Richard Lefroy: All right, we are underway. So, hello everyone, and thank you so much for joining us. Welcome to this Moodle Academy webinar titled Moodle offline – Reaching marginalized communities. My name is Richard Lefroy, and I'm the Learning and Media technologist with Moodle Academy, and I'll be introducing this session and hosting the session today. So, joining us for today's webinar, we have three presenters. Zola Maddison, a senior programs manager at Inclusiv Education. Tina Nassr, EdTech Educational designer and project manager with Inclusiv Education as well, and Maxwell Fundi, director and co-founder of Edutab Africa. So, Inclusiv Education supports, and save the children projects in low to Middle income countries around the world to reach even the most marginalized communities, and provide them with education and professional development training. So yeah, thank you so much, Zola, Tina and Maxwell for being with us today.
I will hand it over to you now. Zola Maddison: Yeah. So, I am Zola Maddison, senior programs manager with Inclusiv Education. We're really excited to be here today to be with Maxwell, and to talk about our work in the majority world. I guess I'll start a little bit just before we dig in a little bit more about Inclusiv. We, as our tagline says, "We believe that everyone has the right to learn everywhere." As Richard mentioned, we are working primarily with Save the Children offices all over the world, but we work with lots of different partners. We partner with International Development Actors, humanitarians, education institutions, and corporations in low and middle-income settings including Africa, Asia, and the Pacific. We use our experience in education technology and international development and humanitarian settings to bring education and technology together. So, over the course of this conversation we'll be digging into a little bit around digital inclusion. We'll be talking about specifically what we call the iLP Box. We'll have a chance to look at a couple of different case studies, and then we'll dig into some of your questions.
So, feel free throughout the course of the webinar just as questions come up, be sure to plug them in there, and we'll start collecting those, so that we can have a rich discussion afterwards. So, I want to talk a little bit about Digital Inclusion, and really, what drives what we're doing here at Inclusiv. I want to talk about when we say Digital Inclusion, where also, sort of the flip side of that, what we're talking about is the digital divide. Very recently, the special rapporteur from the UN on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression wrote that the internet and access to the internet facilitates economic development, and the enjoyment of a range of human rights, marginalized groups, and developing states remain trapped in a disadvantaged situation without that access.
So, while the UN is not yet at a point saying that internet access is a human right, it is acknowledging that access to the internet and technology is a catalyst for the enjoyment of human rights, which is really critical because I think what we've sometimes see and sometimes, maybe in your own lives, it's easy for us to sometimes take for granted all the technologies that are around us today. How pervasive that is in our lives because we use the internet? We use technology tools for a lot of educational things. A lot of business things, but also for a lot of entertainment. We occasionally forget how truly fundamental it is for our own advancement, but what we're seeing right now is that 2.9 billion people who do not have access to the internet.
Out of those 2.9 billion, 96% of them live in majority world countries. The other component that I want to raise with that is that, what does that mean for those people who are being left out? So, recent studies show that right now, 87% of all jobs have some digital component. So, for those 2.9 billion people, we have to ask the question, what is their economic opportunity in the future if they cannot access the internet, and if they don't have the skills and capability to make those tools work for them? I want to dig in a little bit, when we talk about this divide. I want to also dig into the scale of the problem. When I'm talking about scale, I'm talking about both breadth and depth of scale. So right now, we know that 1.6 children around the world live in a conflict region. As you can imagine living in conflict is disruptive to being able to access the internet. Many of us can relate to this specially if you're a parent on the call.
If you have young children in your lives, COVID has disrupted learning. Climate disasters are disrupting learning, and these protracted crises. What's happened is we are now seeing that over 600 million learners are impacted, and are in a place where partial or complete school closures are impacting their ability to learn. That impact is resulting in low and middle income countries, having huge learning losses. So, right now, UNICEF is reporting that 70% of ten-year-old's are unable to read or understand simple text. That's up from 53% right before the pandemic. So, we're seeing these huge losses in learning, and we're seeing that the access to technology and learning is not being able to bridge that divide for young people. So, these are the countries in which inclusive education is working, or has worked. Just a little bit about what these low resource settings are like. We know that the internet is incredibly expensive, and it's often very poor quality. Electricity is oftentimes patchy.
