Bloom is a Contest Finalist

SIL LEAD Literacy Specialist Prossy Nannyombi working with Michael Ongora on editing the Lebacoli grade 2 teacher's guide in Bloom software.

We are pleased to announce that Bloom has been chosen as one of three finalists in the All Children Reading: A Grand Challenge for Development (ACR GCD) Enabling Writers prize contest. As a finalist in this software competition, Bloom will be provided to field projects in three countries for testing. The feedback from these users will be critical input to the selection of the grand prize winner.

It has been an exciting time for SIL LEAD to see firsthand how innovative, “low-tech” solutions can be leveraged to serve local language communities around the world. Most recently, we've seen 12 language communities in Uganda benefit from Bloom software through the USAID/Uganda  School Health and Reading Program. Using Bloom has made it easier for these communities to take ownership of the materials development and editing process for student books and teachers’ guides in Grades 1–4.

A new companion to Bloom desktop software is the Bloom library. There are already more than 150  books in the library that can be downloaded and adapted to local languages. When you develop new books in Bloom, you can upload them to the library for others to use. The library contains not only storybooks but also materials that creatively teach health, math, environment, science and many other topics. One example, The Leopard and the Tortoise, is a story about nutrition. Visit the Bloom library to see all the books.

We look forward to improving Bloom more as we receive feedback from the contest and from Bloom users worldwide

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Bloom News: 

• All Children Reading: A Grand Challenge for Development (ACR GCD) Enabling Writers Contest

• USAID/Uganda School Health and Reading Program

• Bloom being used in Papua New Guinea

• Bloom at the Peace Corp Africa Literacy Workshop in Jinja, Uganda

Unintentional messages in materials development

Materials development and gender issues

By Agatha J. van Ginkel, Ph.D.

…child care is much more than breastfeeding and rather than having another illustration of a breastfeeding woman…they could have an illustration of a father washing a child…

The other day I was sitting next to the Gender and Inclusion Specialist who is part of the materials development team in the project I’m working in. The quote above is one example of the ways that gender bias permeated the initial drafts of the lessons. I realised again how crucial her role was in the materials development process.

There are many issues to consider when developing materials; besides thinking about the methodology, the pedagogy, and language-related issues, there are also gender issues that need to be considered. Textbooks communicate a world view that may give messages to girls and women that they are not as important as boys and men, that they are second class citizens.

While most countries and communities want to communicate that men and women, boys and girls are equally important and not hierarchically different—one lower than the other—it takes great effort to communicate this in instructional materials. Let’s take the instructions to students, for example. In many languages there are grammatical male and female markers on words, students-male and students-female. There is no neutral term that would include both of them. And as you might have observed in the sentences above, I followed the ‘normal’ way in which we present gender: male first, then female. It is a very natural way of writing, but it implicitly communicates that male comes first, then female. And when a language has gender markers on words, most of the time lesson writers will write the male word first and then the female one in instructions to students. In gender-sensitive materials, the two forms are alternated. That case is easy to address.

More complex to deal with are culturally-ingrained practices that favour males. In many cultures, it is not unusual for men to ‘steal a bride’. They can just go to a village and snatch a girl from the road, take her somewhere, marry her and then settle the issue with the family. One can influence students’ thinking about this cultural practice by addressing it in stories and having good discussions with them.

But there is more to it: Often the everyday words used to express cultural practices are gender-bound. Let’s again look at marriage. In many languages there are two words for marriage, one related to the lady and one related to the man. Often it is the case that the lady is ‘taken’ while the man ‘takes’. How does one change this, as there is often not a neutral word in the language indicating marriage? In one of the languages we are working with, the writers thought about this for quite some time and then agreed that the phase after the wedding is ‘living together’. Rather than using the traditional words for marriage they decided to say that the lady and man mutually agreed to live together.

When developing educational materials, even (or perhaps it would be better to say especially) reading and writing methodologies are not neutral. They always convey an underlying world view. It is important to be aware of this and work with a language community regarding how they can encourage gender equality. Let’s not unintentionally give girls the message that they are second class citizens or let boys believe that they are superior to girls.

Using Bloom in Jinja, Uganda

SIL LEAD is proud to see Bloom being spread to new users! Paul Frank and John Hatton were recently invited to participate in a Peace Corps Africa Literacy Workshop. They shared Bloom with Peace Corps Staff and Volunteers from eight African countries so that they can encourage people to write books in their own languages. Here's some feedback from Camille Aragon, Peace Corps Literacy Specialist: 

"On behalf of our team at the Peace Corps, I wanted to extend sincere thanks to both of you for joining us in Jinja for the Africa Literacy Workshop and making the Bloom software available to the participants.

"Your presence there certainly generated a lot of excitement about the potential Bloom has to impact the work that volunteers and staff are doing to promote literacy and I also got the sense that many of the participants felt a deep sense of pride in being able to write stories in their communities’ mother-tongue languages.

"I can definitely see the benefits of Bloom being used in the Peace Corps as multi-fold: as a means for supporting literacy programming, giving volunteers another avenue for connecting to their communities, and using the software to supplement PCVs’ language training, to name a few.

