observer tech monthly - geekie

7212019 Observer Tech Monthly - Geekie

httpslidepdfcomreaderfullobserver-tech-monthly-geekie 15

34 OTM | 100116 | The Observer

983109ducation

GIVINGTEACHING AN

UPGRADE



The Observer | 100116 | OTM 35

In Brazil a shortage offunding and staff hasblighted the educationsystem for decadesNow machine-learningsoftware is helpingteachers to deliver acomplete schoolsyllabus tailored toeach pupil And itlearns as it goes alongwrites Claire Rigby

Itrsquos 10am on a sunny Novemberday in Rio de Janeiro and thescene inside the classroom is oneof quiet application At a dozen or

so hexagonal tables pupils work onlaptops or in exercise books At oneof the clusters a teacher sits to help apupil while another talks to a group ofstudents at the far end of the room ndash alarge salon in which almost half of thepupils at the school are seated Therest of the schoolrsquos 213 students agedbetween 11 and 14 are busy elsewhere inthe building which includes six smallmore traditional classrooms

Through the windows that run thelength of the classroom dark blue sea isvisible in the distance past green hillswhile above the school Rocinha favelasurges up the mountain in a clutter ofconcrete and peach-coloured brick

This is Andreacute Urani MunicipalSchool a technology-focusedexperimental academy at the footof Rocinha in Rio de Janiero whichwith 70000 inhabitants is Brazilrsquoslargest favela With almost all of itsstudents drawn from the communityAndreacute Urani is a flagship adopter ofan innovative educational softwaredeveloped by a Satildeo Paulo startupGeekie Launched in 2011 GeekieLabs delivers the entire high-schoolsyllabus in hundreds of digital lessonsincorporating text images videosand exercises and also evaluates thestudentsrsquo performance at every stepfeeding real-time data to teachersand the school A separate widelyaccessible app Geekie Games has thesame components bar the institutionalintegration

Geekiersquos content and study plans areaimed at equipping students for Brazilrsquosnational ENEM exams held annuallyfor final-year high-school students and

doubling as an entrance exam for manyuniversities as well as providing proofof achievement for school-leavers

Claudio Sassaki

co-founder of Geekie a

digital startup that has

revolutionised education

in Brazil Photograph by

Germano LuumldersAbrilComunications




983109ducation

In the classroom at Andreacute Urani Yago dos Santos Lahas 14 is takinga history test on Geekie using an HPlaptop one of 220 in the school which

has a five-year sponsorship fromcompanies including Natura cosmeticsand Fundaccedilatildeo Telefoacutenica A questionndash part of Geekiersquos bespoke softwarefor the pre-high-school institution ndashreads ldquoIn world commerce there arerich countries with more purchasingpower and others with less Thesearch for better commercial relationsbetween those countries increasingtheir profits is called (a) competition(b) integration (c) association or (d)financingrdquo

Yago reads the question twiceselecting (a) and a green tick appearsAt the end of the 120-minute test Yagoreceives his results instantly 262displayed beside the average for allstudents taking the test 230 How doesit feel to see that you are doing betterthan most ldquoItrsquos OKrdquo he says ldquoI donrsquotreally think about it I sometimes doworse than the others but then you cantry againrdquo The software has machinelearning at its core ndash so the machine likethe students is also learning adaptingand analysing responses as more andmore data is fed in

Its pedagogical content is createdby a team of teachers and educationprofessionals also in-house while the

online lessons are given by teachersfrom private tutorial colleges whoappear in the videos as disembodiedvoices speaking over handwrittennotes on black backgrounds and usingcursors to emphasise points or indicateaspects of images The format of thevideo segments is inspired by theKhan Academyrsquos free video classes on

YouTubeIn a Geekie biology lesson on the

respiratory system text describinghow respiration works is interspersedwith exercises and videos In one videoa teacher speaks engagingly over adiagram showing the transfer of oxygenand carbon dioxide inside the lung ldquoO2 and CO2 take opposite routes but bothmove by a process of diffusion OKOKrdquo At the end of the lesson an ldquoInthis lesson you sawrdquo page reprises thecontent as a list of bullet points

The transmission of content is oneof the platformrsquos main benefits saysAndreacute Uranirsquos headteacher Marcelade Oliveira ldquoYou simply donrsquot need ateacher to carry out this partrdquo Insteadof being lectured en masse on subjectsin which they may fail to understanda given element students she says dobetter when they can set their own pace

return to difficult components in theirown time and get things wrong withoutfear of being shown up in front of their

classmates The idea at Andreacute Uranisays Oliveira is that teachers becomementors rather than lecturers while thechildren take a more active role in thestudy process ldquoThey stop being pupilsand become studentsrdquo

