Simurg

Simurg is a novel model for structuring learning experiences for students in rural Pakistan. The model describes a collaboration across multiple levels - with village teachers, local and remote mentors and university researchers - to co-design lessons aimed at extending the curriculum to skills such as collaboration, creativity and problem solving. A variety of existing information and communication technologies allow the school to leverage the assets of the local community and the skills of remote collaborators. In our work with the elementary school Banyan, introduction of low-cost robotics kits and other digital tools showed promising gains in computational thinking and language literacies.