Many people don't own a laptop, and folks are trying to get access to the internet on their phone. That's for learning or for business, right? When children are in the classroom, sometimes those classrooms have over 100 children in one classroom. Sometimes people don't have an email address that's set up. So, there are a lot of different technology barriers. Inclusiv Education is also beginning more and more work in the humanitarian space. We're seeing a lot of additional disruptions that are happening. Obviously one of the countries we're working in right now is Ukraine. We're saying things, like loss of power. Again, loss of internet, and that inability to predict when there will be internetand when there won't be, and is often leading to a lot of disruptions in learning for young people.
So, I've been tasked with sort of setting the stage for my colleagues here. I just wanted to kind of make sure that all of you understand the context in which we're working. The real imperative is that we feel that we can bring some solutions, and work together with communities. So, with that, I will turn it over to Tina, who's going to start to talk to us through the iLP. Tina Nassr: Thank you, Zola. Hi everyone. I'm really happy to join you today, and let me just move on to the next site.
So, yes, today we want to specifically talk about the iLP Box that Inclusiv Education has been working with or worked on as well. I'm not sure about the background of our participants today, but the iLP Box is based on the Moodle of Box, so published by Moodle itself, right? But we have taken the concept of the Moodle Box, and try to touch it up a little bit. Insert a little bit, some of our ideas. What we basically did or what the Moodle Box basically did is a single board computer that has been enhanced by using a Raspberry PI computer. Then we have put in some improvements. For example, we have increased the storage using an SSD. So right now, it has 2 terabytes of storage due to the low resource settings that Zola has mentioned earlier. With constant electricity interruptions, we bought power banks that are actually strong enough to support the iLP Box so that it can run throughout a class without being plugged into electricity, or like yeah, entirely plugged in. I guess the biggest advantage of the iLP Box is that it doesn't need an internet connection. The way you can imagine it is basically when you want to log in into a new Wi-Fi network, right? You go to your settings in your phone or in your laptop, and you select that network that you want to log into.
You insert your password, and then you're connected to the internet. The iLP Box itself also is sending out a signal, so it gives out a signal that you can connect to, so it's a network basically. So, it's not really connected to the internet, but you can connect to the network of the iLP Box. So, just as you would connect with a Wi-Fi network, you can just go to your settings on your tablet, your phone or your laptop, and connect with the network of the iLP Box. Then you will be connected and can access the Moodle course on your phone, laptop or tablet. I'm not the best technical person to explain the details. We'll get to that later on when Maxwell is going to join us. He can answer some specific questions, but I hope I gave you some sort of overview of what the iLP Box is used for, and how it's built up a little bit.
I want to present one of our use cases in Cambodia. One of our projects where we have implemented the use of the iLP Box in 7 sports. You can see it here in the image, and Save the Children has provided the school with tablets. So, the tablets were set up by the Cambodian Save The Children office with the proper apps already being pre-installed. Then the tablets were distributed into the schools. Obviously before they could use it, we had to set up the content, right? Because the content first of all needed to be translated or needed to be prepared. Some of it needed to be transferred, but a lot of it was already existing, and provided by the Ministry of Education. So, a lot of it was actually videos. As I said before, we have 2 terabytes of storage, but you know how large sometimes videos can get if you do recording.
So, there was a lot of work involved also, in resizing content, and also cutting it down because at the end 2 terabytes isn't much if you want to provide content for grade, 4 and 5. We focus on two grades right now, but still there's quite a lot of content. Good e-learning is not just putting up a video of a teacher teaching the class, right? So, we had to work with the local team to actually produce e-learning content that is a combination of the already existing content like videos and worksheets that they would usually also hand out in class to upload that into Moddle, and combine it with some e-learning activities that Moodle offers, right? Like the Moodle quiz or drag and drop activities. Stuff like that to make it actually more interactive.
