varanasi Dist, UP

The oral assessments are conducted in Hindi, English and Maths at our UP schools. The training also needed to be conducted in Hindi and English. Rajaram did the training over a Google Meet session along with the project steward Komalavalli. The teachers then conducted the assessment at their schools from 17 Nov to 5 Dec, 2023. This year the assessments were held for middle school students as well. Therefore, the coordinator also needed to talk to the HMs and get the permissions.

Data Collection

Asha has been gathering data about the school and the students along with the information on the performance of the students. There is often wide variation in the performance between various schools that we support. While standard measures like teacher-student ratio, motivated vs unmotivated teachers, richer vs poorer area, etc. account for some of the differences, there is still a lot of differences that still need explanation. We decided to collect data to correlate against the performance of the children and the schools. Here are the data that we are collecting now.

School Data

We got the school level data from DISE (www.schoolreportcards.in). The data included the following,

• Strength of the school (which we also had from our own data) and the trend of the strength over the last few years.
• No of male and female teachers. These two together give the teacher-student ratio.
• The percentage of SC and ST students. This to a large extent also reflects on how poor and remote a place is.
• The percentage of BPL families.
• The strength of the school the last two years which gives us an idea of whether the school is gaining or losing strength.
• If the school a middle school or primary school?

Student Data

In addition to the school level data, we also gather data are the level of an individual student. We collect the following student level data:

• Gender – boy or girl – We were collecting this even earlier.
• Student’s pre-school education – Did he attend a Balwadi, a Kindergarten (if so for one or two years) or none?
• Parent’s educations. What is the education level of the mother and father?
• Date of Birth which will tell us the student’s age.
• Height and weight. This will enable us to check if the children is at a correct height and weight for the age/class.
• Attendance percentage for the student.
• Distance of the student’s home from the school. We are not exactly measuring the distance. We classify the student as a. Coming from the same hamlet as the school, b. Coming from a neighbouring hamlet by walk or c. Coming from a more distant hamlet by vehicle (usual share auto or bus).
• Is the student going for tuition?
• Is the student regular with his/her homework?

Result Analysis

More detailed correlation with all the data collected will be done once the written assessment is also completed. In the meantime, here is some basic information that we are able to immediately see from the data.

Recovery of Education Post-Corona

Here are three graphs showing comparision of the result in TN beween this year and last. Thick line represents this year and dashed line last year.

As you can see there has been a good improvement in English and Tamil and no major change in Maths. We decided to compare the performance against the data from 2019-20, the last year before Corona.

Note that in 2019-20 we conducted the oral assessments only for primary school children. Here again it looks like we have caught up with the pre-Corona performance in English and Tamil. However, our Maths performance is still lagging. Part of the change may also be related to the fact that we are following the Ennum Ezhuthum (Foundational Literacy and Numeracy) focused textbooks and teaching pattern.

Effectiveness of KaradiPath

In 10 schools we started the KaradiPath program in Oct 2022 and the children in these schools are continuing the level 2 of the KaradiPath program. In 27 more schools we started the level 1 of the KaradiPath program this year. The first set of graphs, we are comparing the performance of the KaradiPath Level 1 schools with all TN schools. Thick line represents KaradiPath L2 schools and the dashed lines all schools in TN.

As you can see there is an outperformancein English but not in Tamil and Maths. Here is the comparision of the English performance of these same schools in 2019-20.

As you can see there is much less of an outperformance in 2019-20 by these schools. But the odd thing is that there is an outperformance even by the 6th to 8th classes in these schools. Our KaradiPath program should only have an impact on the primary students as we are doing it only for classes 2 to 5!!! Therefore this requires a little more analysis.
Here is the performance in English of the level 1 KaradiPath schools in 2023-24 and then in 2019-20.

Here the numbers are a little clearer. There is a clear outperformance in 2023-24 vs. 2019-20. And the outperformance seems focused more in the primary classes like we would expect.

The aberration of the middle school outperformance may just be due to the small number of middle schools in the first group (2 of the 10 schools). These schools may have had other things happening (like say a change in the English teacher or something like that).

On the whole we are glad to note that KaradiPath program is indeed impacting the English performance positively while not negatively impacting the other subject performances (i.e. by taking away time from them).

UP vs TN Schools

In the analysis of the assessments from 2021-22, we had observed how the UP school children were doing much better in Hindi vs. the TN students in Tamil. But there is an equivalent outperformance of the TN students in English. Maths performance was more or less similar. Here is that report. During our site visits, we were also able to observe that this dramatic outperformance in mother tongue was indeed there.

In this year’s assessment, we are seeing that this outperformance has increased further and has now taken place in Maths as well. Even in English the gap has reduced significantly. Given the significant improvement in all subjects, we are also suspecting that the assessments may have been conducted a little more liberally by our teachers in UP this year. We will continue cross checking these results. We will be conducting written assessments as well in UP this year. This will give us a way to cross check our results. In the mean time, here is a comparision of the performance of UP (thick likes) and TN (dashed lines) in Engliah, Maths and Tamil/Hindi.

