CLIP2 quarterly report: October to December 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 (AccessBoxes) 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 provide 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 Wi-Fi, 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 preschool teachers 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 for the 4th Quarter

Conduct project kick-off meeting and annual update meetings with PoE and 3 districts

We implemented the annual summary meeting in November 2022. POE, DOE, not only director of the dept. Early childhood education but also director of POE/DOE, the dept. Primary education, the dept. Planning, the dept. Inspection participated in addition to the target schools’ principals and teachers. The aim of the meeting was to report the outcomes of this project in 2022 and the results of the project progress survey that was investigated in October (see the detailed results in the next chapter) and receive feedback, requests, and ideas, for the CLIP2 project from all participants.

Based on both verbal and written responses, all the participants were satisfied with the project’s activities. Below is a highlight of the feedback received;

• POE/DOE officers
  • They hope that we conduct more workshops about teaching techniques and have other training, such as using digital devices and home education for parents.
  • They expect the project to link communities and strengthen the connection between schools and the areas.
  • An officer from the dept. Inspection asked to join the school visit with us next year to check whether our teaching resources match the Ministry’s standards. They said they could expand the materials to other teachers if the tools meet their goals.
  • They wanted to know how many people access the Digital Library website.
  • They suggested that the project involve all preschool classes of the target schools without picking some classes, and requested to expand the number of target schools including both government and community schools in the future.
• Principals
  • They noticed the project's effects, such as their preschool teachers getting adequate teaching techniques.
  • They hope that we continue to support their schools in terms of teaching methods, educational resources, and the use of digital equipment.
  • One principal also told his school’s parents to download our teaching tools from the website.
  • In one school, the principal had an upset parent of a child not in the participating classroom. She was not happy with the resources available in the class compared to the classroom participating in the CLIP 2 project in the same school.
• Teachers
  • They all felt that the project activities helped them and they had good experiences through the project.
  • There continue to be many requests to add more teaching resources to the website, such as worksheets and illustrations.
  • They requested that we continue communications with them even though the project will be terminated in one year, and some of them asked to join the workshop in the new term.

Some participants requested to continue in the new project next term too; however, we consider these teachers can also use the workshop videos. This meeting benefited the participants because they could exchange views beyond their positions and know each other's thoughts. They could discuss the budget matter of the preschool classes in primary schools, and they concluded that preschool teachers must make a budget request sheet correctly and the primary school principal also needs to ask the preschool teacher what they need for their class. In short, both sides must communicate with each other and it was great to have everyone in the same room to come to this conclusion. The feedback was especially important for R4C and we will take on their feedback and keep improving our support.

Project field visits

We visited all 10 schools to interview the teachers about the intended and frequent use of computers, tablets and teaching resources in the Digital Library after the 4th workshop.

There are still technical issues with the connection to the AccessBox. Particularly, the slow connection disrupts their instruction flow, making them hesitate to use it as a teaching aid. It should turn on/off automatically every day; however, in some schools, it is inconsistent. Some of the affected teachers use their Wi-Fi or put a SIM card into their tablets to access the live site as a solution. Because of the abovementioned issues, they often use computers over tablets in classes. Even though there are problems with AccessBox, they still use our resources. Most teachers said the worksheets are simple to use, and some only use the ones we created.

In addition, we conducted the progress survey at the same time. The survey is to see how the targets’ teaching changed through this project. Here is the summary of the results of each question.

• Storybook
  • Teachers were using storybooks for teaching more before the CLIP2 project however, now they are reading a larger variety of stories and doing other activities such as worksheets that they previously did not do.
• Song
  • Through participation in the project, they got more choices for songs and equipment to play music.
• Worksheet
  • They used worksheets more frequently and the number of subjects that they used worksheets also increased before beginning the project.
  • Some teachers try to use worksheets that don’t instruct painting so much or print them as small as possible to extend color pencil life.
  • Some schools received papers and donations from parents or asked parents to support money for printing.
• Video
  • Even though the number of videos played in class decreased, all target teachers used videos in their classes, and the number using them in each curriculum also increased. They show videos for playing dance movements for music, especially.
• Activity game
  • The teachers didn’t incorporate activity games into classes as much as before.
  • A teacher answered that she tried to play an activity game after seeing an R4C staff member play it with her students when we visited the school to do a follow up. Some teachers played games that R4C created and introduced in workshops with their students.
  • Toys lent by the Mobile Library project seem to help them to play games.
• Craft
  • The number of teachers who teach crafts increased.
  • Comparing each target class, those that had teachers who love crafts put more emphasis on teaching it and displayed a lot of the students’ work.

Other Activities

Resource Package Creation

We will create 4 new resource packages during the project’s two years, with 2 packages scheduled for completion in the first year (the 7th storybook ‘Being Good’ and classroom decorations). We have been working on the 8th storybook named ‘We can – Just Differently’ and the 9th storybook ‘Family Tree’ for next year.

Information Dissemination Via Social Media

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

Facebook

• Those posts include daily activity reports, animations, songs, activities, worksheets, and workshop videos.

*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 December, 318 members have joined and the number has increased by 185 since September.

YouTube

• The video that has the most top views exceeded more than 63,620 views.
• Note that the YouTube data for gender may be skewed due to sharing phones and not having individual accounts.

• Followers information

In addition, here is the website access record since we launched the website from August 01, 2022, until December 31, 2022. Those numbers show access of people who visit the page from their device, not from the AccessBox. In other words, a variety of people, not only non-target teachers and parents but also foreigners, are included.

Measuring Success

Next Schedule (January – March 2023)

• Conduct the 5th workshop (February)
• Conduct the 5th follow-up visit and the 2nd school assessment
• Create resource packages for two new storybooks