Young students from Northeast Thailand and Laos, Openmind Projects trainee alumni, will work to provide online learning opportunities for village students. They will participate in an Openmind Projects in collaboration with Cisco and overseas volunteers!

Local students

Now that overseas volunteers cannot travel to help poor village children Openmind Projects ambition is to provide online interaction opportunities between local students, teachers and overseas volunteers. 

Openmind Camp with overseas volunteers

Village children should be able to learn in online classrooms be able to use digital technology much as their more privileged, better off, peers in Bangkok, at universities.  Education is key to reduce poverty and increase social mobility. Equal chances to education should be a human right and is actually necessary in any modern and competitive society. The use of technology is the most potent tool to give underprivileged youth better opportunities to learn. Most edtech is however mainly available for the better off students and the poor are left behind again.

Village school

To avoid falling behind, rural schools need to invest in and adopt digital technology to respond to the needs for a better education. Learning can happen in villages via wireless connections with key facilitators, local teachers and overseas volunteers.

OpenmindProjects will collaborate with Cisco. A team of local Openmind trainees and Cisco and Openmind volunteers will work together to find ways to adapt digital education that can be used by local students, teachers and volunteers. If local schools, students, teachers and volunteers can access virtual classrooms that will allow them to interact, exchange information. It will provide better learning chances for village children and help overcome the lack of local teachers and travel restrictions for overseas volunteers.

An ambition is to create a platform, a digital tool to link students, teachers, and volunteers, an online community, easily accessed by all via smart phones.

Cisco collaboration

Covid-19 has forced us to rethink how we work to help the underprivileged. The challenge will be to train all users, students, teachers and volunteers so they are comfortable working, teaching and learning online. Internet access should actually be given to all students who come from low-income families and lack the resources to purchase required internet access.

This joint OpenmindProjects Cisco project can hopefully serve as a model and inspiration for local schools.  Digital technology is part of the answer for more equal education opportunities.

Many things will have to be developed, improved. Learning, improving by doing, testing, is Openmind Projects motto and we hope to contribute to better learning opportunities for the less privileged together with Cisco. This was our ambition right from the beginning many years ago!

Edtech with OMP and Cisco