CYCLONE MICHAUNG FLOOD RELIEF – THIRUVALLUR & THOOTHUKUDI

In December 2023, a low pressure in the Bay of Bengal turned into a severe cyclonic storm which was named Michaung. The storm peaked with sustained winds of 110 km/h causing heavy rainfall in Tamil Nadu which effected our Sangaman project in Thiruvallur as well. India’s meteorological department had issued a red alert. The storm coupled with heavy rain and strong winds caused widespread flooding and inundation. The Chennai airport was inoperable, schools and colleges were closed, train services were hampered. Flooding led to power outages and damage to public and private properties. There was shortage of essential commodities like milk. After the cyclone passed, there was water logging in most of the places which took days or weeks in some cases to subside.

On December 17 and 18, the situation repeated itself in southern districts of Tamil Nadu, namely Thoothukudi, Tirunelveli, Tenkasi and Kanniyakumari. Our project Pearl in Thoothukudi was affected as a result of the intense rain and flooding.

We were made aware that many of our scholarship students (mostly in Chennai) also suffered on account of these floods. For those living in the ground floor, water had entered their houses. Several government agencies and NGOs were working on the ground to help people in this dire situation. Asha also decided to make a contribution to the relief work in Thiruvallur and Thoothukudi since our projects operated in these districts.

You may view the full photo album here.

Thiruvallur

The Impact

The Irular hamlets in Thriuvallur where we work are the poorest areas. These hamlets are typically located in low lying areas adjacent to a lake or river. Further their houses are typically either mud huts or government group houses which are also poorly constructed. Even during normal rains, the places are inundated. This year the rains were quite heavy in these places. We decided to take up the relief work in the hamlets or Old Thirupatchur and Annanagar and help about 200 families living there.Here are a couple of photos from Old Thirupatchur and Annanagar –

Two of the huts in Old Thirupatchur completely collapsed. Both these families have children who are studying in PUPS Old Thirupatchur. We have known these children for years. They are currently just living in tents put up with tarpaulin mats and nylon mats. It costs them Rs 15,000 to put up a hut. We propose to give these two families Rs 10000 each towards this cost.

Distribution Drive

On 4 Jan, 2024, Thursday, Asha distributed provisions and mats. We made a kit containing-

1. Rice – 10 kgs
2. Wheat – 1 kg
3. Rava – 1 kg
4. Vermicelli (Semiya) – 1 kg
5. Refined Oil – 1 ltr
6. Bedsheet – 1 no.
7. Mat – 1 no.

This kit was distributed to 50 families in Old Thirupachur Erular Colony and 150 families in Anna Nagar Erular Colony.

Thoothukudi

While there was severe flooding in a lot of places in Thoothukudi and Thirunelveli, the villages that we support much were not badly affected. In Athikulam, a village near the areas we support, two of the streets were totally submerged and the people there had severe problems because of flooding. There had been Government efforts in these places, where people were provided provisions and money. However, we noticed that the children had lost their books, notebooks, or bags. We decided to make an educational kit for these children and distribute them as a part of our relief work.

The flood affected around 1000 families in Athikulam and Ramalingapuram villages in Kayathar district. We made educational kits for children in classes 1-5, 6-8, 9-10 and 11 & 12.

The kits contained 2 line, 4 line books, square notebooks for math, exam pads, pencils, eraser, sharpener, wooden scale, and crayons for Grade 1-5.

For class 6-8, the kit contained geometry box, long sized ruled and un-ruled notebooks, dictionary, wooden scale, exam pad, refill pens (blue).

The kit for class 9-10 contained, long size un-ruled books, geometry box, wooden scale, graph notebook, ink pen, black refill pens, and exam pad.

The kit for Class 11 &12 contained long size un-ruled book, ink pen, black refill pen, and exam pad. In addition, a metal water bottle, pouch and bag was given to all the students.

The relief material distribution was organized on 17 Jan, 2024. Our team had invited the Collector, but he was not able to make it due to other commitments. However, the Panchayat head, Councilor, VEO and Thasildar attended. Our co-ordinator Mr. Murugan and 4 Asha teachers participated in this relief work. We donated materials worth INR 3,00,000 in Thoothukudi.

Scholarship Students

As the situation/need for each scholarship student was different, we decided to provide them each with INR 1,500 to meet expenses that were critical to them. 28 scholarships students from Chennai were covered under this drive. Since water had entered their homes, electrical equipment like fridge, washing machines, grinder etc were damaged. Around 12 students used the money to help with the repair cost of these equipment. Nine students used the money provided to buy books since their books had been damaged from the rain. Five other students used it to buy provisions since water logging damaged the provisions like rice, dal, wheat etc stored in their houses. One student lost all his uniforms, and had to buy new ones. One of the student, Gowtham is studying medicine. His stethoscope was damaged and he used the money provided to buy a new one.

RTC Impressions – Feb 2024

(by Rajaraman Krishnan, volunteer Asha Chennai)

IITM Pravartak and Asha are running 6 Rural Technology Centres, 4 in Thiruvallur Dist and 2 in Thoothukudi Dist. Project work is an important aspect of the courses offered by the RTCs. Children develop a fairly involved project related to their course. For the courses that we offered in the July to Jan semester, students had developed their projects. We provided the students an opportunity to present their projects to a panel of eminent judges. Here are the details.

See the full photo album here.

See our report from one year earlier for details of our courses at that time as well as the reason why we emphasise project work.