Beginning with a brief test and asurvey on the goal of each user ndash thepurpose of study and which subjectand university if any the student isaiming for ndash Geekie creates study plansselecting content according to eachstudentrsquos needs more economics foraspiring maths candidates for exampleThen as a student uses the softwareit gauges their abilities and presentslessons in personalised sequencesadapted over time as each studentrsquosaptitude evolves and as the algorithm

understands itIn practice itrsquos relatively simple if

a user responds well to certain types

of content it will resurface in similarlessons and as it gauges studentsrsquoperformances based on levels ofdifficulty it will select lessons pitchedat similar levels in other areas of studytoo If a student tends to study best ata particular time of day the app cansend push notifications remindingthem whatrsquos next in the study planAs well as providing structured studyplans Geekie can also says ClaudioSassaki who with Eduardo Bontempois Geekiersquos co-founder and co-directordetect some of the obstacles hinderingstudents Those might include poorreading comprehension leading todifficulty in understanding mathsproblems for example or missed classesand misunderstood lessons causing

knock-on diagnosable problems lateron Geekie also compiles data to identifyfor example specific areas of knowledge

ldquoBrazil is so

diverse Itrsquoscrucially

important

to have

information

coming in

from pupils

all over the

country




that are prerequisites for more complexsubjects producing material that can beanalysed and incorporated by Geekiersquoshuman education professionals

The more the student uses thesoftware the more successfullytargeted its teaching can becomesays Sassaki and the same is true hesays of the entire platform the morestudents use it the better it becomesfor everyone ldquoScale is everythingrdquo hesays Speaking at the companyrsquos SatildeoPaulo headquarters Sassaki explainsthat operating with as many people aspossible using Geekie is essential tocapitalise on the exponential propertiesof the algorithms ldquoThe machineis making correlations all the timediscerning and understanding patternsrdquo

he says ldquoThe more data we have thebetter it can do thatrdquo

Itrsquos partly for that reason that

Geekie has an unusual buy-one-get-one-free policy for each licencepurchased by a private school a publicschool student is given free accessSassaki says he is someone who hasbenefited from the transformativeeffect of education and got into thebusiness to make a difference Whenhis grandparents arrived in Brazilfrom Japan they became indenturedagricultural servants before escapingto Satildeo Paulo Sassaki earned a degreeat the prestigious public University ofSatildeo Paulo then an MBA and an MA inEducation at Stanford before going towork on Wall Street where he spent 10years in finance

Providing the platform free tosome public-school students is partly

an altruistic gesture he says ndash butalso good business ldquoBrazil is verydiverse Itrsquos crucially important to have

information coming in from studentsall over the country because they areso completely different Having thatrange of data helps to create a product

capable of catering for an ever greaternumber of peoplerdquo

Sassaki is quick to note thatachieving scale is also a major factorin the companyrsquos reaching its businessgoals Finding its way into Brazilrsquospublic-school system is at the heart ofGeekiersquos ambition ldquoWe want to positionourselves as the default digital platformin Brazilian educationrdquo he says ldquoI donrsquotthink this a market in which yoursquoll endup with five platforms like GeekieThere might be one maybe two butnot multiple So therersquos an element oftiming you either go for it or yoursquorenot going to make it And someone elsewillrdquo

Geekie made huge strides in itsreach in 2013-14 when promotionalpartnerships with G1 the news portalfor Globo Brazilrsquos largest mediaconglomerate racked up millions ofregistrations for its Geekie Gamesapp It has so far reached a total of fivemillion users it says with 30 of thoseadults working towards high-schoolcertificates that they missed out onas teenagers With a presence in 650private schools Geekie is also in use inmore than 4000 public schools a hugeproportion in Satildeo Paulo state where the

state government reached an agreementwith the company this year to give freeaccess to students in their third and finalyears a total of 415000 students

Flaacuteudio Azevedo Limas directorof the 196000-strong State of SatildeoPaulo Teachers Union says teachersalso need to be given a chance to

learn to use the new technological toolsldquoThey can be extremely productive ifteachers are included in the processrather than simply being confrontedwith the new technologyrdquo he says Thereis a danger he warns that studentscan end up simply parked in frontof computer screens ldquoBut it doesnrsquotwork that way ndash they can do that athome What they need are decentlyrenumerated properly supportedteachers to guide themrdquo

