serving the underserved: a technological perspective rakesh agrawal microsoft search labs mountain...
TRANSCRIPT
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Serving the Underserved:A Technological Perspective
Rakesh AgrawalMicrosoft Search Labs
Mountain View, California
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Backdrop
• 2/3 of the world’s 6 billion people live in the developing world. More than 1 in 6 live on less than $1 per day.
• Huge inequity in the availability of healthcare, education, and opportunities that condemn millions of people to lives of disease, poverty, and despair.
Inequities exist within developed societies too.
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In this talk…
• Focus on school-level education for concreteness
• Draw upon the experience from participating in the 2005 IBM study for the President of India on the use of IT for improving education
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India’s Education System: 1951-2002
1951 1981 2002(*)
Literacy Percentage 18.33% 43.57% 65.38%
Educational InstituionsPrimary 209671 494503 664041Upper Primary 13596 118555 219626High/Hr. Seconday & Inter & Pre Junior College 7416 51573 133492
Enrollements (in millions)Primary 19.2 73.8 113.9Upper Primary 3.1 20.7 44.8High/Hr. Seconday & Inter & Pre Junior College 1.5 11 30.5
Dropout Rates (%) NA 82.5 66
Teachers (in '000)Primary 538 1363 1928Upper Primary 86 669 1157High/Hr. Seconday & Inter & Pre Junior College 127 926 1777
Pupil Teacher RatioPrimary 20 38 43Upper Primary 20 33 34High/Hr. Seconday & Inter & Pre Junior College 21 27 34
Public Expenditure (% of GDP) 0.64% 2.92% 4.02%
Significant achievements, but problems remain …
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Problems of School Level Education in India
Poor performance• 39% dropouts in primary, additional 15.6% in secondary, additional 11.7% in
higher secondary
• Pass out ratio is 50% at Class X and majority of them pass in 3rd division
• Less than 8% finish all schooling to qualify for a college education
Poorly trained teachers• 51% of primary teachers are higher secondary or below
• Only 44% have received in-service training
• Absence of learning material for teachers to update their knowledge
Poor teacher-student ratios• Ratio in primary is 1:43, secondary and Higher secondary is 1:34. About 9%
of primary schools have a teacher-student ratio > 1:100.
• 1.4% of primary schools have no teachers, 19% have only one teacher for all classes.
Poor quality of material• Poor quality of textbooks, out-dated curriculum
Source: IBM Report on Improving India’s Education System through Information Technology, 2005
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Attacking Complex Problems*
1. Define goal2. Find the highest-
leverage approach3. Discover the ideal
technology for that approach
4. In the meantime, make the smartest application of the technology on-hand
1. End the disease2. Prevention3. Vaccine that gives life-
time immunity 4. Prevention by getting
people to avoid risky behavior (requires its own four point plan)
Framework Application to AIDS
* Bill Gates. Harvard Commencement. June 7, 2007.
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Applying the Framework to Education
1. Define goal2. Find the highest-
leverage approach3. Discover the ideal
technology for that approach
4. In the meantime, make the smartest application of the technology on-hand
1. Quality education to all2. New pedagogy3. Individualized learning
with teacher as a discussant
4. Internet-based mass collaboration to help teachers teach better and improve the educational infrastructure
Framework Application
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Education Web
• Participation of experts, teachers, parents and students in the development and revisions of curricula
• Sharing and collaborative development of lectures, assignments, tests, etc.
• Tools for capturing feedback on textbooks (errors, better explanations, supplementary readings)
• Collaborative translation and localization of educational material
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Technical Challenges
• Tools for creating and updating content (Wikipedia++)
• Trust and authoritativeness of content
• Personalization of search to find the material suitable for one’s own style of teaching
• Making material accessible to teachers who do not have a internet connectivity (make use of e-choupal experience)
• Bootstrapping and incentives
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Is Serving Underserved a Valid Research Field?
Microsoft Research’s Digital Inclusion 2005 RFP Award RecipientsDigital Inclusion Kit in Health and Higher Education Mesh Networking: A Testbed for Security Issues and Community Actions Integrated Healthcare Information Services through Mobile telephony in Botswana Robust and Low-Cost Networking for Rural Kiosks Wi-Fi Enabled Phones for Bridging the Cognitive Divide and Transforming the Classroom Experience Project of Modern Long-Distance Education for Agricultural and Pastoral Area in Tibet Autonomous Region Design and Development of a Low-Cost, Low-Power Portable Medical Device Appropriate Technology Interaction for Facilitating Peer-to-Peer Internet Microfinance in Uganda Poor Man’s Broadband: Peer-to-Peer Dialup Networking Deployment Wireless Ambient Networks on Heterogeneous Rural Environments DSH and CAM: Leveraging Low-Cost Technology for Rural India Wireless Grids: A Technology for Rural Networking AIR: Advancement Through Interactive Radio Immersive Language Learning Using Smart Phones Smartphone Health Information and Epidemiology Network (SHIEN) — Vietnam Speech Interfaces for Health Information-Access in Underserved Communities Early Warning Flood Systems Based on Sensor Networks
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Microsoft Research, India
TECHNOLOGY FOR EMERGING MARKETS: http://research.microsoft.com/research/tem
Multiple mice and cursors on a single PC
Consuming content at rural kiosks
Learning from recorded lectures
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Concluding Thought
Humanity’s greatest advances are not in its discoveries – but in how those discoveries are applied to reduce inequity.
Bill Gates. Harvard Commencement. June 7,
2007.
Search Labs’ mission is to invent next in Internet search
and applications