Buy a PC for pupil’s e-Learning contents creation & maintance

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By profession I am a polytechnic professor. Currently I'm employed as a computer lecturer at local elementary school. I work there for 16 years and I have about 24 years of experience working in primary and secondary schools in Bosnia & Herzegovina and neighboring countries.

My country supports and carries out inclusion for children with special needs and me, as a lecturer, are fully committed to this goal as well as quality teaching for other children in my school. As such I was the one and only candidate of the Ministry of Civil Affairs of my State and UNESCO for the award of UNESCO's annual award to King Hamad Bin Isa Al-Khalifa in 2016.

As a form of innovative and modern teaching I started teaching with the help of web site - online learning. Since my school was not able to financially support my idea, and now there is not a better situation, I did it with my financial resources, and the project started in the summer of 2007. The school subject IT science (here called informatics) for 14 years has no textbook for 9th (this year for grade 8th and 9th grade) and for the children beside the lectures it is the only source of learning when they are not in school. Initially I created a MySQL based web site, PHP, HTML and Javascript, and later used eFront. The application of the LMS platform made it easier for me to create and maintain the site myself so that I could devote to the development of educational content and less how to implement it. Soon I learned positive information about Moodle LMS and accepted it as the main platform for teaching children, especially since it has already been accepted in over 200 countries around the World. I felt that on this way I would thus have better cooperation and support from countries in the region and the World.

Installing the learning platform beyond the teaching process was a hit by the words of the pupils and their parents, and I received considerable moral support and approval from my colleagues in my school. After that, all students of grades of 5 - 9 were included. Initially, these were lectures saved as PDF files and then I decided for qualitative changes. Namely, children are today great consumers of computers and mobile devices but not as learning resources or learning aids, but mostly for gaming and entertainment. Probably the fact that children during play can affect the situation in the game and decide on its development make it attractive more than learning. In addition, computer games have many visual effects, colors and sounds that lead to a certain state of excitement and joy. I thought this was perhaps the reason why children are indifferent to traditional forms of teaching and why their traditional lectures are mostly boring. I could not provide modern learning like a smartboard, but I started to use a slide projector and later a video projector in conjunction with PowerPoint presentations. I have noticed after this change that children can easily understand the lessons when in the presentations they use are included at least simple animations and I have gone in that direction.

I found on internet about the SCORM packages for the LMS platform and started to create simple and complex interactive tests, quizzes and interactive video footage of most important applications, such as Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. The existence of so-formed lessons has also allowed parents to understand the essence of the lesson at home easier, and on the basis of video lessons or other online content helps their child to master the lesson or exercise. It was great advance especially because school computer have older version of software than pupils have at home, so it was more easier to track difference and learn both versions.

This is what I do today. The issues I encounter are lease payments on a foreign server (due to high resource requirements) and site domains with unlimited space and traffic (because large amount of videos, animations, files, quizzes), and then the software and hardware I needed.

Hardware is somehow the biggest expense. For high quality animation, video creation and processing, possibly streaming, a powerful computer is mandatory but I can not afford it as my current income, that is often late for a few months, is slightly above $ 500 and consumer basket is twice more!

And despite all, I have drafted a project for the development of educational games - gamification for children with special needs and other pupils, as well as the establishment of a kind of classroom for my school teachers and other schools who would like to carry out similar projects, all in order that we all have a enhanced, with better quality and more modern teaching.

That is why I appeal to you to help me if you can, and if you recognize my work as good-natured and prosperous, and donate an appropriate computer or part of the funds for my purchase that would help me in further realizing this project.

The cost of one such computer here is far over my possibilties .

Unfortunately, the responsible people in our ministry of education, as well as the Department of Teacher Education, have not seen anything of this in particular, so that every aspect of their material support is left out. I spoke to some successful firms, banks and other well-off financial firms, but no one wanted to answer. Everybody loves to talk about the welfare of children and the importance of their education, but no one is willing to support this and similar projects financially. I know I'm a pioneer of this kind of way in my country, maybe in the surrounding countries, and that's all new to responsible people in education but a lack of interest is quite surprising.

However, one day something changed, thanks to the media, to the journalists.

My ten years of work has been noted and described in an interview for the domestic magazine dealing with issues of education, School of Life (www.skolegijum.ba, article link is: https://www.skolegijum.ba/tekst/index/1652/kad-nemas-udzbenik-napravi-internet-stranicu), and after the publication of this article, the same document was published and shared on several online portals such as: krajina.ba (https://www.krajina.ba/profesor-podic-kad-nemas-udzbenik-napravi-internet-stranicu/) i mojusk.ba (https://mojusk.ba/profesor-podic-kad-nemas-udzbenik-napravi-internet-stranicu/) i cazin.ba (https://cazin.ba/profesor-podic-kad-nemas-udzbenik-napravi-internet-stranicu/), and also on some social networks. The same week, the local TV company, RTV USK (www.rtvusk.ba), made a smaller report about it and announced it in the evening of the evening news as a bright example in the practice of education. Its example was followed by TV Liberty, which operates within the framework of Slobodna Evropa aka Free Europe, which has made video footage, and has been broadcasted on state TV channel BHT (https://www.slobodnaevropa.org/a/29643447.html after 19 minutes) and shared with more than 20 local TV stations. Same video is available also on YouTube location:

And after this article, the approval of the media, colleagues from other schools and cities, I have not been able to find a local donor that would help procure a good computer capable of performing all the required tasks. That is why I address you, as the last line to help people with good intentions and projects, to help me in the realization and maintenance of this project of teaching young people in elementary schools.

Lastly, I thank you for the time you have devoted to reading this letter.

In the hope that you will meet my request, I grew most thank you.

Organizer

  • Elvir Podic
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  • Campaign Owner

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