RTC Courses

Last year we were offering the two basic courses “Basic Digital Literacy” and “Basic Programming” and just one advanced course on “Web Development”. Since then our RTCs have started offering two more advanced courses “Javascript Animations” and “Physical Computing”. All the three advanced courses are part of Code.org’s CS Discoveries course intended for 6^th to 10^th std students. Note that the basic courses are offered by all the RTCs. However the advanced courses are offered in rotation by various RTCs so as to provide continuing studying options for the students at the RTC which at the same time not overwhelming the one or two teachers at each of the RTC.

There were number of project submissions for each of the basic and advanced courses. As the number of project submissions in each of the advanced courses is less, we grouped them together as part of a same competition.

Importance of RTC Impressions Competition

In the last years report, I had talked about the importance of project work and why it is not merely an evaluation tool but is a very important instructional tool. But we could have stopped at that. i.e. Have the students submit the projects which are reviewed by their teachers and provided some feedback. We have over the years realised the value of featuring the projects as part of the competition. While an event like this does serve the purpose of PR, for most part these events do not serve that purpose much and that is certainly not the primary goal. Some of the goals are detailed below.

Public Speaking and Presentation Skills

Children often do not get the opportunity to develop the skills required to talk to a room full of strangers, demonstrate and explain their work. RTC Impressions provides the children just this opportunity.

Competition

While competition should not be the goal of the students, competition does force the children to bring out the best in them. It also focusses the energy of the teachers and brings out the best in them as well. We as an organisation try out best to ensure that this is taken in the right spirit and this doesn’t become the most important aspect of the event.

Exposure

The event is usually held in a good Grade-A kind of facility thanks to organisations like IITM, Amazon, Pravartak etc. This in itself and the travel to Chennai provides a great exposure to the children. Further seeing the work done by other students from other RTCs and through their interactions with judges from the industry and academia, provides them a great deal of exposure.

Feedback

It is important for a person’s work to be impartially viewed by others (especially the people they report to) and to receive feedback. While the students do have their work reviewed by their teachers, this provides greater visibility for their work and also visibility for the teachers to show what they have done with their students.

Projects Submissions in 2023 – Semester 2

The following table captures the projects that were submitted as part of the course work for this semester.

To give an idea of the progress made in the last year. In Feb 2023, 68 projects were submitted from 4 RTCs. This year 181 projects were submitted by 388 students from 6 RTCs!

With the selection getting more and more difficult, the quality of the selected projects were indeed very high. We had a tough time selecting the projects for the RTC Impressions. The initial selection was done by volunteers Venkat and Rajaram with help from the lead RTC teacher Kumari. The teachers had about a week after the selection to train the students on how to present their work to judges, and make some last minute corrections and improvements.

RTC Impressions Feb 2024 – Organising

This time too Pravartak rented a hall in their IITM Research Park to organise this. Like the previous times, this was also a great venue for our event. We used the mini-auditorium and a hall next door for our competitions. Food was also arranged for the students right at the venue.

Students were coming for the function from all the RTCs in Thiruvallur and Thoothukudi. The teachers and children from Thoothukudi had travelled by van overnight to come here. They also returned the same day back to Thoothukudi! Children from Thiruvallur were also brought by 4 vans from various locations. Some 75 students and 14 teachers came to the IITM Research Park.

The following people agreed to being judges for our function.

Judges-

1. Karthikmanoj R – He has over 10 years of corporate experience. Karthik started his career with Barclays and is now with Amazon. He also has 5 years of entrepreneurship experience in TechBuzz Projects and Entrent Media.
2. Shankar Subramanian – He is an IITM Faculty and a startup founder. He has industry experience in IBM, Intel and Medtronic.
3. Srividya Kailasam – Project Management/ Scientist for 25+ years. She works for Pravartak as a project consultant and is involved in evaluating and defining many of the projects that are undertaken by them.
4. Deepak Umapathy: CEO of Crossbow Labs and a consultant in enterprise cybersecurity and privacy.
5. K Arun – Worked as an independent Consultant/ Product Manager in the field of Supply Chain management. Currenlty retired.
6. Raja Chidambaram – Technical Architect for 18 years in media and Cloud products
7. Aiswariya Chidambaram – Director – Account Management at Indegene.
8. Purva Bhatter – Completed post-doctoral fellowship with IITM. Currently running an organisation KrVidhya that focuses on improving science education in schools. She has been the science trainer for Asha for last couple of years.
9. Rajani Arjun Shankar – She has been a middle school teacher for 8 years. She is involved with freelance writing and translating projects now.

RTC Impressions – The Competitions

All the judges and the vans carrying the students reached the venue a little late by about 10:00 and the event finally started by about 10:20. In addition to the students, teachers and judges several volunteers and staff of Asha were also present and helping with the organising of the events. And staff of Pravartak and IITM Research Park were available for any help with the facilities. We also had four visitors from the Government Education Dept. They came representing the School Clubs program and the Schools of Excellence initiatives of the TN Education Department. They got to see all the work done by the children and also interacted with the students and teachers. They stayed till the end and gave their very positive feedback about our program.

The main stage of the mini-auditorium was used for the presentation projects. The children presented their presentation after which there was Q & A related to both the contents of the presentation and the technology behind their work. The children were also asked to make some modifications on the fly and show to the judges their understanding.

