News/2012/31.10.2012

The Noolaham Foundation has been actively working on an extremely important and worthy project over the last few months. The Virtual Learning Environment Project as it is formally called is based on the ultimate intension of the creation of a virtual, open and a freely accessible learning environment to the Tamil students of Sri Lanka. The Foundation firmly believes that once completely finished and executed the project would be of immense help to the learning and teaching population of the country. The entire project had been mainly divided into three phases of execution of which we are currently through the first one. At the end of the third phase, we hope that our project would create a robust, self-sustaining online social learning community.

Thereby the aim of the first phase was to bring mostly text based educational resources to online and make it accessible to students. In this regard the prime necessity was to collect relevant material such as text books, teachers’ guides and question papers. The members and enthusiasts of the foundation were actively engaged over the last few months in the collection of such stuff from prominent teachers in the field, schools, zonal education offices and private educational institutions. The mission was satisfactory and great amounts of material were able to be collected and the task is still in progress. Moreover scanning and digitizing of the collected documents is also simultaneously underway. Everyone involved in the project are investing their maximum effort in making the virtual environment an ample source of resources of all kinds. So far the project is progressing successfully and as always we are hoping for even more improved performance.

Project Details

Vision

To create open, free, accessible, self-organizing virtual learning environments for the Sri Lankan Tamil speaking students and educators.

Background

As society evolves into a knowledge society the need for higher and specialized education is increasing.  The need for continuous learning, retraining and acquiring of new skills is becoming part of everyday life.  Yet, the cost of education is increasing at an alarming rate, higher than food or medical costs.  For a vast body of students quality education is simply unavailable and/or unaffordable.  This is specially the case for many students from North and East of Sri Lanka, who have been deprived of vital educational resources due to the long civil war.  There exist a significant youth population whose education was disrupted and need vocational training. Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs) made possible by emerging Internet based educational technologies provide a great cost-effective opportunity to bring quality educational resources to these students and youth.

There exist various levels of Virtual Learning Environments.  They can be classified as follows.

Level 1: Virtual educational resources (curriculum, text books, notes, assignments/exercises/labs, quizzes/tests, teaching guides)

Level 2: Virtual learning management systems (courses, video/multi media, animations, dynamic tools, collaboration tools, assessment, administration)

Level 3: Social learning systems (self sustaining co-learning, collaborating, co-creating learning communities)

The technology complexity and the resources needed to build successful systems increases proportionally to the level of the VLE.

Project Objectives

The aim of the project is to create open, free, accessible, self-organizing virtual learning environments for the Sri Lankan Tamil speaking to students and educators. The project will be divided into several phases each phase building on the previous and reaching out to more people.  The technical complexity, capability and costs will also increase.

The first phase of the project is to immediately bring mostly text based educational resources to online and make it accessible to students.  This phase involves an outreach and engagement phase to inform the students of how to use the resources.

The second phase is to build a more comprehensive virtual learning environment or classroom.  Students will be able to supplement or completely learn courses online.  Video lectures, self – assessment tools, collaboration tools and online based educational tools such as simulations are some key features of such a learning environment.

The third phase is to build a robust self-sustaining online social learning community where student to student, student to teacher, teacher to teacher interactions will happen seamlessly. The diaspora can co-learn and collaborate with students and teachers in Sri Lanka.

Project Activities (Phase 1)

• Collection of educational resources (see annex for resources details under each grade)
• Curriculum and teachers guides
• Text books (published by the government and exercise books)
• Question papers (Previous examinations question papers by the government, model question papers in use in the schools, zones, districts, provinces and private educational institutions).

• Scanning and uploading
• Scanning the above educational resources through sheet feed scanner
• Removing unwanted marks in the electronic format.
• Uploading to Noolaham virtual classroom.

About Noolaham Foundation

Noolaham Foundation (www.noolahamfoundation.org) is a non-profit, charitable organization (GA 2390) founded in the year 2005, to document and preserve all spheres of knowledge related to Sri Lankan Tamil speaking communities and make accessible to all. The Foundation works primarily with Tamil speaking communities in Sri Lanka. It has also taken initiatives to establish chapters in various countries such as the UK, Canada, US and Australia to strengthen its activities.

The main objectives of the Noolaham Foundation are to Engage in and support preservation and digital archiving of written, print, multi-media and electronic resources related to Sri Lankan Tamil speaking communities. Document, preserve and digitally archive ethnography and knowledge bases such as dialects, belief systems, myths, rituals, folklore, games, indigenous medicine, law and administrative systems, technologies and arts of mainstream and marginalized communities. Provide knowledge and information services to ensure free and open access thereby support educational, research and development endeavors related to Sri Lankan Tamil speaking communities. Build communities of practice, processes, technologies and standards of archival, library information sciences through communication, networking and collaboration.

The Foundation maintains an online digital library, develops special library collections; updates a vast database about places, institutions (schools, temples, community centers etc) and individuals; publishes a newsletter; organizes awareness raising seminars on digital preservation; provides training to librarians and students on digital archiving; publishes books; maintains a blog; coordinates a range of fund raising activities and collaborates with other organizations and individuals.

Noolaham digital library (www.noolaham.org) has documented over 11,000 publications related to Sri Lankan Tamil speaking communities so far and the publications without copyright restrictions are available online freely. This digital library serves as a learning centre incorporating local knowledge and enabling social interaction with a view to achieving constructive social outcomes. This digital library functions as a repository for various institutions, supports the cognitive work of scholars and researchers, and fulfils the information needs of social workers, teachers, historians, and the general public.