A QUANTUM LEAP FORWARD

JULY 11 - A hint about what we CAN do for Kessararam Primary School ("KPS") this year came in the meeting yesterday.

It's end of school year. My Teacher Readers will know well what this means. The teachers are "closing the books" and preparing necessary reports to the Siem Reap Provincial Ministry of Education. Stacks of yellow-cover books, 1 per student, and summary reports were accumulating in the office for validation. ALL record keeping and reporting is done by hand writing. Kessararam Primary School is responsible not only for its 1507 students, but for 4 outlying primary schools as well. KPS has no typewriter or computer. Actually no primary school has a computer. Some high schools "yes."

Not only do the teachers and administrators spend countless hours handwriting the student data and reports, but any mistake or erasure means the Ministry of Education will send the paper back to the school to be redone perfectly!

I probed about the format and data in the student record books and the reports. I looked through some student books and was shown sheafs of handwritten pages reporting to Ministry of Education. My mind is whirling about the countless human hours required to create this redundancy and how the magic of the electronic spreadsheet would improve efficiency, accuracy, retrieval, and release the teachers for more time WITH the students!

I thought this was a perfect application for a computer in the school office. None of the teachers or administrators at KPS knows how to use a computer. I know this will change their world forever!

Before I commit to the project, I want to get Sam Pritchett's opinion; he's got the expertise to thoroughly assess and implement. Sam arrived from Texas late last night and we're meeting for breakfast this morning to talk about best use of his 1 week in Siem Reap.

Check out Sam's blogspot via the link on my blogspot.