The Scratch programming competition was held in the back of the mini-auditorium itself. The children were called one batch at a time and asked to present their program to the judges. The judges tried the games and programs themselves. Here again there was Q & A asking the students how various things in the program works and were again asked to make changes on the fly.

The Advanced Projects competition was held in the other hall. Here again just the team presenting their work was called to present to the judges. Judging here was probably the most challenging for the judges. The three courses for the projects – Web Development, Javascript Animations and Physical Computing – were very different. It helped that all of them came with huge experience in the software field. Arun was explaining how he personally went over the various courses in the days leading up to the event and even then couldn’t understand how many of the students had done many of the features. Students out of their own self-interest had gone well beyond the requirements of the course. For instance, Sivapriyan the boy who won the Web-Development prize, ran a small webserver and DB and has also implemented a small backend code! Even our teachers do not know how to do this!

We all had lunch from about 1:15 to about 1:45. The competitions completed by about 3:00 and the judges arrived at the result in about 15 mins. The prize distribution function started after this.

RTC Impressions – Prize Distributions

Then 3 judges, Aishwariya, Raja and Arun – one from each of the competitions took the stage along with Rajaram and Venkat from Asha.

Each of the judges talked about the very high quality of the projects they observed and how narrow the gaps were between the project. They appreciated the great work done by the students and also Asha for conducting such a great program for the children. Venkat thanked the judges and Rajaram talked about the reason why we conduct RTC Impressions. Gifts were given to all the judges. We also observed one minute of silence for Dhatchayani, an RTC teacher at our Poondi RTC (which has been closed since then) who passed away on 23^rd Nov 2023.

Each of the judges then announced the winners of the prizes were announced. The judges themselves distributed the medals to the students. There were some tearful faces but we were happy to note that all the RTCs including one that had to shut down (Poondi) was represented by winners! Here are the list of winners:

Presentation Competition

1^st Prize: Homophones and Homonyms by Suthiksha P, Poomika S and Pavithra P from Kalugumalai RTC

2^nd Prize: Emmathamum Sammadhame by Kavya S from Thomur RTC

3^rd Prize: Vivasayam by K.Sukran, V. Santhoshkumar, V. Bhuvanesh from Kannigaiper RTC

Consolation Prize: Kayathar by F.Rabiath Faariza , K.Mohammad Sheik Arsaq and M.A.C.D.Ahamed Abdullah Ebrahim from Kayathar RTC.

Programming Competition

1^st Prize: Crazy Games by Mathan Kumar G from Kalugumalai RTC

2^nd Prize: Ludo and Tic Tac Toe by N. Monisha from Seethanjeri RTC

3^rd Prize: Rescue my Friend by S.Ranjith kumar,V.Sathvika,N.Sarmi from Seethanjeri RTC

(and) Match the Shadow by Ranjith S, Marudhu pandiyan R from Kanakamma Chathram RTC

Advanced Projects Competition

Here rather than comparing the projects in the various categories, the judges chose to give one prize for each course.

JavaScript Animations: Rocket Game by Chenthamizh Chelvan A, Banu Prasad A from Kanakamma Chathram RTC.

Physical Computing: Treasure Hunt by Priskilla V from Kannigaiper RTC.

Web Development: Aquarium by Sivapriyan S from Thomur RTC.

(and) HTML Projects by Dhanush A from Poondi RTC.

After this most of the groups went to the Besant Nagar beach, spent some time there, and then went back to their places.

Impressions of the RTC Impressions

One of the judges, Ms. Poorva Bhattar, who runs an academic initiative of her own said, “The most striking feature of the experience is the confidence of the students. They look in the eye and speak. They are absolutely comfortable with machines and programming, indicative of their involvement in learning. And, since they work on the programs on their own, the projects are demonstrative of their logic. The RTC seems to be holding the right nerve which is encouraging their learning and associated outcome. This is a great initiative.”

Ms. Aiswarya Chidrambaram said, “This is my first time volunteering to judge the event. Great experience! Thoroughly enjoyed the creativity, innovation and talent of young kids from rural India. Asha is doing a phenomenal job nurturing these talented kids. More power to you!”

K. Sukran, V. Santhosh kumar, V. Bhuvanesh who presented on the topic Vivasayam said,” We are living in the village. Agriculture is very important here, so we thought we could make a presentation about it. First we learned Open office features. Then we started the project and it took us two months to complete the project. While presenting, we were very scared at the start because this was our first time. But when the judges came and asked us a very friendly questions and even talked to us, it made us feel confident. The IIT Travel Experience was a very happy moment for us. They don’t take us to competition and excursion from our school. It has given us a good experience and made our parents feel proud.”

Raabiath Faariza, who presented on the topic of Kayathar said,” I got the idea from watching a lot of shorts on YouTube, and we decided to give a presentation on the topic. It took me one and a half month to write this topic and we took a lot of pictures and videos in person to do it. It was a new experience for us. Our teachers helped us for our background speech for this topic. We came from Kayathar by Van. We all came together singing and dancing very happily and it was a new experience for me. Food and toilet facilities were arranged very nicely on the way and they looked after us very well. I was very surprised to enter IIT Research park Chennai and see the buildings there. I found the topics presented by everyone in the competitions very different and interesting. We won the third prize. We left in the evening eager to come back and do better next time. We visited Besant Nagar beach on our way back. This trip gave me a lot of experience and I went home very happy.”