"Again, thank you for collaborating with us on this workshop and for your contributions and participation in Jinja. We look forward to working with you again in the future!"

One of the developers of Bloom, John Hatton, looks on as workshop participants utilize Bloom at the Peace Corps Africa Literacy Workshop.

SIL LEAD looks forward to additional ways that it can connect Bloom to communities and communities to their languages. For more information about Bloom, check out our recent Bloom blog post. 

You can also visit the Bloom website: www.bloomlibrary.org

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Happy International Literacy Day 2014!

September 8 marks the celebration of International Literacy Day with this year’s theme being “Literacy and Sustainable Development.”

Literacy has the power to bring permanent change to people’s lives; it changes the way people think about their personal goals, participate in their communities, and contribute to the development of society. SIL LEAD is proud to see and participate in work that contributes to increased literacy particularly among speakers of lesser-known languages. 

Photo: Robert Waliaula - SIL LEAD

Much of the literacy work has been accomplished by teachers themselves who are working with SIL LEAD under USAID’s flagship education program in Uganda, the USAID/Uganda School Health and Reading Program implemented by RTI International, to discover more effective ways to teach young students to read and write. In June, a number of early grade teachers met at the National Curriculum Development center in Kampala, Uganda to develop learning and reading materials for first grade children in five different languages spoken in Uganda. This project is funded by the United States Agency for International Development and aims to improve early grade reading and health education for Ugandan students.

The teachers worked alongside SIL LEAD technical experts to develop teachers’ guides and primers, which will be used by local primary schools in areas where the different languages are spoken. Throughout the process of developing materials, teachers showed commitment and determination and were eager to complete these meaningful literacy tools. They expressed excitement about the books they were writing for children of their own communities, which have the power to transform the classroom for both teachers and young learners. They understood the critical importance of how these learning materials will help students read and write by the completion of first grade, which is not common among children of marginalized language groups. 

One literacy worker, Maddelene, explains her experience of participating in this project: 

Photo: Robert Waliaula - SIL LEAD

“I have been a teacher for fourteen years now... During these years, I have been teaching in the best way I know how using the limited resources available. By covering the curriculum and testing children, I thought that our children were learning. It’s true that some were learning but a majority of them faced obstacles and acquired writing and reading competencies later than they should have. Reasons for this include lack of emphasis on mother tongue instruction while children came to school not knowing any other language but their local languages. The other reasons that contribute to the mentioned problem are the inadequate reading and teaching resources in local languages and the lack of training for teachers on how to teach in local languages. 

Coming to the materials development workshop has opened my eyes and I can now point out things that need improvement to enable our children to be able to read and write at an early stage. While developing materials for our children, I have learnt how to write stories and how to teach reading and writing. These skills are not currently being taught and could be one of the reasons why children are leaving lower grades without basic reading and numeracy skills. I am excited with the materials we are currently developing. I believe that when they finally reach schools, they will transform the way our children are learning.”

Today SIL LEAD celebrates International Literacy Day alongside teachers like Maddelene who are working to provide younger generations with the keys to sustainable development through the transformational power of literacy.

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Gaining Access to Books through Bloom

A few weeks ago volunteers in a remote area of Papua New Guinea delivered new books designed with the book creation technology, Bloom. These books were given to members of the Bau language community. Copies of the books, also known as “shell books,” were given to Fulumu, a local elementary school, and they will give young students a chance to read stories that are written in their own language and localized to fit their unique culture. 

Bloom technology allows speakers of smaller language groups to create their own literature through simple publication software.  Bloom puts book creation within the reach of people with minimal computer skills, is “book-aware”, and provides layout templates to facilitate the book creation process.

Twenty-six different books were delivered to the Fulumu school, some storybooks and others alphabet books. An additional set of these books were left for a small library that was started in one of the villages of the Bau language community.  Members of the village were very interested and had lots of input and comments about them as they read. 

The hope is for Bloom books to create a new interest not only in literacy but also the Bau language and that teachers will be motivated to use them in schools.

Bloom developers and volunteers are working with other language groups to grow this language interest and book accessibility with other language groups in other areas of Papua New Guinea. 

An initiative that puts books into the hands of young readers in remote villages is large and complex, and language diversity is part of that complexity. SIL LEAD looks forward to sharing its knowledge of minority language literature production and the technology that now exists to support it.

For more information on Bloom and other technology innovations of SIL and SIL LEAD see Innovation and Technology.  

You can also visit the Bloom website

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USAID/Uganda School Health and Reading Program

The USAID/Uganda School Health and Reading Program, created to improve educational quality, is funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and being implemented by RTI International in collaboration with SIL LEAD, World Education, VSO International, Africa Development Corps, International Book Bank, Books for Africa, and the Centre for Social Research.

This 5-year project is being implemented to support Uganda’s Ministry of Education and Sports (MoES) to improve the quality of education in Uganda emphasizing early grade reading, and HIV and AIDS education. Working to strengthen the government system and build staff capacity, the project will emphasize hands-on leadership at national, district, and school levels to address Uganda’s challenges of low literacy levels and high HIV prevalence.

