Learning in his mother tongue made education a cherished part of his life
Localizing ed-tech and materials to transform learning for children, families, and their communities
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At Learning Equality, we believe it’s important for ed-tech to cover a variety of languages, especially mother tongues. We work with collaborators all over the world to make this a reality. This is a guest blog post from one of them in West Africa who helped localize Kolibri into their local language. To ensure their right to privacy, all identifiable information have been omitted and/or modified.
This is the story of Sani, a 10-year-old boy from West Africa.*
In the fall of 2018, his father, a temporary migrant, came to work in our organization and, being a multilingual himself, started to help us translate Kolibri and early Math content into the local dialect spoken here.
When Sani arrived, he was shy and removed. We learned in the coming days that he believed he could not learn. His parents, too, had come to a similar conclusion. He had attended primary school for 5 years but was never promoted. As a result, he was sad, withdrawn and ashamed. His parents were worried but had no idea what could be done.
With an approach focused on learning through hearing the sounds of their mother tongue language and, with the help of a picture-based alphabet chart, Sani started to sound out and write the word or idea of his choice. This approach helped foster the important skill of writing, while naturally introducing the sounds-to-letters relationship. We worked with Sani a few hours per day, teaching him in his mother tongue language. In a short time, he made remarkable progress. Soon, he was writing sentences that were stories from his own mind. Every time he wrote a new sentence, or story, he would hurriedly find his father to show it to him.
He also launched into learning numbers and basic math skills in his mother tongue. This was done through a combination of paper-based learning activities and activities on Kolibri. Though none of them had ever used a tablet, computer, or smartphone, they learned very quickly. Once he discovered the points system in Kolibri, he was all the more motivated to work hard to push his score higher.
It quickly became evident that Sani was an intelligent, creative boy! He has a head full of stories and wants to write them down, sometimes even adding his own illustrations! He quickly mastered the basics of numbers and math.
Toward the end of our time together, that magical moment happened when he started to read new content independently with just a few bits of help. He also more actively explored some of the materials in the Kolibri Content Library in the local language including books from African Storybook and translated materials from Khan Academy.
At the end of the literacy courses, Sani and his family returned home. We were all concerned about what would happen with Sani once back in his old school situation. It took a few weeks before we were able to get an update on them because the phone network is not good in their area. Once we did connect, we heard wonderful news from them: after 5 months of learning with us, he returned to his local school, took the Class 3 end-of-year exam and earned the highest score in the class! He did so well that he is now “head boy,” writing notes and diagrams on the blackboard for the teacher.
Moreover, others in their tight-knit community have seen the change in Sani: he is no longer withdrawn but is now joyful and confident. The biggest key to Sani’s success is the chance to learn in the language he understands, his mother tongue!
He now knows that he is able to learn. With the foundation he gained in this short period of time, he has acquired essential skills that will help him succeed moving forward.
His father told us that Sani continues to write his stories almost every day.
The opportunity to localize Kolibri and relevant learning materials into mother tongue languages opens up an unimagined world of learning. The fact that these organizations have the goal and vision to facilitate this with technical, financial and personnel resources is significant.
Sani is one example of the potential impact these tools can have.
We hope to see many more…
*Sani is a pseudonym. His name and identifying information have been changed to protect his privacy.