Professor Glaucia da Silva Brito isresearch leader for the TechnologyTeachers amp Schools study group at theFederal University of Paranaacute in the cityof Curitiba Research carried out by thegroup shows strong teacher interestshe says in incorporating digital toolsinto their teaching ldquoBut at the momentthey are leaving university without any

training in the proper use of technologyin the classroomrdquo

In the hallway between classes at

The Andreacute Urani

school in Rio where

students learn with

the help of Geekie

shown by history

teacher Gilberto

Amorim left

Photographs byLianne Milton forthe Observer




983109ducation

Andreacute Urani a handful of studentslounge about on beanbags manyabsorbed in their phones ldquoTherersquos nopoint in banning phones at schoolrdquo

says Oliveira ldquoTheyrsquore part of studentsrsquolives and part of our lives toordquo Geekiesoftware is optimised for smartphonesso students who canrsquot get to school on agiven day can work on their phones ortablets if they have them even if theyhave no internet at home Many AndreacuteUrani teachers also run Facebook orWhatsApp groups for their studentsldquoThey ask a lot of questions on thererdquosays teacher Luana Rezende who runs aWhatsApp group for her class

J

ust as Geekiersquos systems are tailoredto students the platform alsoprovides modules for teachers andschool managers and in the state

system can feed performance data tostate authorities too ldquoThe informationit gives me is the best part in termsof managementrdquo says Sueli Cain deOliveira academic director for thesix private schools that with MaterDei make up the Weducation groupWhere Cain de Oliveira previouslycreated her own charts and statisticsGeekie provides them in real timeevaluating the performance of teachersand principals as well as of studentsand allowing her to splice the data in

different ways ldquoI can use it to proposetargets for school directorsrdquo shesays ldquoand they can do the same forco-ordinators and for studentsrdquo

Is there an issue with privacy giventhat data on student ndash and teacher ndashperformance could become widelyavailable within organisations bothprivate and public Itrsquos informationthat has always been gathered byorganisations in one form or anothersays Sassaki Yet the centralised easilytransmittable nature of electronicdata ndash often cloud-based unencryptedand accessed via ldquobring-your-ownrdquodevices belonging to employees ndash couldmake it easy for it to find its way intounforeseen places in future with similarimplications for student privacy asthose raised for patients by the use ofelectronic health records

Sassaki doesnrsquot appear to haveconsidered it He looks thoughtfulldquoThatrsquos truerdquo he says ldquoBut ultimatelythe data belongs to the institutionsthemselvesrdquo

Despite significant improvementsin school attendance rates in the last20 years ndash in part as a result of themeans-tested Bolsa Famiacutelia benefitand before that Bolsa Escola ndash only

45 of Brazilian adults aged 25-64completed high-school compared to theinternational average of 75 according

to figures from the Organisationfor Economic Co-operation andDevelopment International rankingsbased on maths and science test scoresat the age of 15 placed Brazil 60th out of75 countries in a set of May 2015 resultsalso published by the OECD

There remain deep-seated problems

in Brazilrsquos education system includinglow levels of competence in themanagement of many public schoolsand a lack of accountability says SassakiHe says it is also a result of the failureof Brazilian society to demand bettereducation ldquoItrsquos a very complex set ofproblems Without strong pressure fromthe population I doubt many politicianswould be prepared to tackle itrdquo

Yet when Mayrsquos OECD reportwas published the organisation alsoreleased calculations suggesting thatgiven universal enrolment in highschool and the achievement of ldquobasicskillsrdquo for all students Brazilrsquos GDP

could increase by 751 by 2095 ndash thatis over the lifetimes of todayrsquos 15-year-olds If those figures are anywhere

near the truth the question becomeshow much longer Brazil can afford tofail its schoolchildren Technologicalinnovations like Geekie seem toindicate that at least part of the solutionmight be less complicated expensiveand arduous than it once seemedoffering a generation of children new

chances to do betterWhile recognising the potentialFlaacuteudio Azevedo Limas sounds a noteof caution ldquoIncorporating technologyinto education is importantrdquo he saysldquoas long as it isnrsquot intended to substitutefor real teachersrdquo He points to schoolsthat achieve outstanding results underdifficult circumstances with almost notechnology ldquoThey could be out in thesertatildeordquo he says referring to Brazilrsquosimpoverished north-eastern backlandsndash but still manage to serve theirstudents better than schools with all thetechnological solutions in the world

What students need most of all says

Limas are well-trained teachers ndash ldquoandfor tech to stay part of the processrather than becoming the processrdquo

What is adaptive

learningA highly personalisedonline learning methodthat adapts to usersrsquoneeds in real timeSoftware providesfeedback that helpslearners progressat their own pace Itknows who you arewhat yoursquove alreadyunderstood (or not) anddecides what yoursquoregoing to see next basedon your performance

In a class usingadaptive learningsoftware each studentwill be learning thesame syllabus but attheir own pace oftenusing different types oflessons

Who are the main

providers

Knewton based in NewYork is a big providerto schools and claims tohave 10 million studentsworldwide It also has

an office in LondonAleks (Assessment andLearning in KnowledgeSpaces) owned byMcGraw-Hill Education

is also used widely inUS schools Facebookis developing adaptivelearning software withUS schools while theBill and Melinda GatesFoundation has fundedresearch in the areaand given grants to UScolleges and universitiesto launch adaptivecourses