ACE Inauguration Function

Click here to see photos from this event.

There has been a lot of excitement at Asha since the MOU was signed with the education department to implement various projects to take computer science education to government school students. It heralds a new chapter in Asha’s aspirations to catalyze socio-economic change in India through the education of underprivileged children. In particular, the main project covered in the MOU, enables Asha to work with teachers in government schools to facilitate a one-year computer science curriculum to any one class of students from 6th to 9th standards. The project will be funded by Amazon under its Amazon Future Engineer program. The project will serve as a pilot to take computer science education to all children in Tamilnadu.

Our team came up with several interesting names for the program. After some deliberation, we decided to go with ஆஷா வழி கணினி கல்வி-Asha Computer Education – ACE, since it perfectly captures the essence of this project.

Selecting the Schools and Teachers

Asha through the broader outreach projects in Thiruvallur district, has been working with several (more than 250) middle, high and higher secondary schools. Our trainers talked to the school teachers and Head Mistresses to identify the interested schools. We narrowed down to a list of 52 schools. All these schools primarily had a teacher who was keen to get trained and implement the ACE project at their school and the Head Mistress who was able to allow one teacher to do this activity.

Asha trainers will provide initial and ongoing training to these teachers both in person and online. In addition, Asha trainers will visit these schools on a regular basis to make sure that the program is implemented well and provide support as needed. All teachers will be provided a laptop and all schools that do not already have a computer will be provided 3 computers.

Computers from Amazon

We received 267 laptops from Amazon out of which, 83 laptops were donated by the Amazon Chennai office and the remaining 184 laptops were collected by our team from the Amazon Hyderabad office. Amazon had to removed SSDs from all their laptops owing to security issues. We installed new SSDs in the laptops at our office out of which around 6 laptops had to be condemned. 55 laptops were sent to Thiruvallur from Chennai office and the rest were directly dispatched from Hyderabad to Thiruvallur.

To get the laptops ready, our team had to run initial check on all laptops. This involved-

• Checking if laptops are working properly or not.
• Installing the SSD in working laptops.
• Installing the Windows OS on the laptop.
• Installing the Asha Setup (Including all Applications required for Asha Kanini).
• Checking the faulty laptops.
• If any part was not working properly we replaced the parts from faulty laptops.

On the inauguration day, we have distributed 52 laptops to the government teachers. The checking of remaining laptops is still ongoing at our Thiruvallur office.

Inauguration Function

The inauguration function was held on 19 October, 2023, at Govt High School Thirupatchur. Ms. M.Mohana, the District Educational Officer for Thiruvallur was the chief guest. She spoke to the teachers. The Kutthu Vilakku was lit by Ms. Mohana, Mr. Rajaraman, coordinator of Asha Chennai, Mr.Poovaraghava Moorthy, BEO Poondi Block, Ms. Patricia Porkodi, also BEO of Poondi Block, and Mr.Sriram V S, a volunteer of Asha Chennai.

Rajaraman said, “To reach all students, it is imperative that motivated government teachers are themselves supported to teach computer science in their schools. We are hoping to successfully demonstrate this through the ACE program.”

The District Educational Officer Ms. Mohana, who oversees the primary and middle schools talked about existing Asha programs and the new Government Teacher training program and said “More than 8,000 children are benefiting from computer education provided by Asha through projects in partnership with Amazon. We expect that the ACE program which will start today will be useful to the government teachers to teach computers.”

Ms. Mythili, the head mistress of GHS Thirupatchur and other teachers at the function talked about how the ACE program will benefit their school and the students. Ms. Mohana distributed some of the laptops provided by Amazon to the teachers and launched the training program.

The Chief Educational Officer, Ms. K. Saraswathy joined us later during the training and spoke to all the teachers. She talked about the importance of computer education and said “Now it has become more important than ever for students to learn digital literacy. The teachers assembled here should utilise the opportunity provided by this ACE program and learn computer science. This can pave the way for its introduction in all schools in Thiruvallur and Tamilnadu.” She also distributed laptops to the government teachers present. District Educational Officer for High and Higher Secondary Schools Mr. M.S. Suganandam also visited our training along with the CEO and participated in the distribution of the laptops.

Training Program

The first part of the training program was conducted by one of Asha’s volunteer, Mr. Rajaram. He talked about the growing importance of making our students digitally literate and confident in using computers. He then talked about some of the pedagogical techniques that will play an important role in the implementation of the ACE program. Asha strongly supports the idea of Learning by Doing and Project work. This shift in pedagogy needs to be emphasized, as it forms the crux of the entire efforts of Asha’s computer science initiatives.

After the lunch break, two of Asha’s Lead teachers, Ms. Nathiya and Ms. Kumari took up the training. The group started off with some fun activities and later were taught how the children can be introduced to computers using the GCompris games. The government teachers were encouraged to use GCompirs. They played a few games on it, after which there was a discussion on the basics of computer science. The teachers were informed of the schedule for the next training sessions and with that Asha wrapped up the day.