The Cambodian Save the Children office, the reason why it started out anyways was due to COVID right? Because so many kids just couldn't attend school as it was closed, but actually while we were working on setting this up, schools were opened again. That's when they realized, "Well, we can maybe use it as a combination of blended learning." So, we use it in the classroom with kids working on it, on the tablets in the classrooms, and the teacher to be there to actually help out if there are any issues. Now, I want to hand off to Max who's going to talk about our project in Kenya, where we partnered with Edutab to also use the iLP Box. Maxwell Fundi: So, thank you very much, Tina, and everyone. Hi, everyone. My name is Maxwell Fundi. I would like to talk about how we use the iLP Box in Kenya with Save the Children and Inclusiv Education. So, Save the Children supports some of the refugee schools in one of the biggest refugee camps we have in Kenya called Dadaab.
We have been working with different partners. In this case, Sesame Workshop, Inclusiv Education, Save the Children to implement Pilot called Watch, Play and Learn. This Pilot is meant to provide videos for pre-primary one and pre-primary two classes for them to be able to learn mathematics or mathematics activities and social emotional learning. So, in this early childhood development education in this context, we find that the children are between say 3 years.
Actually way older than that, 3, 4, 5. Some of them are up to ten, and one of the reasons why the videos work in Somali is because a lot of them cannot read or write any other language. They can only read Arabic because it's a very Muslim community. So, they've been attending madrasas, so they saw it and they know Arabic, and their local language is Somali. How are we using iLP Box in this context is that, as Tina had mentioned, we have power banks. These power banks support the iLP in schools because the schools do not have power at all. So, the power banks support the iLP Box to be at the school while it's on because we, a lot of times, needed to be connected to get the content of the iLP Box. However, initially what we started doing was using the Moodle app to get all the videos downloaded offline, so that we can have the tablets in class even without needing the iLP Box.
But then we met challenges along the way that's related to analytics, or what the kids were doing, which I'll talk about later on. So, that's why we need it. We get really good power banks that can support the iLP Box. But then technology is not enough. We provided this technology, but we also need the capacity to build the teachers to be able to use this technology effectively, to promote playful learning by incorporating pre and post video activities.
Remember, these are only 5 minutes videos, and the normal lesson is about 30 minutes long. So, the teachers need to be able to incorporate pre-video activities that can lead to the video, and then to post video activities. That's part of what we did initially, and we just ended up again last week for refresher training. This pilot is happening in 2 schools, which are supported by Save the Children, and because of the influx of people when there was all this news about, "Oh there are tablets in schools. It's not technology." The attendance was so high, and enrollment increased drastically that this had to be changed to only one school. So, at this point in time we're working with one school, which has a population of about 500 students and classes availability. You have classes of ECT going up to 100-120, and they only have 2 teachers per class. How does this all work? The tablets are stored, and the iLP Box are stored and the iLP Box are stored at the Save the Children office, and they're taken to school every day.
So, that means that there are support people who go from the Save the Children office to the school, and back to deliver this technology. So, some of the things we have found out at least for the last week when were there, as I have said, due to the introduction of the use of technology, the schools, there has to be a huge drastic in attendance and enrollment. So for example, the initial target was about 300 learners, but now we are up to 500 learners who were using these tablets. That's also hosting a challenge in terms of in the north – because the tablets are being used by groups of people, by groups of students, so that groups can get it, but sometimes they try to make them between 4 to 5 learners. Then because this was among the first times the teachers were introduced to the use of technology. Then the teachers at that time due to the continuous capacity building that we've been doing, both virtually and face-to-face when we're in Dadaab. They've been able to use this technology.
