Shilpa Sayura goes live at 20 Nenasala Te

11/19/2007
The Internet is a vast ocean of content but special efforts are needed to translate and contextualize this content for consumption by rural communities.

The lack of digital content in local languages is in fact a significant drawback that keeps a majority of Sri Lankans who cannot read and understand English from reaping the full benefits that Information Technology can bring.

The Information and Communication Technology Agency of Sri Lanka (ICTA), functioning under the Presidential Secretariat recognizes this and has, through its e-Society Development Initiative (e-SDI) grants programme, sought to encourage the development of content in local languages.

One of the projects to be funded by the Agency under this programme is Shilpa Sayura, a project by eFusion Ltd to create digital content related to the school curriculum in Sinhala to help students in grades 6 through 11. Computers and other basic IT infrastructure are not widely available in rural households, but are necessary in order to use this resource.

The 380-strong Nenasala network provides a practical and efficient means of distributing the content. Therefore, Shilpa Sayura has now been deployed through 20 Nenasalas and will eventually be deployed across the entire network.

Shilpa Sayura provides an interactive means of self study and could be particularly helpful as a teaching resource to children in remote, rural areas who do not have access to teachers. Even children who do have access to teachers can refer to Shilpa Sayura for self study and to better understand a subject that is being taught in school. The content includes text, supported by movie clips, photographs, animations and applet based interactive exercises, totaling over 2 GB. It can therefore go far beyond a textbook’s ability to impart subject knowledge.

Furthermore Shilp a Sayura also provides a platform on which students can interact with one another, share and exchange knowledge.


The content has been generated and reviewed by a panel of teachers from around the country and piloted with schoolchildren and teachers from 20 Nenasala communities. The feedback received has been used to further upgrade subject matter and improve its delivery. It has also been demonstrated to , President Mahinda Rajapaksa at the recently concluded Deyata Kirula exhibition at the BMICH and also to the National Institute of Education.

The goal of the e-SDI programme is to pilot innovative ideas to spread the benefits of ICT to all members of Sri Lankan society.

The Shilpa Sayura project is one of many projects funded by the e-SDI that fulfills this goal. Those interested in working with the e-SDI to help take the dividends of ICT “to every citizen and every village” are invited to visit www.icta.lk/esdi or email esdi@icta.lk for more information.

Source : Daily Mirror
http://www.dailymirror.lk/2007/05/07/ft/16.asp

Shilpa Sayura Presented to Moratuwa Univercsity

11/19/2007

Shilpa Sayura was presented to Moratuwa Univercsity Telecom and ICT department heads. Dr. Ajith Pasqual, Dr. Sanath and two other members of Academic Staff were present.

They commended Shilpa Sayura as a suitable product for school net as well as provided us with valueble advice on e-learning concepts.

The content of Shilpa Sayura and Its depth was appreciated and commended by Dr. Ajith Pasqual.

Niranjan Meegammana

Shilpa Sayura Recives Recognition of NIE

11/19/2007

As a part of review and feedback process Shilpa Sayura Project was presented to the Top Management and Officials of National Institute of Education (NIE) www.nie.lk.

Dr. I.L Ginige (Deputy DG), Mr. Jayasuriya (Director ICT) and many other Educational Experts and Section Directors of NIE was present.

It was an important milestone in Shilpa Sayura Initiative as it received high recognition from NIE, the top most institution of National Education.

Shilpa Sayura Concept, CMS and Shilpa Sayura Content was presented and we made a brief awareness of ICTA e-SDI , Nenasala and our findings at ICT in Rural Schools.

The NIE Officials greatly appreciated ICTA-eSDI and Shilpa Sayura Efforts to develop rural education standards.

We presented content in depth as well as methods used to create content map from NIE Syllabus, Teacher Guides and Text Books. We presented them methods to used to provide interaction, student involvement. We showed them random content in Science, Math , Art , History as examples to display content and its depth.

We also showed them how content can be access from Syllabus Menu as well as content map. We showed them facilities made available to students to comment and rate the content. We also showed them some rare indegenepus content

They highly appreciated ICTA -eSDI and e Fusion initiative that has set a foundation of Cariculam Content in Sinhala Unicode, which is a timley need .

They also commended the NIE syllabus based menu and appreciated the depth and presentation methods. They said that Shilpa Sayura is quite inline with the changes of education policy they are making these days. They like to have Shilpa Sayura in Schools, specially in the rural communities where computers available even with out Internet access.

