(1) Teachers' voice social network.

The teachers' voice social network has been a success.  We have
reached a steady state where in our weekly cycle of organized topics,
about 20 teachers call in each round (voluntarily), and they have left
a consistently high quality of discussion messages that have to do,
for example, how to tie daily teaching to children's real life
experiences, the role of parental involvement, the role of
complementary science documentaries.  Here are a few weekly
transcription examples and the discussions:

4/4 transcriptions:
http://groups.google.com/group/dsh-discuss/browse_thread/thread/740f3fc385900c2f
3/21-25 transcriptions:
http://groups.google.com/group/dsh-discuss/browse_thread/thread/5f4042a3d8e821e4
ideas of doing an "off-line" radio version:
http://groups.google.com/group/dsh-discuss/browse_thread/thread/f12c77e9bd1e180c

Going forward, we will improve the voice system on several fronts: (a)
building a better web-based interface for both office staff and
outsiders so we can all more effectively take advantage of the system
and better communicate with each other and with the teachers; (b)
expanding the system to get more teachers to participate; (c) in
addition to using the system as a discussion forum, we will explore
how to take on more of the monitoring role currently done by physical
visits; (d) exploring other applications of the voice system (for
example, possibly letting the children participate).



(2) Monitoring and testing.

We are continuing to work on a more effective monitoring and testing
system for the recipient schools.  A lot of work has been put into
working with our model teachers to design tests for every single
lesson video; these tests will be placed on DVDs following each lesson
(in the form of a short video giving questions).  These new DVDs will
be put out in July and we will work with local teachers who will
conduct these tests and get results back to us.

We are also continuing to work on a more effective monitoring
mechanism in which field visits and the voice system are better
integrated with each other: problems and information brought up in one
place should be systematically and consistently followed up in other
"channels."



(3) Digital Polyclinic.

Anna continues to work with the Nishat Hospital in Lucknow to film
sessions in rural gatherings and do screening in and around the DSH
school sites:

http://dsh.cs.washington.edu:8000/Projects/StudyHall_Discuss/upload/090420-112655.6984.armin2_IMG_7495.jpg
http://dsh.cs.washington.edu:8000/Projects/StudyHall_Discuss/upload/090420-112752.7011.armin1_IMG_7500.jpg
http://dsh.cs.washington.edu:8000/Projects/StudyHall_Discuss/upload/090424-182946.32238.dpc_DSCN5188a.jpg
http://groups.google.com/group/dsh-discuss/browse_thread/thread/9c61a17862081d0f#

One of the interesting things we are seeing is the importance of
extreme local relevancy: the importance of filming doctors talking
directly to villagers in their local settings.  Naively, one might
think that as long as the language issue is resolved, the content
relevancy issue should be largely resolved automatically.  What Anna
has consistently found that this is hardly the case.  For example,
city doctors who have little experience doctoring the poor have for
the most part not been effective; sessions filmed in a city classroom
or even in a rural clinic are less effective than sessions filmed
directly in the middle of a village---audience consistently display
greater interest in the type of settings that they identify as their
"own;" and the language issue also shows up in subtler ways.  For
example, a smart city doctor would need to modify her accent to fit a
village dialect to be really effective.

Going forward, Anna will be exploring working with the Krishnamurti
Foundation in Varanasi, and a Lokarpit organization on HIV/AIDS
topics:

http://groups.google.com/group/dsh-discuss/browse_thread/thread/457debc01067f84b#
http://groups.google.com/group/dsh-discuss/browse_thread/thread/cb6b8e9dde202f6b#



(4) "DSH in a box."

As discussed earlier, the DVD-based distribution mechanism has a bunch
of limitations, such as the continued hassle of dealing with scratched
discs, the labor and cost involved in tracking and burning discs, and
perhaps even more importantly, the fact that a big stack of DVDs is
just a poor way of organizing a large DSH film library (which already
numbers more than 3000 objects today).  (Just imagine how ridiculous
it is to see the linkages and navigate a Wikipedia which is stored on
a collection of floppies!)

The idea of a "DSH in a box" is to distribute the entire DSH film
library in a simple box.  It plugs into a TV, you turn it on, and the
entire library is on TV.  The recipient teachers (or kids) browse,
navigate, and search it with a pleasant and clean interface.  So for
example, when you're studying a science lesson on lunar eclipse, you
will see that there are 7 other related films, science documentaries
that have to do with the moon, instead of being reminded verbally by
our staff that there are these other DVDs that you might also want to
pop in and look at.  If you want to see any topics at all,
electricity, tigers, history of India, life of Gandhi, you name it,
and you'll find it easily.