It's very simple to use, and so because they also have smartphones and tablets and things like that, so it wasn't a completely foreign thing for them. So, they picked up that very quickly, and now, able to deliver lessons, even before delivering lesson, a lesson plans, that they are able to integrate using their normal teaching. So, yeah, those are some of the outcomes of the project so far. It's continuing again until a few more months this year. I will be happy also to involve when we find more outcomes. Tina: Thank you, Maxwell. So, Inclusiv Education has asked Maxwell to join today because he can best explain the use case because he has traveled several times to the school and actually implemented the iLP Boxes. It's the most recent project where we've used the iLP Box.
So, we thought we just have some questions for you, Max, that might be interesting for everyone to know. So, basically, our first question would be, what has worked well with offline learning in the Kenya project? So, what went over well, basically? What can you tell us about that? Maxwell: Yeah. So, I think one of the things that worked very well was the technology that we deployed because thinking about this context that has no power, and it has no electricity, and all these things. Also, internet access would be quite catastrophic around these areas. Then the choice of low-cost technology, iLP Box, Raspberry Pi's and normal tablets has worked really well because these are things you can also move around. These are things that people are already used to using for example, so that worked pretty well. It would not have been successful if we did not do the teacher professional development to enable them to one; adopt technology, and then two; be innovative and creative to teach with the technology.
One of the things that came out during our official last week was that, they felt that this time we're having the other people, "The tablet is not enough. We would like to have a little bit more time to be able to prepare." Therefore, we did set up their phones so that they are able to have access to these videos at any time whenever they want, so that they can continue using their phones to prepare to make a lesson plans. Of course, because it needs people to move back and forth from the office having an ICT support person in to go to school every day in case of any technical problems has really worked so well.
Because sometimes maybe a tablet didn't sync properly, or maybe the tablet, the Moodle app is not opening properly, or this one is hanging. But then, having the ICT person from my experience, there are two sides of the coin. So, we've had 2 ICT support people, and the first ICT support person was really good technically. Someone who knows a lot about technology, how technology works, he can fix things very quickly, but then he had no ideas or any knowledge and background on how to teach using technology.
So, they could not be able to support the teachers in terms of development of, for example, lesson plans, materials for teaching, or how to incorporate the PDS into teaching. But then we have a second ICT support person who came in just a few months ago. This is a person who has a background in education. A very strong background in education, but has a lot of interest in technology. It took a while for us to be able to bring him up to speed, but I think striking that balance has been really a highlight for us because now he's not only supporting the teachers with just bringing the technology and fixing technical issues, but he is there. He is able to support the technical and also pedagogy, and teaching and incorporating of technology in teaching and learning. Then finally, another thing that has worked really well is having the support of the community.
In the refugee camps, you can imagine, there are lots of people around the camp, that's number one. They are formed into different groups. So, these communities, they really embrace the idea of, "Ah, we now have tablets. Our kids will be able to learn better in one way or the other, they feel it's giving them an opportunity to get good quality education. Remember, they said, "This is the children.
A lot of them don't know how to read and write in other language. They only know Arabic and Somali. So, the parameters of field is a good opportunity, and that has supported the work we've been doing it that school. Tina: So, you've already kind of answered my second question. So, you said that the teachers actually went along with the introduction of the technology quite well, right? Because if I compared a little bit to our Cambodia project, we haven't reached that stage yet, but I feel like the teacher capacity training is an upcoming stage for us. We've had experiences in the past, where actually kids pick up technology, phones, tablet, whatever, and they run with it.
They don't have any issues navigating. It's easy for them. So, has your experience been that teachers actually felt good using the technology, and also easy for them to learn how to use it, and to use the content there? Maxwell: Yeah, so I think the teachers based on my experience, at first they've never done this before, and remember, a lot of these teachers are teachers who were born in the refugee camps. They studied there. Got up to, for example, high school level. Then they then become teachers. Some of them have gone out, and learn to another colleges, but just cleared high school and then, they are just supporting their community where they had education. So, we found in our experience that initially, the kids were very excited with technology. As you rightly say, we have also noticed that kids just click everywhere trying to explore what they are able to do. Sometimes teachers may feel like these kids need to do specific things, but we also have time for the kids to explore, but the teachers were also being instrumental because they kind of owned this project now. They feel it's bringing a lot more value to them.
