DigitalBlue : solving illiteracy in India

5/21/2018 DigitalBlue : solving illiteracy in India

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Digital BlueSolving illiteracy in India

Anand Manikutty


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Anands slides


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LEAN MODELLean for Education


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Digital Blue

Lean ModelLean for education

Leveraged Learning


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Digital BlueWhat is Lean?

We applied lean to agriculture =>

The result was Digital Green, a Bill &

Melinda Gates Foundation funded NGOwith state offices across six states in

India


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Lean is a production practice that

considers the expenditure of

resources for any goal other than the

creation of valuefor the enduser/customer to be wasteful and

thus a target for elimination.

-- via Wikipedia


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An application of Scientific

Management

People have conducted Time and

Motion studies on bricklayers. ->Reduce the number of motions

required for the brick laying process


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Anands slides


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Frank Gilbreth, a proponent of

Scientific Management

Assignment during World War I was

to find quicker and more efficientmeans of assembling and

disassembling small arms.

Therbligs


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Gilbreth reduced all motions of thehand into some combinationf 17

basic motions (grasp, transport

loaded, hold) => more efficiency.

Also, developed techniques to teachrecruits how to rapidly disassemble

and reassemble weapons even in

total darkness.


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Anands slides


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Toyota Production System also usesScientific Management principles.

Concepts:

Kaizen: focuses upon continuous

improvement of processes Muda: Waste

Mura: Unevenness

Muri: Overburden


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Digital Blue

Lean ModelLean for educatio

LVG Learning


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Anands slides


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Digital BlueLean for Education The main goal in Lean is to reduce

Waste

What is Waste? Anything that does

not contribute to the final end

product.


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Digital BlueLean for Education pronounced a as in cut

pronounced aa as in father pronounced b as in Bravo

pronounced g as in Golf pronounced d as in David


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Digital BlueLean for Education pronounced bug

pronounced baag pronounced Gaab

pronounced dug


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Digital BlueLean for Education Learning the above alphabet took

TWO MINUTES!!


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Anands slides


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Digital BlueLean for EducationThe Hawaiian language has only:

13 letters

5 vowels

8 consonants

AEIOU HecKLe MiNe Paw


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Anands slides


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What is Lean?Lean for educatio

LVG Learning

Digital Blue


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Anands slides


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Digital BlueMinglish = Malayalam

+ English Kerala: a state in one of the poorest

countries in the world, India.

Population: 33 million; literacy rate:98%

Compare to Bangladesh: 61.3% for

males, 52.2% for females


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Digital BlueMinglishTHREE VERBS

To do

To have

To be

=> Additional auxiliary verbs exist but

not in Minglish1.0


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Digital BlueMinglishTWO ADJECTIVES

Good

True

=> Additional adjectives exist but not in

Minglish1.0


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Digital BlueMinglishADDITIONAL FEATURES

Alphabet: English alphabet

Pronouns: All pronouns are used in

Minglish1.0

Numerals: 1 to 9 and zero only Case: all cases are used

Tenses: present, past, future

Number: singular, plural


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Digital BlueMinglish

CONJUNCTIONS

AND

OR

NOT

incorporates ALL of Boolean logic


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What is Lean?Lean for educatio

LVG Learning

Digital Blue


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Anands slides


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Digital Blue=> LVG Summer 1

LEARNING A LANGUAGE LIKE

MINGLISH ONLY TAKES 3 WEEKS

FOR A BILINGUAL ADULT

Create an initial corpus of teachers

using contract labor An initial group of 30 teachers can

teach upto million other teachers

all within 3 months


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CHILDREN LEARN IN GROUPS

Children learn from each other

Teach (then test!) children on letters,

then words, then sentences Testing occurs throughout the entire

process


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Digital BlueLVG Summer 1

WITHIN A SUMMER BREAK, WE GET

IT ALL DONE

A cadre of bilingual instructors can

reach an entire state The children of an entire state can

learn to read and write within three

months


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WHY IT WORKS

We teach the children only 9 to 14

English letters

We teach the children only a subsetof the language

We measure performance every

week


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WHY IT WORKS

We use teachers on contract basis

If teachers are not able to meet

fortnightly performance goals, theymay be replaced

Contract teaching has been

associated with much higher perf. [1]


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WHY IT WORKS

We are able to get performance on

WHERE exactly the children are

falling behindreading letters,reading words, reading sentences,

etc.