Is it being used in UK

schools

Not widely but interest

is growing Examboard OCR CambridgeUniversity Press andRaspberry Pi jointlycreated adaptive

learning platformCogbooks in 2014to add personalisedlearning to computingGCSE massive onlineopen course (Mooc)It was used by 20000students in 2015

CogBooks is alsoworking with CambridgeUniversity in 120 UKschools and is hoping toexpand this year

What are its limitations

It can be expensive to

develop and can requireschools to invest intechnology up frontClassrooms may alsoneed to be restructured

Adaptive learning

systems often usemultiple choicequestions and somesubjects ndash such ascomputer science ndash areobviously much bettersuited to being taught inthis way than others

Will teachers lose jobs

Probably not JimTompson CEO ofCogbooks says that inthe US teachers havefound them to be usefultools

Some systems helpteachers track studentsrsquoprogress in real timeenabling them to spendmore time with thosewho need extra supportMany systems alsoallow teachers to maketheir own curriculum

But there is a longway to go until adaptivelearning is standardin schools eacherswill probably have tobe trained in how the

systems work to ensurestudents receive thebenefits of adaptiveeducationNatalie Gil

C A N S O F T W A R E T E A C H B E T T E R T H A N T E A C H E R S

ldquoStudents

need good

teachers

and for tech

to remain

part of the

process

rather than

becoming

the process

US-based Knewton says it has 10 million students




In Brazil a shortage offunding and staff hasblighted the educationsystem for decadesNow machine-learningsoftware is helpingteachers to deliver acomplete schoolsyllabus tailored toeach pupil And itlearns as it goes alongwrites Claire Rigby

Itrsquos 10am on a sunny Novemberday in Rio de Janeiro and thescene inside the classroom is oneof quiet application At a dozen or

so hexagonal tables pupils work onlaptops or in exercise books At oneof the clusters a teacher sits to help apupil while another talks to a group ofstudents at the far end of the room ndash alarge salon in which almost half of thepupils at the school are seated Therest of the schoolrsquos 213 students agedbetween 11 and 14 are busy elsewhere inthe building which includes six smallmore traditional classrooms

Through the windows that run thelength of the classroom dark blue sea isvisible in the distance past green hillswhile above the school Rocinha favelasurges up the mountain in a clutter ofconcrete and peach-coloured brick

This is Andreacute Urani MunicipalSchool a technology-focusedexperimental academy at the footof Rocinha in Rio de Janiero whichwith 70000 inhabitants is Brazilrsquoslargest favela With almost all of itsstudents drawn from the communityAndreacute Urani is a flagship adopter ofan innovative educational softwaredeveloped by a Satildeo Paulo startupGeekie Launched in 2011 GeekieLabs delivers the entire high-schoolsyllabus in hundreds of digital lessonsincorporating text images videosand exercises and also evaluates thestudentsrsquo performance at every stepfeeding real-time data to teachersand the school A separate widelyaccessible app Geekie Games has thesame components bar the institutionalintegration

Geekiersquos content and study plans areaimed at equipping students for Brazilrsquosnational ENEM exams held annuallyfor final-year high-school students and

doubling as an entrance exam for manyuniversities as well as providing proofof achievement for school-leavers

Claudio Sassaki

co-founder of Geekie a

digital startup that has

revolutionised education

in Brazil Photograph by

Germano LuumldersAbrilComunications




983109ducation
















ldquoBrazil is so


important

to have

information

coming in

from pupils

all over the

country






















school in Rio where

students learn with

the help of Geekie

shown by history

teacher Gilberto

Amorim left





983109ducation



J

















What is adaptive



Who are the main

providers





schools








Adaptive learning








ldquoStudents

need good

teachers

and for tech

to remain

part of the

process

rather than

becoming

the process





983109ducation
















ldquoBrazil is so


important

to have

information

coming in

from pupils

all over the

country






















school in Rio where

students learn with

the help of Geekie

shown by history

teacher Gilberto

Amorim left





983109ducation



J

















What is adaptive



Who are the main

providers





schools








Adaptive learning








ldquoStudents

need good

teachers

and for tech

to remain

part of the

process

rather than

becoming

the process























school in Rio where

students learn with

the help of Geekie

shown by history

teacher Gilberto

Amorim left





983109ducation



J

















What is adaptive



Who are the main

providers





schools








Adaptive learning








ldquoStudents

need good

teachers

and for tech

to remain

part of the

process

rather than

becoming

the process





983109ducation



J

















What is adaptive



Who are the main

providers





schools








Adaptive learning








ldquoStudents

need good

teachers

and for tech

to remain

part of the

process

rather than

becoming

the process


observer tech monthly - geekie

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