RFWIP

Facilitator

Minhaaj ur Rehman
Independent Consultant
Ph - 92-332-635-0284
Email - minhaaj@gmail.com
See also the WikiEducator Workshop in Pakistan home page

Acknowledgements

The facilitator wishes to thank the following:

• Ishtiaq Ahmed Bokhari, Principal Mustafai Model School, Muzaffarabad, AJK for his generous help that made this workshop possible.
• Teachers and students who participated in this workshop after the school timings.
• Wayne Mackintosh and Patricia Schlicht specially for their consistent help that made this workshop possible.
• COL for their prompt and reliable support, in responding to questions and requests.

Background

The workshop was organised by Minhaaj ur Rehman in consultation with WikiEducator from 1st Sept - 2nd Sept in order to accomplish the yearly goals of workshops WikiEducator has announced to organize this year. This was the first workshop in Pakistan a developing country in Asia which has joined WikiEducator initiative recently.

Venue

Mustafai Model School, Muzaffarabad, AJK, Pakistan.

Participants

17 participants attended the workshop, all being high school teachers and students. All the particpants are male. 25 participants signed up but because of ramadhan (Muslim month for fasting) some teachers were on holidays and some didn't show up. We also had only 4 computers that was a big restraint and we had to conduct the training in multiple sessions of 4. It took us till night to give everyone the turn to get familiar with website, syntax of markup language and other important details.

The Participant's List is given on the Pakistan Workshop page.

Preparations

The following pre-workshop organising was carried out by the Consultant.

• Finalising participants list
• Finalising venue
• Drawing up lesson plans and pre-workshop briefing.
• Printing handouts, photocopying
• Organising lunch and refreshments

Handouts included:

• The agenda
• WikiEducator Philosophy Printouts.
• The 11 workshop lesson notes (about 50 pages)
• The electronic copies of the lesson notes, lesson slideshows and other useful items such as Open Office 2.3 was made available for participants to copy

Workshop

The workshop went ahead according to the schedule and all items on the schedule were completed.

Each participant created a user page and was able to use the info they had previously completed on their registration page. The results were very good. Most of the participants obviously enjoyed writing their own profiles. I helped some of them in order to start and explained mark up language syntax if there was a problem.

Most participants did very well with their example learning materials. They were encouraged to complete these and develop them further.

Training certificates will be prepared by COL and sent to Pakistan, for each attendee.

Please view the Pakistan page on the wikieducator at the address given above, to view outputs from the workshop.

Issues for Mustafai Model School

In this workshop 4 computers were shared by 17 participants. Normally there is no Internet access at the school and Internet access is still needed either at the participant's own schools, or at the college where a computer lab is provided for that purpose; however, currently it has no Internet access. This was pointed out to the SCOM, Pakistan, which is an ISP and interested in providing facilities to educational sector. In this workshop a cellphone was used for internet and a blackboard for explaining about internet and wikieducator. I use GPRS service by my service provider Ufone in the area. It was a wireless service with a maximum speed of 15-25 kbps which is insufficient for 4 workstations to use internet simultaneously.

This is primarily because of a poor internet infrastructure because of a devastating earthquake in 2005 which claimed hundreds of thousands of lives. City is in the phase of rebuilding and numerous UN organizations and NGOs are helping rebuild the infrastructure and housing facilities. Due to its geographical location, its height and mountains have caused severe hindrances in this process. There is ample amount of landsliding in rainy season and developmental work halts whenever that occurs.

Consider developing new curriculum materials and porting existing materials to the Wikieducator

The teachers in Mustafai Model School are actively involved in curriculum development. This gives the wiki a lot of relevance. Mustafai Model School might wish to consider developing policies regarding open curriculum content, and consider how to link the teacher's new skills to official policies.

For instance, the AJK Ministry of Education might conisder making curriculum materials available as open content on the wikieducator, and then porting them school server. This will contribute to the development of a free curriculum for Pakistan, and encourage other countries to follow the example, thus helping in the scaling up of the content development. Teachers could be tasked with this activity – transferring curriculum materials to the wiki.

A section has already been created for Pakistan on the Wikieducator. Please contact Minhaaj ur Rehman for further advice should this be taken up by the Ministry. ons are very good, but the associated slideshows are rather too lengthy and it is best to trim them down and customize them for your own purposes. What you do will depend on progress, and for that reason I recommend that each evening prepare some slideshows for the next day's workshop