Next Steps

There are three more training sessions planned in the next 3 weeks. The training in the coming week will also be a common one for all the teachers. The subsequent trainings will be held in three places and will be just for about 15 to 20 teachers in some of the areas.

The training will be focused on the curriculum and lesson plans of our 1-year curriculum. We will also be distributing the laptops meant for the schools during the next training session. After that they will be able to teach the students in parallel. Our teachers will also start visiting the schools to assist the teachers, and clarify any doubts they may have in the implementation.

At the start we were apprehensive about undertaking this training. This is the first time Asha is training government teachers. However, our concerns were quickly dispelled when we saw the motivation in the teachers. The teachers were very keen to learn computer science and were very comfortable working with our trainers. This has given us a lot more confidence about the success of the program in the coming year and a half. It is indeed going to be an interesting time ahead for all of us in Asha and the 52 government teachers who are taking this journey along with us.

Press Coverage

After the successful inauguration of our ACE program, we received good press coverage across local media. Here are a few links and photos.

The Hindu

Business Line

Aaram News

Gem TV

Arunai Express

Puchiya Naalidhazh

Asha Chennai Tamilnadu Government Partnership

Asha Chennai has entered into an MOU with the education department of Govt of Tamilnadu on 22nd Sept 2023 to work with 50 teachers in 50 government schools to facilitate a one year computer science curriculum to any one class of students from 6th to 9th standards. The project will be funded by Amazon under its Amazon Future Engineer program. The project will serve as a pilot to take computer science education to all children in Tamilnadu.

The MOU also authorizes Asha to continue delivering computer science education through a more detailed curriculum for classes 1 to 8, provide a flavour of computer science to class 6 to 9 students through a set of curated one hour activities and to provide a more detailed CS education to children in classes 6 to 9 to then enable them to take more advanced courses in our centres for free.

Here are the details.

Background

Asha Chennai has been teaching Computer Science to children through various initiatives.

Curriculum for Primary and Middle School Students

This is our oldest program which we have been implementing since 2014 and which currently serves 160+ schools in Tamilnadu and 10+ schools in UP. 100 of these schools are supported by Amazon. Our teachers teach a detailed 8 year curriculum starting from mouse and keyboard familiarity in classes 1 and 2, to office software in classes 4 to 6 and moving on to programming for classes 6 to 8. Our teachers also use the contents in Asha Kanini to teach the children Computer Science using technology.

Exposure to Computer Science for 6th to 9th Std Students

Asha has been implementing the Amazon Explore program at 250+ schools spread across 4 districts in Tamilnadu. This provides 5 independent one hour activities to the students every year to expose them to different aspects of computer science. While the original Amazon Explore program was focussed on programming activities, Asha expanded it to include activities related to digital literacy as well.

Higher Secondary School program through our Rural Technology Centres

In partnership with IITM Pravartak, Asha runs 7 Rural Technology Centres (RTCs), five in Thiruvallur and two in Thoothukudi districts. These RTCs are paired with one or two high/higher secondary schools. Our RTC teachers visit these schools and teach all children in classes 6 to 9 the basics of digital literacy and programming. Then interested children (including children from other schools) are given the option to take one of several advanced courses for free. These include web development, Javascript Animations, Physical Programming, Media editing, Robotics etc.

Reaching this to All Students

Through this MOU that Asha has entered into with the Government of Tamilnadu, Asha gets the necessary permission to conduct these above initiatives in all the districts of Tamilnadu where they are operational. But beyond these, the most important aspect of the MOU is the new project which takes Asha Chennai also in a new direction. It provides for training 50 to 60 government teachers working in as many schools to teach a one year Computer Science curriculum to students in any one class between 6th and 9th standards.

Tamilnadu Government has recognised the importance of children learning computer science. We are entering an era where digital literacy is going to be as important for people as literacy and numeracy. Computer Science has been available as a stream in classes 11 and 12 for several decades. One basic lesson in computer science has also been included in every term as part of their Science curriculum for classes 6 and above.

However there is a need to introduce a practically oriented curriculum to provide deeper exposure to both digital literacy and programming. That is where this pilot program implemented by Asha comes in. A good practically oriented curriculum that can be executed by motivated teachers without a degree in Computer Science and where the children demonstrate a strong knowledge of Computer Science at the end will be a very good program to introduce to all of Tamilnadu’s students. This is precisely what Asha aims to demonstrate through this pilot program at 50 schools.

From Asha’s perspective, this provides us the opportunity to take what we have learnt through all our previous programs and scale that to reach all the students. Amazon’s funding of this program through their Amazon Future Engineer program paves the way for achieving this.

Timeline, Evaluation and Monitoring

As the MOU got signed only by early Oct, we are planning to stretch the program across two academic years.

Output of the program will be evaluated by the following,

• Attendance record of the students in each school for the computer science classes.
• Record of Asha teachers visits to the schools.

Outcome of the program will be evaluated by the following.

• Assessment of the students.
• Projects submitted by the students.
• Satisfaction survey of a sample of the school HMs.

The MOU commits Asha to employ similar standards of evaluation and monitoring of the output and outcome of our other programs.

