CLIP2 quarterly report: January to March 2023

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

Training teachers how to access and use the resources

The 5th workshop, which is the first workshop this year included the new program not only introducing the 7th resource package ‘Being Good’, but also computer training. This training provided how to make worksheets and the participants made two kinds of worksheets they use for their students frequently. Also, we displayed all our classroom decorations by following the government requirements and asked the officers of POE and DOE to instruct it so that the teachers could know it clearly and prepare their classrooms for the next school assessment that will be held in May.

From the participants’ feedback, the making worksheet training seemed to be the most impacted for them. This program had been requested by them before and appeared to have sparked their desire to produce other worksheets. We showed two kinds of worksheets tracing letters and coloring an image. However, the differences in their computer skills made the program flow challenging. Some teachers knew basic computer operations, but some needed to learn fundamentals such as how to type and move the cursor. Also, inserting, cropping and moving an image on the sheet seemed difficult for them because they had several steps to do. Except for the worksheets, how to save documents, including naming files, creating new folders, and places to save, need to remind in the next workshop as well.

Explaining how to display our decorations and demonstrating some resources, especially dancing to a song and playing an activity game, had good reputations.

We plan to conduct the 6th workshop in May and lecture on the way to design other kinds of worksheets they requested they want to make. Based on this feedback, in terms of computer training, we will modify the program’s progression so that we can include a session to teach each other to make the time become more effective.

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 5th workshop.

Currently, most of AccessBoxes have problems, such as slow and unstable connections and some system bugs. Those matters led them to use computers more than tablets with their own Wi-Fi and use a folder that contains our teaching resources on their desktop, not the free resource website. However, to make downloading images from our website when they make other worksheets in the next workshops easier, we will encourage them to continue using the website to remain up to date and keep their skills ready for the future workshops. 10 of 13 teachers answered that they have shared the website with other teachers in their regular district school meetings, non-target teachers in the same school, and parents via Telegram or Facebook. The teachers who viewed the website often searched for worksheets and one of them made crafts, inspired from the ideas on the website.

Teaching tools most often used were animations, songs, worksheets in the folder, copies of the worksheets we have provided in the workshop, and YouTube. The teachers were trying to make worksheets by watching our YouTube channel with the software LibreOffice; we lectured in the workshop, and only some teachers were using the worksheets they made in the workshop for their students. One of the teachers made her own original worksheets using what she had learned with us. As a first resource made by a teacher, we will publish the worksheets on the website in the near future. Also, we could see our classroom decorations in the target classrooms. They prepared them for the next school assessment. Some teachers also printed them more for the non-target classroom. One parent asked the teacher where she could buy the decorations to display in her house.

We happy to welcome Ms. Lori Forand from the Rotary Club of Calgary on March 22-24, 2023. We greeted the vice director of POE and the director of the early childhood education (ECE) department and found that the officers were positively impacted by CLIP2 in the meeting. They loved that we provide training to not only the governmental preschool teachers but also educational officers and community school teachers. Especially community school teachers have to take 35 days of training to become teachers, but they don’t have many occasions to take other pieces of coaching after that in reality. The officers said the CLIP project played a part in it for the teachers, including computer training, and hoped the next project, CLIP3 would take more community schools (We will cooperate with four community schools next two years). Also, they were pleased that the project provides the targets to use digital devices as the Ministry is pushing to spread ICT in education. They hoped the teachers' new computer skills will enable them to make administrative documents by themselves too. Finally, they expressed gratitude for the project supported by Rotary and hope for consistent collaboration with TukTuk and R4C.

Other Activities

Resource Package Creation

We will create 4 new resource packages during the project’s two years, with 2 packages completed by this quarter (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 to introduce in the remaining two times workshops.

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)

• The members 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 March, 845 members have joined and the number has increased by 527 since last December.
• We began to meet and hear people who are not teachers say they were a member of the channel and used some resources for their children.

YouTube

• The video that has the most top views exceeded more than 26,554 views.
• The top-viewed 50 contents were all the songs that the Ministry made for teaching in the preschool

* Note that the YouTube data for gender may be skewed due to sharing phones and not having individual accounts.

• Followers’ information

Free Educational Material Distribution Website

We launched this website in August, 2022. The viewers can download those teaching tools for free and without royalty. The AccessBoxes provided to the target schools lead to access the website despite the unstable internet place. This website access record shows access of people who visit the page from their device, not from the AccessBox. In other words, people are included, not only non-target teachers and parents but also foreigners.

The director of the ECE department helped spread our website at the annual meeting, which invited all educational office staff in all seven districts in Pursat province and some principals. We could make them know about our organization and the resources too. Some principals and officers were interested in the website and could hear they had been hoping to look at such a teaching resource platform.

The increasing number of social media and website viewers gives us confidence and reminds us how our work affects them. We must look back on our daily activities and think about how we should work on each program to be more effective for all preschool teachers, not only our targets constantly.

Measuring Success

Next Schedule (April – June 2023)

• Complete resource package of the 8th storybooks (April)
• Conduct the 6th workshop (May)
• Start creating the 9th resource package (May)
• Conduct the 6th follow-up visit and the 2nd school assessment (June)