Under the hood, this box is a cheap Linux computer with a big disk in
it.  If you care to see the detailed status of its development, the
following discussion threads talk about what we have accomplished so
far: porting the DSH code to several flavors of Linux, getting it to
work on the Tornado M60 (one of the candidate hardware boxes we are
looking at), getting the interface to be controllable by a TV remote
alone, using Google Translate to automatically translate English
descriptions to Hindi, getting it to work on "Puppy Linux," a
light-weight Linux flavor that allows the system to work on a
low-spec'ed machine with a slow CPU and very little memory.

http://groups.google.com/group/dsh-discuss/browse_thread/thread/e4ef6fa72ade6194
http://groups.google.com/group/dsh-discuss/browse_thread/thread/dc1c8de9496ea5c4#
http://groups.google.com/group/dsh-discuss/browse_thread/thread/5a559f2e42dc8701#
http://groups.google.com/group/dsh-discuss/browse_thread/thread/3ca0ee31b6213ec5#
http://groups.google.com/group/dsh-discuss/browse_thread/thread/477bf6668ec1e2f4#

We will distribute several of these boxes to our schools before the
summer starts (so kids can watch fun science shows during summer
break).  To begin with, we will make some of these boxes out of
discarded old computers.  A little later, we will probably explore
low-cost and low-power configurations such as ARM-based systems that
are about to enter the netbook frenzy.



(5) Solar-powered pico projector.

At the time of the last status update, we mentioned that Matt York was
about to come to Lucknow to work with us on a solar-powered system
that we can put in a village that has no electricity.

The idea was to use a "pico projector," which burns less than 10w,
instead of our current 19in TV, which probably burns between
150w-200w.  Because the pico projector is much less power-hungry, we
can power it with a small solar panel.  We will get rid of the huge
batteries and inverters that we currently use as power backups.
Everything will instead be powered directly by 12vDC coming from a
small battery charged by the solar panel.

Pictures of Matt working in Lucknow:
http://dsh.cs.washington.edu:8000/distance/snaps/090222matt1

Pictures of putting the box in a school:
http://dsh.cs.washington.edu:8000/distance/snaps/090402solarPico2

Discussions:
Matt in Lucknow:
http://groups.google.com/group/dsh-discuss/browse_thread/thread/5170a7c70898749d/
numbers on specs, charging time, playing time, costs:
http://groups.google.com/group/dsh-discuss/browse_thread/thread/5048de94fc7ed690/
experience:
http://groups.google.com/group/dsh-discuss/browse_thread/thread/42f140cbf46591c0/

Conclusion: good news and bad news.  The good news is that after much
experimentation, we have something that works.  And the cost is barely
about $100 more expensive than what we use today per school.  The bad
news is that the pico projector's light seems a bit too dim for a
regular classroom.  If we darken the classroom too much, then teachers
and kids can hardly see each others' faces, and teachers can't even do
board work.  I think there are scenarios (or room configurations)
where this rig can still be effective (see the discussions).  We will
continue to explore purely solar-based solutions that are more
effective.



(6) Prep for Chihat study.

Rahul, Richa, and Elizabeth have been visiting the set of 12
government schools in Chinhat that will be part of a DSH study
starting this summer.  The prep work has to do with filming the
classroom activities as of now and conducting pre-tests, all for the
purpose of later comparison.



(7) New repository mirror.

http://dstar.cs.washington.edu

http://groups.google.com/group/dsh-discuss/browse_thread/thread/34b553308edcadf8/

It was brought online shortly after the last "big update" in February.
 In addition to updated content, you'll also see a few new features.
For example, you'll see a little "H" icon for each object.  The "H"
icon pops up English-to-Hindi translation (done via the automated
Google Translate.)  If you know Hindi, you'll laugh at how bad the
machine-supplied translation is, but it's not my fault :)  If you know
a better English-to-Hindi translator, let us know.  The Hindi
translation was done in preparation of distributing the "DSH library
boxes" (discussed above) to our village schools.  The village boxes
are disconnected (at least for now) so they don't actually talk to
Google Translate.  Instead, the translations were done ahead of time
and locally stored.



(8) Ripping from YouTube and scanning books.

http://groups.google.com/group/dsh-discuss/browse_thread/thread/123b3d92db1bb617

Priyanka has been leading an experiment to hunt down good YouTube
videos that are closely related to our textbook topics, dub them in
Hindi by our teachers, and add them to our database and outgoing DVDs.
 This adds imagery and illustrations that could potentially greatly
enrich sometimes dry lessons; it should aid comprehension and also
increase "sexiness" that will hopefully better attract attention.

Indeed, from the earliest days of DSH, we see ourselves being in the
business of being a "conduit:"  taking what's good on the net (and
elsewhere), adapting it a little, and funneling it to our children and
teachers who are not part of the normal "networked world."  (In fact,
it's not just the net, in a similar vein, in the past three years, we
have been scanning picture story books, sometimes dubbing them, and
distributing them on DVDs to our schools.  Again, it's the idea of DSH
being a "conduit.")



(9) DSH-Pakistan.

Navaid and company have gotten DSH-Pakistan started:

http://groups.google.com/group/dsh-discuss/browse_thread/thread/c7d15de86ae88c59/0a3
http://groups.google.com/group/dsh-discuss/browse_thread/thread/dac3d18af34ed07b

A lot of issues are still in the process of being worked out :)



(10) Sumeet in Stanford.

http://groups.google.com/group/dsh-discuss/browse_thread/thread/17d9c450b6201260

Congrats to Sumeet for being accepted by the Master's CS program at
Stanford in a competitive year, continuing a perfect record of "DSH
kids" going on to top schools!

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