Hi! I started my Senior Experience yesterday. For the next 3-4 weeks I will be collaborating  with School Tool and OLE Nepal. I will be working in the Arlington Career Center under the supervision of Mr. Jeff Elkner.

Introduction

School Tool is a student information system which is used all over the world. It allows you to enter various information about the student like demographics, attendance and grades. It is now becoming widely used, and is  translated/ being translated into several languages.
One of those being- Nepali. School Tool has not yet been fully translated into Nepali.

OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) is a global project that aims to provide every child a low-cost and a low-power laptop, which they will use for educational purposes.

Ole Nepal, (Open Learning Exchange Nepal) is a non-profit organisation that has been working on improving the standards of learning in all Nepali public schools. They are trying to integrate technology into Nepali education.

How do they tie in? 

Ole Nepal has been trying to use School Tool as their student information system at their deployment sites in Nepal. The major task now is to make sure the information is easily understood by the Nepali community- most of whom are non- English speakers.

That's the big picture- improving the quality of education and increasing the access to educational resources by using technology- the laptops

Challenge- making sure that everybody, most of whom who have had no experience with technology and do not speak English, can make use of these technologies.