CLIP2 quarterly report: July to September 2022

Project Overview

There are 3 main objectives of this project:

1. to create/prepare/distribute teacher resources for preschool teachers.
2. to install technical equipment (Access Boxes) in schools to store teacher resources for preschools; and
3. to train teachers on the use of the Access Boxes as well as how to upload and download resources.

There are two main beneficiary types:

1. the preschool teachers; and
2. the preschool students.

Background: This project will take place in the Pursat Province of Cambodia. It will be providing Early Childhood Education (preschool) support to rural schools in the Pursat area. Cambodia is still catching up after the total dissemination of its education system during the Civil War (Khmer Rouge). Recently the government has legislated that Early Childhood Education (preschool) be compulsory. There are not enough resources for teachers and many are struggling with what to do with so many children in their classrooms.

Rermork for Children (in conjunction with TukTuk Charity) has been creating resources for preschools and has been successful at delivering resources via their digital library which is available on the internet and the "Access Box" (computer device that acts as a WIFI so teachers download resources without being connected to the internet) and training teachers how to access, upload and download resources.

Participants

Provincial Office of Education (POE)

5 officers

• Director
• Department of early childhood education
• Department of primary education
• Department of education audit
• Department of plan

District Office of Education (DOE)

8 officers (the director and the director of dept. early childhood education of each district)

• Pursat city
• Kandieng district
• Bakan district
• Krakor district

Target Schools

10 principals and 14 preschool teachers (2 principals are counted as a preschool teacher too)

*1 The school that was independent of the primary school.

*2 Managed by the commune and the schools were built by the Rotary Club of Pursat.

Project Implementation

Detailed Activity Report

Training teachers how to access and use the resources

3rd Workshop

Before the 3rd workshop which took place in July, we launched the Digital Library website. It contains our teaching resources and the viewers can search them by sorting subjects, resource types, lesson themes, and typing keywords, not only by resource packages. Each school received an AccessBox to allow the digital library to be available, regardless of internet availability. This has replaced the folder stored locally on each computer that was used up until now.

We introduced the website and the Accessbox as well as a resource package ‘What Are You Good At?’ in the 3rd workshop. The 14 teachers, the director of the Dept. Early Childhood Education of POE/DOE and members of the Rotary Club of Pursat (RCP) participated.

The 13 teachers received tablets to access the website in the workshop and they learned how to search our teaching resources with them.

We also had storytelling training provided by a specialist with 25yrs experience in preschool education. In addition, teachers used our resources, such as dancing with music, an activity game, and a printable game, and then made weekly lesson schedules with the resources.

In the post-workshop survey, the teachers seemed to easily understand how to use the website, despite some of them having difficulties using the tablet. The teachers requested more training on how to make teaching resources by themselves such as activity games and worksheets. The previous survey had some similar responses however more teachers gave this feedback for this survey. Our planned workshops for next year includes a section for teachers to make teaching resources with computers by themselves.

One DOE staff member asked us to include more role-playing where the teachers practice as if in front of their class. This would help community teachers in the workshops who could better understand how to apply their new knowledge in the classroom. We made a small adjustment to our 4th workshop to incorporate this.

We also received other ideas for teaching resources for storybooks, worksheets, and the like.

4th Workshop

In September, we had our 4th workshop, the last workshop for this year. We invited a POE officer as an instructor and asked him to explain the indicators of the school assessment and standards of the classroom decorations. We prepared a resource package for the classroom decoration for the day and made some decorations with the participants as a hands-on experience. We also introduced our 6th storybook ‘Which Job Would You Like?’ and its educational resources.

We reported earlier that the teachers were not sure how to evaluate their classrooms per government requirements. With the help of our new resources and the instructor from the POE, the teachers are now more clear on the process. This was a great way for the preschool teachers to exchange their views with the POE staff directly.

Although we made instructional videos for preparing the classroom decorations, the more experienced teachers stepped in to teach other teachers including POE and DOE staff how to create them there. The teachers were very enthusiastic about the new classroom decorations and we thank the POE for consulting with us on this project. Even teachers who have already decorated their classrooms preferred to update to our new designs as they thought they were better suited.

Some teachers kept the original decorations without cutting them so that they can show the resources at the technical meeting held with other preschool teachers. One DOE staff member said they would distribute the decorations that they made in the workshop to community schools under her jurisdiction. We will continue to create additional decorations and hope our resources will be known among non-target teachers as well through our partner teachers.