So, they are really owning the project. They are now more effective, and they feel more empowered. That enables them to teach better at this point in time. Even with the increased numbers, they're still okay. They are trying to subdivide their classes and things like that. So, they are finding ways that they work around problems with numbers and technology to enable a better learning experience for the learners. Tina: Okay awesome. Now, I like the metaphor you used before. It's the two sides of a coin. So, what would you say were the main challenges that you faced during this project? Maxwell: Yeah. So, I will highlight one of the big challenges we've had related to our context. So, a lot of what we needed in terms of the user analytics from Moodle were not possible using the Moodle app in the offline context. When it's completely offline, it couldn't get a lot of data that we needed.
For example, being able to know how long the videos were watched, whether the children watched the video to the end, or they just watched 3 minutes, in what order, and things like that. So, a lot of analytics tools that we experiment with, are built for a standard Moodle web. So, the fact that these tablets would actually go to school for maybe a week without having connected back to the iLP, post a challenge of being able to collect the data we needed. But still we get some data for example, from completion activities, activity reports, completion reports and the logs as well, but then all those are kind of stumped when the syncing happens, but not when the kind of activity happens. So, that has been one of our biggest challenges, and we have been looking around to see how we are able to – yeah we've been exploring different ways to navigate this. For example, using xAPI or learning LRS, and things like this, but it's something we're still looking into solving.
Also happy to hear ideas from the wonderful group that's on this call. Tina: All right. Thank you so much, Maxwell. Obviously, the iLP Box is not finished yet, as you've just heard from Max. There are still a few challenges that we are facing. So, the iLP Box is still a product in development. I'm sure there are still a lot of improvements that can be done. Maybe a little bit towards our vision for the iLP Box. So, last year, basically the year went without Cambodia project. At that point, we had the 2 terabytes internal SSD and 30 concurrent users were able to logged in at the same time using one iLP Box.
In September, we had two another test runs basically. The project in Kenya and also in Cambodia, uses the iLP Box. This was a very important feature that specifically the Cambodia project needed and wanted was the Cloud sync of user – sorry, the Kenya project the Clouds sync of user analytics and course copy, but also for the Cambodia projects. The issue with the iLP Box is basically that we face is the teachers or the Save the Children office in Cambodia had to prepare all the content in advance, so that it can be put onto the iLP Box.
Then the iLP Box was brought into the school, and then they would use it, right? But what happens if you want to add another course, or you're realizing there is a mistake in the course, and you want to change something. That would have meant taking again, the iLP Box out of the school back to the Save the Children office. Then re-uploading that course, or uploading a new course. So, we have actually been working with Moodle US to get the cloud syncing working. We are not there yet to report and how that works, but it has been created with the support of Moodle US. Actually I am really excited to hopefully report on how exactly it's going to work and how well it's working. So, that's basically right now, the development. Yeah, for 2023, we are open to any suggestions. We want to listen to people, and see what you see that is still missing basically. What use cases can you see the iLP Box being implemented, and what features do you think are still messy missing? So, we're happy for you to reach out to us. We are going to keep working on the iLP Box, and improving it, and adding to it.
So, if you have any suggestions, please contact us. We are always happy also, to collaborate and work together on this. This is a very important project for us, and it's needed in so many places. So yeah, we hope 2023 brings some bright ideas and some improvements. So, basically that's the road ahead. Maybe I want to make a quick summary, and then we can get to your questions. So yeah, as we said the iLP Box is a very important project for us because it can provide those marginalized communities with access to education without relying on things like a stable internet connection or electricity. Very specifically, the teacher capacity training is an important aspect of that because it just has such a big reach, and helps teacher development, and that's one of the most important things, right? To enable our teachers to use technology within the classroom or even outside the classroom, and to prepare online learning. So that kids who cannot make their way to school, but maybe they have a device at home and phone of a parent or whoever, can use it.