They also mentioned that they have got good feedback from Teachers using Nenasala about Shilpa Sayura. With this presentation, we are quite happy that NIE accepted Shilpa Sayura as a timely needed and quite useful product in ICT based eduction. They also said that they will provide best of their, support, content expertise and current content (Raw) for Shilpa Sayura.

During the discussion they mentioned that they would like us to include content for teachers in Shilpa Sayura (Lesson Plans , Teachers Handbooks produced by NIE). Dr. Mr. Ginige advised us to include content for teachers, so that teachers can use them at Nenasala.

When we mentioned about 7 schools we implemented Shilpa Sayura with Nenasala Support, They realised how nenasala can be a HR for School ICT development. A recent circular by Mini.Ed allows Schools to develop partnerships with schools to conduct ICT training and share revenue. A possible way Nenasala can progress using school resources.

We also updated Shilpa Sayura progress and how EVS programme has helped it. We also mentioned that having content available is not adequate to develop e-Learning. A development, review and activities are needed to transform traditional learners to e-learners.

Dr. Ginige had a discussion with Mr. Y.S Ratnayake from Shilpa Sayura Teachers Group about content and teachers group activity.

As well as we pointed them the important using unicode which allows uniform distribution, sharing and updating using databases. We also volunteered to assist them to implement unicode in NIE.

With this presentation and recent visits to deep south we are thinking of Shilpa Sayura Phase II, which will involve replicating Shilpa Sayura, Creating Content on Demand (ICT, English, Science and Math etc.) as well extending it to unemployed youth for e-Leaning that would reduce unemployment.

Finally we are quite happy that years of our work got recognized by NIE . We also take this opportunity to thank all of you for evething you have done to make Shilpa Sayura progress to this level with in a short time period of one year. We would like to request your support further to develop Shilpa Sayura as a National Education Project.

Niranjan Meegammana

Shilpa Sayura creates a Trial English Cou

11/19/2007

Due to the massive demand from Nenasala Tele Centers, Shilpa Sayura Started a Research on a New form of English Content to be learned in Sinhala Language. We refers to a book written by Balangoda Ananda Maithree thero, who had used similar technique to teach english. 

In his book, he uses Sinhala Grammer to explain English. We tested the technique with students and found that they liked the idea to map their exsisting Sinhala Grammer Knowledge for English Grammer.

We researched several English learning cointent from international universities and found many self learning techniques that can be used inside Shilpa Sayura model. 

Several teachers helped us to compile a gerneric cource which covers O/L , A/L and English Literiture areas intended for Students, Nenasala Staff as well as youth.

The cource contain lessons on    

 

 Part Of Speech - භාෂා ව්‍යුහය        

 Tenses කාලත්‍රයන්        

 Conditionals කොන්දේසි        

 Punctuation Marks විරාම ලකුණු        

 Making Sentences වාක්‍ය සෑදීම        

 English Dialogs සංවාද      

 English Tests ඉංග්‍රීසි පරීක්‍ෂණ      

 English literature ඉංග්‍රීසි සාහිත්‍යය      

 Correct Your English      

 Writing Essays රවනා ලිවීම      

 Letter Writing ලිපි ලිවීම      

 English Pronouciation උච්චාරණය      

 Advice for Teachers      

 Voculabary වචන      

 Speech කථනය      

And special English Skill testing facilities

Shilpa Sayura CMS becomes an eLearning En

11/19/2007

The Shilpa Sayura CMS was planned to build a multi language content core. This was based upon e fusion's flagship CMS uniportal designed to manage multilingual content in Sinhala, Tamil and English supporting Unicode standard.

As we continue the project, we found the rural students need something more than a CMS. we reseched many e Leaning envionments, and found moodle to be most powerful.

However moodle like e Learning systems had several differances to the concepts we developed for rural commmunity.

1. Too advanced interfaces mostly intended for univercities.

2. Mandatory need of a Teacher to manage and run the cources.

3. Lack of support in rural communities Sri Lanka

4. Lack of content core and a testing module

5. Lack of Sinhala Support in certain interfaces.

We tested Uniportal CMS and Moodle with several teachers and students, and found that

1. Students like total sinhala interfaces given in Shilpa Sayura

2. They liked and learned faster simpler technology in Shilpa Sayura

3. They liked to learn them self than being taught

Our options were to either modify moodle core or to create something of our own. Considering the long term benefits that can be created though a locally conceptualized system was identified at the end.