According to the post-workshop survey, the lecture by POE staff and making decoration sections were easy to understand for the attendees. However, it was mentioned that we needed to spend more time practicing the resource packages for each storybook. Some teachers answered that playing an activity game, a printable game, and dancing with songs were not clear for them. It seems that we may try to add too much into each workshop and need to reduce the schedule a little. The target teachers can see those instruction videos on their tablets on the Digital Library website, however, we will improve in future workshops as we have received this feedback in the past. We have so much to share and too few time to do it.

The remaining three workshops next year will mainly consist of introducing resource packages for storybooks and making teaching resources by the teachers with their computers which will allow us to focus more on each resource.

Hardware purchases

We supplied 13 tablets to the target classrooms in the 3rd workshop so that the teachers can access the Digital Library website easily and 13 corner cutters to make their teaching materials safer for the students. As a side note, 8 tablets of 13 tablets and parts for the AccessBoxes were purchased in CLIP1.

The laminate sheets of A4 and A3 were handed over to the 13 target classrooms as well in the 4th workshop to create the decorations by themselves.

The target teachers received all items as planned, including tablets, cabinets, laminators, laminate sheets and colored pencils. The colored pencils remaining will be distributed next year as additional to them.

Project field visits

We visited the 10 schools to interview the teachers about the intended and frequent use of computers, tablets and the teaching resources in the Digital Library after the 3rd workshop. In addition, we installed the AccessBoxes in 9 schools that didn’t have Wifi.

There were slight problems related to the electrical codes and Wifi connections at the start of the AccessBox installation, but these have already been resolved. We ask the teachers to keep a paper log of the times they visited the Digital Library website, however, the AccessBox does have a tracking system. The paper log is being used to verify in the short term.

In the follow-up interviews, it turned out that using tablets is handier than computers for the teachers. They liked the touch screen interaction better than the computer despite the tablet screen being smaller. This may be due to their experience with mobile devices over computers. The teachers use worksheets, animations, and songs consistently but not the activity games and printable games as much.

We noted that most teachers like to show our book animations with their computers but we think the long-term display of a screen is not recommended for children and teachers need to read the story with their real voices and emotions to communicate with their students better. Thus, we will ask them to do ‘storytelling’ by using storybooks more instead of playing animations. We would also like them to practice each dance before teaching their students when they use our music resources, as currently they are using our music videos which are not intended as a teaching aid but more to sing and dance to once the song and dance moves are known.

Some teachers are using storytelling techniques from our workshop when reading Kamishibai’s in the classroom. Also, a teacher said the students’ parents knew about us through the worksheets that children bring back to their homes and they were pleased that we support the preschool class.

Other activities

Resource package creation

We will create 4 new resource packages during the two years of the project with 2 packages scheduled for completion in the first year. In this quarter, we have been working on our 2nd resource package for the classroom decorations and the 8th storybook named ‘We can – Just Differently’.

Information dissemination via social media

We run three open social media (Facebook, Telegram and YouTube) to share the teaching resources for preschool teachers and parents.

In August, we participated in the technical meeting, which discussed teaching methods, lesson plans, teaching materials, etc, and could introduce our social media and the website to about 20 Pursat city teachers, not included in the Clip project. The meetings are held in each district regularly and we would like to join them not only to advertise our organization and the website but also for additional feedback on teacher requirements.

Facebook

• Those posts include daily activity reports, animations, songs, activities, worksheets, and workshop videos.
• We introduced our page at the technical meeting mentioned previously.
• We received a comment ‘I have been wanting to see a website like that’ on the page.

*Reach…The number of people who saw any content from the Page or about our Page, including posts, stories, ads, social information from people who interact with our Page and more. Reach is different from impressions, which may include multiple views of the posts by the same people. This metric is estimated.

• Followers information

• Members information

Telegram (messaging app)

• In February, we created a public channel for not only target teachers but also other Cambodian teachers and parents was created. You can see the R4C’s teaching resources such as storybooks, music, worksheet, etc. in it regularly. And other information related to education for preschool children is posted. As of September, 133 members have joined and the number has increased by 37 since June.

YouTube

• The video that has the most top views exceeded more than 41,230 views.
• Note the YouTube data for gender may be skewed due to sharing phones and not having individual accounts.

• Followers information

Measuring Success

Next Schedule (October – December 2022)

• Conduct the 4th follow-up visit and the progress survey
• Conduct the annual meeting (November 03, 2022)
• Create resource packages for two new storybooks
• Prepare for the 5th workshop that is scheduled in February 2023
• Prepare for the 2nd school assessment that is scheduled in February 2023