SIL LEAD and the USAID/Uganda School Health and Reading Program

SIL LEAD’s responsibility to the program is to bridge language barriers and improve reading, learning, and instruction in African languages selected by the MoES. Pursuing initiatives that address both quality of education and access to health information, USAID/School Health and Reading Program aims to improve both early grade reading and the health behavior choices of young students.

Direct program outcomes include improved reading skills of 1 million primary school students and sustainable systems for the country to better monitor and respond to the evolving prevention needs of the HIV and AIDS epidemic in Uganda.

Training and professional development of teachers, better learning materials, and improved tracking of students’ progress will increase the quality and relevance of education. It will also improve the effectiveness and efficiency in the delivery of education services. 

SIL LEAD is providing technical assistance by engaging with speech communities to standardize their writing systems and develop mother tongue reading and instructional materials for Primary 1-4 classrooms.

Working collaboratively with project partners, SIL LEAD will also support the development of a sound pedagogical approach to transition 4th grade students to English as the language of instruction.

As of February 2014, student books and teachers’ guides have been published in eight languages and are being implemented in Primary 1 classrooms. In addition, Primary 2 materials for four languages are being published now and will be in schools by April 2014.

Supporting and Developing Writing Systems

Ugandans speak at least one of 40+ local languages yet most schools teach in English. Many of these languages do not have a standardized writing system (also called orthography). 

One of the first objectives for the USAID/School Health and Reading Program was to identify the language and districts in which the project would be implemented. In 2012, SIL LEAD conducted an initial assessment of existing orthographies of several languages using an orthography analysis tool developed specifically for use in the Ugandan context.

With the help of this tool and in collaboration with RTI Reading Specialists, the MoES chose which languages would take part in initial implementation of the program and identified which languages would need greater support. 

Training and Materials Development

In 2013, SIL LEAD assisted in the development of materials for teaching reading. Creating reading materials involves conducting orthography review workshops with language communities to determine what changes might be necessary to the existing orthography. These workshops ensure engagement of the community in the development of their writing systems and ownership of the language. 

Now in the training and materials development phase of the program, SIL LEAD is guiding the preparation of teaching and learning materials for primary school classrooms. The process of developing materials includes first examining existing curricula in each language to assess what components can be utilized and what needs improvement. SIL LEAD consultants then design a tailored framework for teaching in the language of instruction. This comes with classroom materials and accompanying teachers' guides. 

Before implementation, teachers will be trained to teach using the new instructional materials. A support and feedback system for teachers will be established emphasizing peer-to-peer learning as well as adequate supervision.  

Transition to English and ongoing support

As per the established curriculum, children in class 4 will make a transition in the medium of instruction from the local language to English. They will then continue learning local language as a subject course.

Teachers and school administrators will be trained in language-based learning methodologies and the use of transitional materials in order to help students smoothly transfer their learning into an English-speaking classroom. SIL LEAD will take part in this planning process and help ensure students and teachers are well prepared. 2014 is filled with lots of activity and planning in this cooperative effort to bring comprehensive education to Ugandan students.

“The home language acts as a bridge for children, enabling them to participate more effectively in school activities while they are learning English.”

— Barry McLaughlin (Myths and Misconceptions About Second Language Learning: What Every Teacher Needs to Unlearn, 1992)

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SynPhony: A tool for developing learning materials

The order in which to introduce letters and sounds is important for young students as they begin to learn to read in their language. Rigorous analysis is often required in order to create effective teaching and reading materials, especially for lesser-known languages.

SynPhony (from "Synthetic Phonics") helps simplify this process by optimizing the introduction of letters and words in a reading curriculum. The web-based program, developed by linguist Norbert Rennert from the Canada Institute of Linguistics, is a smart system designed to rapidly analyze a collection of texts in a particular language, identify the patterns within the language, and effectively display them in a way that is easy to use. SynPhony provides a platform for producing efficient applications for teaching reading and can be used with almost any of the more than 7,000 languages on earth.  

Rather than introducing students to all the symbols used to represent their language at once, SynPhony suggests a relevant order for presenting new symbols and words, and matches the words selected to the student’s reading level. This allows the learner to acquire the most common elements of a language first and progressively move through an alphabet. SynPhony also has the capability to evaluate texts for their readability and to create literacy-related word games. 

SIL LEAD supports key technological innovations like SynPhony for communities and their partners to foster language development. With access to simple technologies like Synphony, communities can take hold of their own development and direct their own path towards progress.

“SynPhony can save you hours and hours of time trying to find just the right words for each lesson. … It’s just amazing what it can do! … I can try out innumerable different sequences at the click of a mouse”

— Mavis Price, Literacy Co-ordinator of SIL PNG

Norbert Rennert, a researcher at the Canada Institute of Linguistics, is the creator of the SynPhony technology and has experience living and working in low-resource contexts to produce literacy materials and programs. Having previously lived in Suriname, South America, for 10 years as a linguist and translator, Mr. Rennert understands the challenges faced by educators and teachers looking to develop reading programs and books for minority language communities.

To learn more, visit SynPhony’s website at http://call.canil.ca/.

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