Principles and Pedagogy

As an organisation formed by volunteers, everything Asha does has been driven by the vision of improving education for the underprivileged and this project helps us take that vision further. In several key ways our principles and views on pedagogy guide these initiatives for computer science education as well.

Not a Remedial or Gifted-child Program

Remedial programs label slow learners and find strategies suitable for them. Gifted-child programs also similarly aim for solutions for those who perform well. Both of them have a serious impact on the children’s mind through Golem and Pygmalion effects.

We think a broader pedagogy that employs all senses addresses both weaker and stronger students. Self-learning strategies for younger children also work only where there are motivated parents to guide the learning of the children. A teacher driven instruction combined with free format projects which allows the children to work at their level of capability we believe works the best.

Learn by Doing

A practical subject by computer science must be taught practically with the children getting as much opportunity as possible to try what they are learning on computers. Infrastructure at the schools becomes a challenge. However Tamilnadu education department has equipped most of the schools with a HiTech lab with one server and 10 or 20 clients. We will be using these for our course. Where these are not available, we hope to equip the schools with used computers from Amazon.

Goal-Driven and IntensiveLearning through Projects

Mastery learning is not required and in fact becomes detrimental to education in many subjects and esp. Computer science. For subjects such as these, a basic minimum covered through instruction followed by an involved project works much better. Note that the project work is not merely an evaluation tool but is a very important pedagogical tool. When there is a need to learn and apply certain concepts, children retain what they learn much better. This is the thought behind goal driven learning.

Further some of the deeper aspects of computer science like bug fixing,choosing between multiple ways to achieve the same end, importance of backing up etc. cannot be taught through any amount of teacher driven instruction. These are only encountered and learnt through intensive learning through project work. Our courses emphasize this as well.

Our Hope

Through this MOU we hope to define a path to take computer science to all the students of Tamilnadu. It provides Asha a great opportunity to scale up our work from where we are and use the knowledge we have gained so far. We also hope to spread some good ideas on education through our computer science curriculum and course to how education is handled for all subjects.

Stationery Distributions – Aug-Sept 2023

(by Rajaraman Krishnan – Volunteer Asha Chennai)

Click here to see photos from these distributions.

Asha usually augments the materials provided by the government at all the schools that we support. This includes materials for individual students like notebooks and geometry boxes as well as materials that we provide for schools like A4 paper, Chart paper, sketch pens etc.

Here is the list of items that we provided at Sangamam and Poorna Vidhya projects.

Similar items were provided to the schools at Thulasi and Cauvery as well. Pearl project will be doing the purchase and distribution in October at the start of Term II.

Purchase and Distribution at Project Sangamam

We placed the order for Sangamam schools with two vendors. A new vendor covered about ¼ths of the order for the schools in Ellapuram block. Our usual vendor covered ¾ths of the schools in Poondi and the rest of the blocks. The Poondi and other blocks order was delivered on August 30^th and the Ellapuram block order September 2^nd. Over the next couple of weeks, these were delivered to all the schools. The computer teachers at these schools checked the numbers and then distributed it to the children at all these schools. The distribution is complete.

I also participated in the distribution of the materials at Boochiathipedu and Ayalacheri on the 8^th of Sept.

Purchase and Distribution at Poorna Vidhya

Purchases for Poorna Vidhya schools were also handled along with that for Sangamam. These were delivered to our Mylapore office and from there it was distributed to the schools starting on 13^th September. Stewards for the project participated in the distributions on the first couple of days.

The distribution continued and it was completed on 15 September, 2023.

Purchase and Distribution at Thulasi

At Thulasi the materials were ordered directly with a vendor from Thiruvannamalai. The materials were delivered to our office on 28^th August. When I visited there on 30^th Aug for the inauguration of the toilet at Gengavaram, the stationery material distributions were also started. I also participated in the distribution at PUMS Melachery.

The distribution continued and is expected to complete shortly.

Purchase and Distribution at Cauvery

Here again the materials were purchased from a local vendor from Mannargudi. The materials were distributed from 12 September to 14 September, 2023. The steward for the project Ms. Komalavalli also participated in the distributions.

GENGAVARAM TOILET CONSTURCTION

Every year, Asha takes up the task of renovating toilets in schools where the facility is either non-existent or of a very poor quality which renders them unusable. Under Asha’s Sugadharam project, we had completed work at Kayathar few months ago. (You may read the report here). In the month of July, we started work on the toilet at Gengavaram school in Villupuram district. Click here to see photos from this event.

The PUPS (Public Union Primary School) at Gengavaram has a total of 100 students, where 52 are boys and 48 are girls. The school is located in a remote area and hence has been largely neglected where sanitation has been concerned. The school had just one toilet for teachers and students, which was also in a state of disrepair. This lead to children not being able to use the facility and had to go out in the open. Since Asha has been associated with this school for the last 5 years, we decided to take up the construction of toilets here under our Sugadharam project.

Considering there are a 100 students at this school, just renovating the existing one toilet would not have been feasible. We decided to build a toilet building with 3 Indian toilets and 6 urinals. With this plan in mind, the toilet construction began on 16 July, 2023.

Since there had been no overhead water tank or septic tank, we installed those. The overhead tank has 500 ltrs capacity. We have installed taps in all the toilets and the urinals are equipped with buckets and mugs for use. One wash basin has also been installed for use.