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WHY IT WORKSTAKES OFF

WHERE ASER LEAVES IT

ASER is able to tell us where childre

have problemsreading letters,reading words, reading sentences,

etc. This data exists.


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WHY IT WORKSIT TAKES OFF

WHERE ASER LEAVES

ASER is able to tell us where

children have problemsreading

letters, reading words, etc. byregion. This data also exists. For

much of India.

But there is a problem!


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WHY IT WORKS

ASER is able to tell us where

children have problems with natural

languagessuch as Malayalam

But this is not good enough Some natural languages are very,

very complex. It is very hard to teach

them.


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Anands slides


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WHY IT WORKSthe AHA! moment

Leveraged learning does the

oppositeit deliberately creates a

language that is very easy to teach

Furthermore, if there are parts of theIndian region which are falling

behind, we know exactlywhat to do.

We add resources


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WHY IT WORKSthe AHA! Moment

We add resources to whatever

region those resources are

needed.

We can replace teachers who areineffectual within two weeks.

It should not be hard to teach

children 5 characters in 2 weeks.


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WHY IT WORKSthe AHA! moment

In discussing with a friend, it hit me.

THIS ISATKINS FOR EDUCATION.

YOU CAN MEASUREPERFORMANCEAT EVERY STAGE

YOU CAN TAKE STEPS TO FIX

ISSUES TOOAT EVERY STAGE


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Digital Blue

=> LVG Summer 1WITHIN THREE MONTHS

Millions of kids will be able to learn to

read and write Minglish by the end of

the summer.This itself is a HUGE achievement,

but wait, there is MORE!


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Digital Blue=> LVG Learning

LEARNING A LANGUAGE LIKE

MINGLISHONLY TAKES 3 WEEKS

FOR A BILINGUAL ADULT

So what?

Virtually nobody in the world thatspeaks Minglish.

My answer to that: Of course!

But wait for the AHA! moment


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Digital BlueAHA!=> LVG Year 2

Over the following school year, what

is done is quite simple

Simply teach children the rest of

the English alphabet

1 letter every week Plenty of practice- revise, rinse

and repeat


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Digital BlueAHA!LVG Year 2


is done is:

Children also learn how to read

simple words written in Harvard-

Kyoto


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Digital BlueAHA!LVG Year 2


is done is quite simple

Children get extensive practice

to read words written in Harvard-

Kyoto Performance is measured every

fortnight


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Digital BlueAHA!=> LVG Summer 2

Over the second summer, what is

done is quite simple

Simply teach children Malayalam

in a structured way

Build it up in a structured wayfrom Minglish

We add 3 verbs per week, 3

nouns per week


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Digital BlueAHA!=> LVG Summer 2

Over the second summer (following

the school year), what is done is :

At this point, we are ready to use

conventional Malayalam

textbooks although they will haveto be adapted to be written in

Harvard-Kyoto


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The key to the problem of learning a

new language:

Learning a very large number of

new verbs

Learning a very large number ofnew nouns

(Possibly) learning which nouns

are masc., which feminine, etc.


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The key to the problem of learning a

new language:

The combinatorial explosion

problem: once you add enough

verbs and nouns, problem muchmore complexwhich ones

match with which? Which ones

are masc./which ones fem.?, etc.


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Digital BlueAHA!LVG Summer 2

Over the second summer, what is

done is quite simple

You slowly add the other

material such nouns and verbs

so that the children are notoverwhelmed with nouns and

verbs.


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Anands slides


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The Digital Blue Idea

Summary Avoid the combinatorial explosion

that comes with nouns, verbs

An initial group of 30 teachers can

teach up to million other teachers

all within 3 months, etc. First summer: Focus on teaching

Xinglish, which holds basic structure

of language X


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The Digital Blue Idea

Summary Next year, through the school year,

teach the children the English

alphabet and Harvard-Kyoto.

Focus on teaching Malayalamin the

second summer An entire states worth of children

can be taught between two summers


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Digital Blue

End illiteracy


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Digital Blue

Atkins for illiteracy


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Digital Blue

Literacy in ONE YEAR


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THE END


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DigitalBlue : solving illiteracy in India