Actually also, access the content that the teachers have prepared, so they don't miss out. Thank you so much for listening to us today, and for joining us. We are happy to now get to your questions. Zola or Richard, I don't know, are there any questions in the chat? Richard: Yeah. There's quite a few actually, which is great. Thank you very much to the three of you for presenting a lot. It's easy for people who live the life that I live, or people that lead to lives that many of you live as well, to take all of this technology, and all the technology that we have and communication for granted.
So, it's great to get this sort of insight from you. Yeah. So look, there are quite a lot of questions. I think I've jotted some of them down. Some of them have been responded to already. A few of the ones to start with a sort of quite technical ones. So, I think if it's all right, I'll just run through this from top to bottom. We may or may not get to all of them. So, it's a question from Ian. How many users can connect to the iLP at any one time? Tina: I believe the maximum we had was 38. Maxwell, can you maybe confirm or deny or correct me? Maxwell: Yeah. So, we currently have a maximum of 38 based on our current test, and this was [inaudible]for example, but we are looking into ways of pushing that up to say, 50.
Hopefully, that's going to be possible because again, this is a solution that still under development. Lots of tests; lots of iterations as well. Richard: Thank you. A question from Alex, "What is the unit cost of an iLP Box? Tina: That's [crosstalk] Richard: Is there an easy clear answer on that? I guess it depends on where we are, and where you are. Tina: Yeah. The people that are here today don't know this because actually originally, our colleague, Nathalie, was going to join us.
She's actually the driver behind the iLP Box at Inclusiv Education. Maxwell, I know you've collaborated with Naths on providing the iLP Box in the Kenya project. Do you have an estimate that we can give? Otherwise we can add that information later to our presentation or send it out, and provide the actual information. Maxwell: Yeah. I think it would be best to send that info reach out later because now, there are very many different components to this iLP Box, so it's hard to quantify to say it's going to cost you 350 USD or this much at this point. Tina: Prices are also driven by demand. We have actually had issues getting Raspberry Pi's at some point because they just couldn't be delivered or very strong power banks couldn't be delivered. So, the prices change depending on demand and what is available, but we're happy to get maybe arranged out to you at a later point, and added to the slides.
Richard: Thank you. Yeah, look, I'll just quickly mention. So, the slides from this session will be available in the course in Moodle Academy. So, if you want to go back and check on those, and then yeah, I'll get a lot of questions here. So, if you guys want, we can look at adding some of that information in. Okay. A couple of questions sort of on, I guess that inner workings still on the iLP Box. Can you increase the storage capacity to go beyond 2 terabytes? Maxwell: That's a very good question. At this point in time, we know, 2 terabytes were very well with the amount of power that we are able to deliver to the box. So, more than 2 terabytes, we're still experimenting that as well. We cannot say with certainty that you have 8 terabytes. This needs power as well, and when you're reading and writing things on the hard drive, then the bigger the hard drive is, the more power you need for these things, so yeah.
Richard: Thank you. Question on the power banks and solid. Do you have information on the sizes of the power banks, and how long it can run? That's a question from Dean, or how long it can run off the electricity grid? Maxwell: Yeah. So, at least for the power banks, I can give you the specifications for the output we would need for an iLP Box. Then depending on the size of the power bank, then that determines how long it's going to last. So, at least a power bank has an output of 3.1 amperes which is higher than what we know you charge your phones with. That's the kind of power bank we would need for an iLP Box, but how long it last, it depends whether your power bank is 10,000 amperes or 35,000 amperes. Richard: Thank you. A couple of sort of related questions. I think Tina sort of touched on this. How do you update the call software and content once the devices in the field? That's a question from Mark, and also does the iLP Box sync with the cloud? How do you install new courses on the box? That's a question from Alex.