One major difference we made comparing to moodle like LMS is that Shilpa Sayura is driven by the student through self and group learning while moodle designed to be driven by Teacher.

As shilpa sayura aims to reach rural communities where lack of teachers is going to be a major problem, and Nenasala tele centers not having tutors for school syllabus. Shilpa system has to be the teacher.

We analyzed needs of rural studnets visiting Nenasala

1. Obtain Educational Content for School home work
2. Learn extra expanding knowledge

3. Test and prepare them selves for government exams

4. Devloping new skills not taught in school

5. communicating with other students

6. Create local content for self use and for the purpose of sharing.

This resulted our specification grow in software infrastructure. Although content can be created on demand, the software infrastructure is a key resource to be invested for the future.


The Nenasala models range from 2 computers to 10 computers, we had to scale the software archetecture and operating environment to suit implementing locations. Nenasala uses windows XP and special servers not available.

How ever in terms of concepts and scalbility we dsigned shilpa sayura open to meet growing technologies and resources at Nenasala. The system was designed to be open, easily modifiable and scalable.

By now we have completed Shilpa Sayura Software System which is the infrastructure for Shilpa Sayura, It was to be CMS, our enthusiasim and Researh made it a really good Self and Group Learning Enviorenment for Rural Communities.

Shipa Sayura Software Team
Niranjan Meegammana
Tusitha Randunuge
Saliya Randunuge
Chulani Padmathilaka
Gamini Chamara
Gamini Pathirana
Ranjan Dhanasuriya
Subash Dhananjaya

Shilpa Sayura Reaches Final Content Targe

11/19/2007

When a project begins with nothing what’s available is hope and veliefs that targets could be reached. In most ICT community project cases targest keep moving with time due to inflation as well as other factors which were only can be imagined at the beginning.

Reaching targets need great courage and commitment of all stakeholders. Shilpa Sayura did it. Shilpa Sayura readhed target of 4000 units and was reviewed by teachers groups and approved by ICTA and PWC. It’s the first time in Sri Lankan hoistory such a large content repository was built, and it was done in less than an year.

Shilpa Sayura made it happen by opening up, making everyone interested taking part in the process through out.

The content base include 8 Subjects Sinhala, Science, Math, Art, Dance, Music, Environment and changes to new syllabus also incorporated breaking Social Science into history, geography and civic studies

Shilpa Sayura Trial Implmented in 21 rural communties

11/19/2007

Shilpa Sayura 3rd milestone was to reach 50% of the target content for the pilot.
After completion, Shilpa Sayura took a tour of 11 days covering over 1200 km. Tour visited 21 Nenasala Tele Centers in deep south covering Embilipitiya and Monaragama, Matara and Hambantota Districts .

It was a great learning exercise as well as we were able to penetrate into grass roots to communities and meet students who would use Shilpa Sayura as a path to become future ICT professionals.

We found future Software Engineers, Journalists, Writers, Musicians,
Dancers, Pilots and Sportsman. They talked to us ambitiously,. They are Healthy and need assistance to learn the skills they need. They also need orientation and ;eadership skills. They said that they will go any distance, take any hardships to become future leaders.

The Shilpa Sayura Pilot Implementation tour was about 9% of sample of
Nenasla model which included round trip in Deep South 4 districts. Following locations were covered in the pilot implementation.

Godakawela, Embilipitiya, Thunkama, Padalangala, viharagala,
Sooriyawewa, Sevanagala, Kandiyapitawewa, Balaharuwa, Unawatuna,
Maduraketiya, Monaragala, Karavila, Detagamuwa, Mahasenpura,
Mirrijjawila, Wanduruppe, Thangalla, Devinuwara, Polhena & Pasgoda.
Padalangala, Kandiyapitawewa, Balaharuwa, Pasgoda are real rural
Communities while rest are semi rural, semi urban Tele Centers.

Shilpa Sayura created a new Network and brought them together as well as got a
great start with ICT community development and capacity building. Shilpa Sayura thanks all the people who has helped us to reach this stage.

TRIP REPORT ON GOOGLE FORUM

Following are some photos made in the tour.