Case Study: ICT in Education in Sri Lanka
SuRaLa Net. Co., Ltd (called Surala) held “Surala Math Calculation Contest & Surala Festival” from August to September 2019 as a part of the activities of “Promotion of digital mathematic learning materials for primary school students in the world”, which is the 2018 EDU-Port Japan Certified Project.
Surala Math Calculation Contest was for the students who were learning with “Surala Ninja!*” as well as the primary school students from 1st to 6th grade nationwide, then 290 students participated in it.
The contest consisted of two parts: qualifying round and final. The qualifying round was organized in six major cities in Sri Lanka and the final in Colombo, the capital of the country. The final was a great success with the presence of the representatives of the Embassy of Japan in Sri Lanka, Ministry of Education and educational institutes in Sri Lanka as well as media.
* “Sural Ninja” is an original e-learning system for primary students developed by Surala where students are able to have fun learning basic mathematics operation through interactive animations. Multiple language versions such as Sinhala for Sri Lanka, an Indonesian as well as an English version utilized in India are currently available.
The winner of this contest who had gone through the fierce qualifying round was Ms. Pinidi Upunya. She was a 5th grade student attending Surala Juku near Colombo and established a record of 100 multiplication questions in 2minutes 9 seconds with 100% of correct answer rate in the final. She answered to the question about a tip for winning the contest, “I kept learning everyday with Surala Ninja!”
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| Ms. Pinidi Upunya, standing on the top of 290 participants,and her teachers of Surala Juku | Winners of “Surala Math Calculation Contest” and guests |
After the final of the contest, “Surala Festival” was organized, participating more than 700 of students and their guardians.
The students experienced various games adopting the concept of mathematics as well as a Japanese traditional shrine festival “Ennichi” game through the festival and realized a fun of learning and exposed to Japanese culture. In Sri Lanka, there are few opportunities where students can experience “learning” combined with a play or a game. So, their guardians made a lot of comments that their children’s motivation to learn was enhanced through the participation in the contest and such fun games using knowledge of mathematics outside school.
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| Sri Lankan students enjoying a game with mathematics concept and “Ennichi” game (Wa-nage) | ||
In the 2018 EDU-Port Japan Certified Project “Promotion of digital mathematic learning materials for primary school students in the world”, Surala is working to strengthen a management of primary schools and cram school (juku) which introduce “Surala Ninja!” and to implement the training in Japan for capacity development of facilitators who are in charge of class management in “Surala Ninja!”
Those facilitators who observed a Japanese primary school in the program were impressed with activities to foster students’ independence and leadership (e.g. Nicchoku system, clean-up activity, (school lunch) duty, etc.), proposed the adoption of those activities into class management of “Surala Ninja!” and implemented them on their initiative. That has led to more effective and organized class management, such as washing hands before a class, cleaning PC after a class and promoting a learning file organization, in addition to usual class management of “Surala Ninja!”, although they had been apt to concentrate only on the usual class management before the participation of the program.
As a result, the learning attitude of the students were further improved, and their concentration increased. The training in Japan has made a great contribution to the growth of the facilitators and improvement of class management, which had led to the improvement of students’ motivation and leaning attitude as well as the improvement of academic performance.
Surala will keep working towards improvement of students’ academic performance through the class management with “Surala Ninja!” and implementation of events such as “Surala Math Calculation Contest” and “Surala Festival,” and conduct activities to foster their independence and leadership in the future.
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| The facilitators managing a class in a pilot school in Sri Lanka | The facilitators participating in school/educational general exhibition (Edix) in the training program in Japan. |
The more information of the project in Sri Lanka is introduced in Facebook (FB) page of Next Learners (Pvt) Ltd., which is the local partner company.
FBページ：https://www.facebook.com/NextLearnersSriLanka/
（2018 EDU-Port Japan Certified Project：SuRaLa Net. Co., Ltd）