Local construction workers were employed and the construction was completed within a month.

Inauguration Function

Asha and the school planned an inauguration function for 1 September, 2023. Mr. Rajaram, the coordinator of the chapter, travelled to Gengavaram for the inauguration. It was also attended by Paripooranam, the project steward and Dhinakaran, the project coordinator.

The children put up dance and song programs for the audience. It was well attended by the parents of these children as well. The inauguration also used as an opportunity to distribute stationery materials to the school. At the end of the event Rajaram cut the ribbon to inaugurate the toilet.

Currently, the old toilet is being used by the boys and the new toilets are being used by the girls. We hope that with Asha’s efforts, we are able to reach more schools to provide sanitation facilities securing the health and dignity for everyone.

Uniform Distributions at Sangamam and Pearl

July-Aug 2023

(by Rajaraman Krishnan – Volunteer at Asha Chennai)

Click here to see photos from these distributions.

Providing an additional set of uniforms from Asha is something we take up if we have additional funds in some projects. Like student excursions etc., these are not essential but will help a lot in making the school a more welcoming place for the children. The uniforms given by the government for most part is adequate but not of a very good quality. They barely last one year. We had last distributed these uniforms in early 2020 just before the Corona outbreak. Some of the schools wanted to distribute it after the new year starts. Thanks to the Covid, they could distribute the uniforms only when the schools reopened in Oct 2021. The children are still wearing it now.

This showed us the importance that the schools and the parents place on this uniforms. We decided to do the same this year. As there was extra funds available for Project Sangamam we decided to do it there. Qbrik ???, a company run by one of our volunteers, decided to fund the uniforms at Pearl and Thulasi. This most of our rural projects were covered.

We decided on the following,

• T-shirt and shorts for class 1 to 5 boys.
• T-shirt and skirts for class 1 to 5 girls.
• T-shirt and pants for class 6 to 8 boys.
• Chudidhar set for class 6 to 8 girls.

After evaluating some samples we decided on red colour for the T-shirts and dark grey for the shorts/skirts/pants. This chudidhar sets were going to be white and grey. We placed the order with Shanmuga Apparels. At project Thulasi, the orders were given to a local tailoring group. The distribution was to be held later.

A tailor from Shanmuga Apparels visited a few schools in Thiruvallur to get a mix of the sizes of the various dresses that would be required for all the classes.

At all the projects we placed orders for about 5% less than the strength of the schools in 2022-23. We did that with the idea that we will place an order for some extra sets after the first distribution. We can order for the specific sizes which are required in larger number. But this year the enrolment at the govt schools were quite bad and the number of students had dropped back to the pre-pandemic levels. It doesn’t look like we will need to place order for any extra set of dresses. At Sangamam the total strength this year is about 5200 against 5500 last year. At Pearl the strength is about 2540 against 2700 last year.

Distribution at Project Pearl

Shanmuga Apparels delivered the dresses to our Project Pearl office 12 July, 2023. These were already separated by schools. Our coordinator Murugan delivered these uniforms to the schools over the next 3 days.

On 22^nd July a group of about 10 employees from Qbrik came to the Pearl project area and distributed the uniforms at the following schools: Kayathar South, and Koovachipatti.

The staff from Qbrik also spent some time interacting with these children and also visited our RTC at Kayathar in the evening before returning back to Chennai that evening.

Over the next few days Murugan and the teachers completed the distribution at all the Pearl schools.

Distribution at Project Sangamam

At Thiruvallur Shanmuga Apparels delivered the dresses directly to the schools along with our project staff on 1 August, 2023. The deliveries started on August 1^st and continued till August 10^th. Adjusting the excess and deficit dresses between schools is still taking place and is expected to get over in the next couple of days.

I was also there on Aug 3^rd and 4^th. I distributed the dresses to the children at the following schools: Kosavanpalayam, Kuppammal Chathiram, Gandhigramam and Thomur on Aug 3^rd.

On Aug 4^th the children at the following schools were wearing the dresses we had distributed. I also got to take a couple of group photos with them in their brand new dresses at Ammambakkam and Sadhurangapettai.

The distribution of the dresses to the children was handled by our teachers along with the government teachers till Aug 10^th. They also posted several group photos of the children wearing these dresses.

Feedback

The feedback on the dresses have been largely very positive. In personally talking to the children, they also liked the red colour T-shirts a lot. The schools have already adopted a schedule to include this dress as the uniform for one of the days. We are seeing that regularly in the KaradiPath classes and other photos coming from our schools.

Couple of other points we have heard include,

1. The skirts can be a little shorter. The initial set of schools that the tailor from Shanmuga apparel visited insisted that the skirts be long. I think Shanmuga Apparels also erred on the longer side (which only increases their cost).
2. Some expressed the thought that track pants and sports shirts can be given especially for 6^th to 8^th boys and girls. We have seen these pants and shirts in the dry-weave kind of materials. But these are really not intended for wearing the whole day sitting inside a class on a hot day. We felt our choice would be better. Further in some of the places the HMs felt girls will not wear pants and T-shirt. Therefore, we had chosen the chudidhar set. This can be revaluated.

On the whole this was welcomed by the schools, children and parents as we had hoped.

Independence Day Celebrations