L2L volunteers have been making digital lessons for the primary school children in rural Lesotho who are using XO laptops at their schools. The lessons cover topics in ESL (English as a Second Language), math, science, and cognitive skills. There are games, instructional lessons, and practice exercises.
These lessons are customized for the language and academic skills of the children in rural Lesotho, and they use familiar images from their culture and environment.
A key advantage of using computer lessons to teach standard subjects in Lesotho is that students in overcrowded classroom can repeat a lesson as many times as they need and get instant feedback on their answers. Scores on screen help teachers see immediately who is struggling with a particular lesson.
Scratch is a computer program language designed by MIT to help teach children how to program. It is also highly suitable for creating lessons on XO-1 laptops like we use in Lesotho. The program code is made up of color-coded blocks that are interlocking. Children have the option to watch the live action (lesson) while viewing the programming that created it.
You can view a sample of these lessons on the L2L's page on the Scratch website. To start a lesson, click on the green flag.
https://scratch.mit.edu/users/L2L/projects/