Tina, I think you mentioned that you're working with Moodle US. Tina: Yeah. Richard: That sort of thing. Tina: Yeah. I see also Maxwell nodding his head. Do you want to answer that question or dove a little bit deeper into how it has been done in the Kenya project, Max, so far? Maxwell: Yeah. I can't talk about this a little bit. So, before we move content onto the iLP Box, we definitely set up Cloud site where all the materials were curated. Then that's [inaudible] to the iLP Box. So, at this point in time, we are working as rightly mentioned Richard, that we're working with the US to develop plug-ins and tools that can able syncing around where if you have new content on the Cloud site as soon as the -iLP Box has access to internet through a cable, then that's pushed down and everything could be updated offline, or anything that happened offline is also pushed back the Cloud.
So, yeah, that's something – including updating it. So, if you have courses on the cloud that can be pushed down. If you have data or things you need to get from iLP Box, that syncs as it's working at this point in time. Tina, feel free to add more info. Tina: That's good. Thank you, Max. Richard: So, there's question here from Mark, and again, Maxwell, I think you might have touched on this when you talked about syncing of logs. Are teachers using tracking tools like Gradebook or Completion Status? I think that's sort of vaguely, maybe fits into something you mentioned earlier. Maxwell: Yeah. So, at least for the activities that are set up, yes, there's a Completion Tracking site, but then we do not have grading because there are no proper activities for them to be graded. So, what we are using is a video that is being served with the tablet.
Then they are pre and post video activities that are done by the teacher in the classroom within a lesson. There are now assessments that kids have to do or things of that nature. Maybe on that question on updating the iLP Box. So, we have the ability to remotely log into the iLP Box if you have the internet connected to it. Therefore, if we need to update to the latest version of Moodle, we just need to have it somewhere.
This could be the Save the Children office where they have internet and cables, connect the iLP Box, and remotely update Moodle Russians. Tina: Maybe if I can add, in the Cambodia project, we do actually try to – all we want to implement is activity completion in terms of assignment. As I said, the Ministry of Education had provided a lot of documents and videos to be used. It was quite a challenge and we're still working on how to transfer a worksheet that's basically a PDF into an online assignment, right? Then there's a challenge to you if they also want to use the content that is online. If they want to use it in a format, then sometimes the teacher might hand out the actual sheets for the students to complete. Sometimes they might just say, "Okay, please log in now and do assignments. I don't know, 1, 2, and 3." So, for those online assignments, yes, we have used activity completion so that the teacher can actually see what assignments were completed, and how long it took them or the teacher can also say, "Please, go home and do these assignments, or tomorrow we'll continue.
You have this much time to do them." So in Cambodia, we are actually playing around with activity completion. It's always a difficulty also when the project changes, right? So Cambodia, the online learning project started out due to COVID, right? Schools are being closed and kids couldn't go to school at all. Now, again, circumstances have changed, and of course, schools are open again. So, we have to adjust again, but I think with the iLP Box, and with the low resource settings, activity completion is a little bit difficult to track. So, I think many times people just prefer to have open content without checking, without at least too much checking.
Obviously, we like to have data, but sometimes it's easier to just open everything up and have no checking. At least in the short run, or short view, that sometimes what has to be done. So, just to make content accessible. Yeah. Richard: Thank you. I'm aware of the time. I might just pose one more question that we've got here. Then, perhaps, Zola, if you want to maybe just have a quick scan through the chat, see if there's anything else that sort of jumping out at you, that you might want to address. Then, yeah, I don't think we'll be able to get to all the questions here, but let me just pose this one here, while Zola picks out any more questions that she might be able to see. We have a broad question. What are the benefits of using Moodle in this context over some other content delivery application? Not sure who wants to feel that one? Tina: Maybe I can start, and then Maxwell can jump in. Well, the advantage of Moodle is that it's open source, and it's adjustable, right? I mean, as I said before, the iLP Box is based on the Moodle Box.
