October 2024
Welcome to EFM's October Newsletter!
It is essential that every caregiver in the world reads books and does math with their young children!
EFM believes in every child’s mathematical right to equity, opportunity, and personal fulfillment.
News
Early School Math App – We are continuing our work developing a prototype for a mobile app that can act as a mentor and resource for math teachers of early math in low-to-medium-resource environments. If this project is of interest to you, we would love to collaborate with you.
Celebrating EFM Volunteers
Everyone at Early Family Math is an unpaid volunteer. Everyone. That makes us very different from most organizations. This has many consequences.
This structure allows us to stay true to our vision. We do not change our goals to go after the next funding source. We are quick to try out new ideas that seem promising. We also don’t spend time and resources fundraising. With such a low cost structure, it means we can afford to give everything away, which opens access to our program materials. It also promotes a feeling of camaraderie, because we are all equals in terms of pay.
On the less positive side, folks who need a paycheck cannot work here. It also means that, despite our good work, large foundations do not seriously consider backing us because we do not look like we have a stable structure ready for growth.
Because our volunteers are our lifeblood, I want to celebrate some of the people who help make EFM happen. I’ll be celebrating others in the months to come.
Sue
Sue did our Korean translations for two years. She was born in Korea and enjoys translating to her native language. She also strongly believes in EFM’s mission. Over the course of those two years she translated almost every aspect of our program, sometimes more than once as we moved from one version to the next.
Kienn
EFM was on a quest to create characters that were universal, that looked human and could show human emotions, but they also had to be racially and ethnically ambiguous. After six months of my torturing one illustrator after another (causing quite a few to quit), Kienn came along and figured out a way to make it work. His illustration appears on the backs of the grades 2-5 playing cards, and his characters also appear on the backs of the K-3 playing cards.
Mobile Education Alliance Symposium
I am recently back from the mEd Alliance symposium held during the first few days of October in Washington, D.C. This symposium brought together people from all over the world interested in improving access to education in low-to-medium-resource environments.
There was a wide range of organizations and people. There were folks like me who are working to supply resources in various learning environments, there were representatives of government education departments, and there were various agencies trying to coordinate and fund all these efforts. I met a lot of people and learned a great deal. What follows is a small sampling of my experiences there.
EFM Presentation
My presentation on the EFM playful learning resources for home and school was well received. One audience member held up her phone with the EFM mobile app showing on it and said she had been recommending it to everyone she knew.
As a result of some of the people I met, some of our puzzle playing cards are now on their way to STEM kids museums in Tanzania, and another batch of cards is going to Poland. I am beginning conversations with several organizations I connected with at the symposium.
Refugee Camps
There were several presentations about childhood education in refugee camps. I had naively thought refugee camps were temporary encampments set up for a few months. I was shocked to learn there are refugee camps that have been around for decades. Furthermore, because the surrounding communities and countries can’t (or don’t want to) handle the influx of these people into their communities, the refugees in many of these camps are essentially trapped inside. One aid worker told me of 20-year olds who had never been outside their camp and who had no exposure to things we take for granted, such as a river!
Education in this environment, along with many other services, is very challenging. There is a clear shortage of teachers and of educated adults. Many children have not been in school for a while, or may never have been in school. The aid workers told of the shame some children felt being a 12-year old needing to learn alongside a 6-year old.
Most of those programs used smallish tablet devices with software made by One Billion (others had software from Learning Upgrade). It costs in the neighborhood of $15 to $20 per child and is remarkably powerful. The tablets allow for autonomous personalized education. Not only are they useful for isolated single students, but they are also important additions to some of these remote classrooms that may have 30 to 100 students in a classroom with a very wide range of backgrounds. The math education on the tablets is well structured and thorough, but is a very routine approach to content mastery. One big advantage of tablets is for reporting learning results, which gives them a way to measure efficacy and go after more funding.
Tablet Devices
This is deserving of a side note. Generally, I am against the use of electronic devices for very young children. These children should live in a social world with things they can touch and interact with less abstractly. Also, almost all math apps for this age range do a very limited version of math education. Khan Academy Kids is an example of what I’m talking about. Organizations employ electronic devices because they are easy to deliver at scale, they are relatively easy to measure for efficacy, and busy caregivers are quick to accept them to help reduce their caregiving load. Young children deserve better – when it is possible. I would love to see EFM materials delivered on these tablets alongside the existing software; however, as is, these tablets are a lot better than having nothing for the children in these camps.
Interactive Voice Response (IVR)
Another interesting project used phones for illiterate caregivers. They used Viamo phone technologies and IVR. The organization starts by setting up connections with the people it serves. The phones people own are not necessarily smart phones and the people may be illiterate, so all content is delivered by voice. The organization then sets up automated scheduled calling to these people. The content delivered to each person is tracked and sequenced. The person can push a button from 0 to 9 in response to a query to get the content they want for that particular call. The content is a 60 to 90 second bit of education on a selected topic. The caregiver can make use of it directly or deliver that information to their children. The organization has a pretty low cost per call, but I don’t remember the number.
Using Older Siblings
This is a program called "Teachers in the Home" by the organization Home to School in Kenya. In an environment where caregivers may not have the time, inclination, or educational background to help with education in the home, this approach does home-based education by using older siblings, who are in school, to teach very young ones. One disadvantage of this approach is that it leaves the oldest child without education in the home. I am talking with one of their people about the possibility of incorporating EFM into their program. One interesting aspect of what they do is they incorporate local games into their program.
Foldscope
Imagine what a difference it would make to be able to deliver a fully functioning microscope for one dollar! That is their cost in volume or if they are supplying a community in need. They sell them for more like $2.50 to $5.00 in quantities of 20. They have 50x and 340x lenses (on separate devices). These microscopes (with extra attachments that cost more money) can even send images and movies to a smart phone! It’s not math, but it is mind blowing technology. They have delivered over 2 million of these all over the world.
Wrapping Up
Thank you for allowing me to share these stories with you. I hope you are as struck as I am by all the good that people are doing helping to improve the lives of others. Next month I’ll return to talking about math games and puzzles. I hope you all have a wonderful month!
If you have any questions or comments, please send them our way! We would enjoy the opportunity to chat with you. Also, if you are interested in collaborating with us or supporting us in any fashion, we would love to talk with you about ways we can work together!
October 18, 2024
Chris Wright
Chris@EarlyFamilyMath.org
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Early Family Math is a California 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation, #87-4441486.