So, it can be tweaked and added on. We love working with open-source products, right? It's not only an issue of low resource settings, but it's also low budget, right? So the project budget often doesn't allow for an LMS that costs this much to be maintained, or to have its customized too. For example, the Save the Children brand name, and everything. So, a lot has also to do with the cost, and we tried to use as many open source projects as possible. Also, Moodle has a lot to offer. All of the activities that are in there, if you know how to use them. I mean, I think all of us are kind of Moodle in the US, right? Just in another project, we started using Adapt, another open source authoring tool . Also the Moodle app, it's not everyone's favorite, but it is there. It works quite good. I know when I was at the Moodle Mooch, they're working on the Moodle app to make it a little bit more user-friendly, but it works. Yeah.
So, there are a lot of advantages that we see in Moodle. Maxwell, is there anything you want to add that I might have missed? Good. Richard: Good. Thank you. We're getting right up to the hour. So, are there any other questions that you'd like to address quickly that you've seen there? Zola: Yeah. Maybe just really quickly, Richard. There's a couple questions around sort of the education side, and asking about tracking tools for grades, completion status, and Mark asked at the end here, "Why use an LMS at all?" I do want to just point to the very real need that many of our partners have around data collection.
The need to be able to show how many students are completing, and what the status is of their completion, and really be able to track the learning. Share that learning with their ministers. So, we know that data around education is really an issue for a lot of countries to be able to get more funding for education, and to be able to really meet the needs of their learners. So, as Tina mentioned, this is a really low cost flexible solution that gives a lot of power to their learners. Tina, anything else you would add or Maxwell? No. Okay. I'll stop there. Tina: No, I was trying to find the unmute button, but yeah, I think there's nothing to add right now. I did say earlier, sometimes it's easier to just not check, but obviously, the ideal way would be to be able to track. That's why iLP Box is helping us, and we have very different project context, right? Some projects, we are not only having project where we use iLP Box, right? That's not our only focus. We have projects where we don't use the iLP Box, and checking is quite relevant.
So, it is a very important part, and it gives a lot of information. You just have to adapt as though I said to each project in each project setting. Some things work, and you can use the full potential of Moodle, and in some cases you just don't and work with what you've got. Yeah. Richard: All right, thank you. As I mentioned earlier, we will make slides from this session available shortly. Tina's, Zola, and Maxwell, hopefully, you can confirm that your contact details might be in there somewhere. So, anyone who wants to reach out and yep, I'm seeing nodding heads. That's good. So, feel free to reach out with any more questions. That is almost it. Yeah. Look, this has been a great session. Thank you so much to the three of you for presenting and sharing.
Thanks to all of you for being here. We've had some great discussion as well. I'm just going to take about another minute and a half, if that just to wrap things up. So, just let me share my screen very quickly. So yeah, look, if you have enjoyed this session, we'd love you to consider getting involved further, and helping us grow by contributing to the development of Moodle Academy. You can do this by visiting, How get involved course, which you'll find on the front page of the Moodle Academy site. You can suggest ideas for new webinars and courses. You can vote on ideas that have been suggested by others already. We're always on the lookout for community members to help present webinars.
Today has been a fantastic example of that. Also, to co-create short online courses. We love for your help making Moodle Academy more inclusive. So, if you're able to, please jump into our translate Moodle Academy course and get started with helping us translate our courses and webinars into other languages. Of course, please help spread the word about Moodle Academy by telling your colleagues about the courses we offer, and the events that we run.
When you complete our courses, you earn badges. So, you can build up a nice collection of those to stick on your data wall or wherever you put those. Educators might like to think about getting involved with the Moodle Educator certificate. You can take the, "Are you ready for the MEC quiz, and one of our certified service providers will support you through the certification process. So, that is it. Thank you again, so much to the three of you. Thank you to everyone else for joining us. Hopefully you found this useful, and yeah, look, we hope to see you around in Moodle Academy courses in our upcoming webinars soon. So, thank you again, and we'll see you soon. [END]
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