Executive+Summary

**__Executive Summary__**

"Knowledge Works" goal as a group is simple and that is to provide students (even young adults) from third world countries access to teachers from not only across the country but around the globe. Our intent is to provide education (literacy being the prime focus) to places that 1) don't have the sufficient funds to put into education 2) have low literacy rates to open up opportunities for the young generation and 3) have other factors preventing distribution of education.

A place like Afghanistan is an example of a country that falls into ALL three of these categories. Most school buildings in the area have been stuck in a never ending rebuilding cycle due to the country's endless wars and conflicts. Also, most if not all of Afghanistan's resources go straight into the war front while education is shoved lower down the priority list. It is because of this that the people in Afghanistan have such low literacy rates (According to UNICEF, as of 2008 the literacy rate was a staggering 28% and primary school enrolment/attendance was a measly 61%). There are many reasons as to why it is this way, for one the Taliban as a terrorist group are very much oppressive towards their people. They taunt Afghan teachers with death threats if they do so much as lay a foot in classrooms and because of this there is instability and disorder in the schooling system. In order to bring about change to Afghanistan and their troubled education system, we must focus on changing three key items that were covered by Sally Armstrong in her article "The Courage to Teach in Afghanistan" and they are: security, budget and staffing. "Knowledge Works" covers all of these issues with their proposed operation.

The setup is simple. Knowledge Works will pair up with UNESCO Afghanistan. UNESCO stands for United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization and they are basically concerned with increasing the literacy rate in third world countries by means of supporting teacher training, rebuilding of schools, and promoting the use of communication technologies in schools. Knowledge Works will work under UNESCO's wing and by doing so UNESCO will provide some of the fundings needed in order for it to function (such as a building where the operations will commence, responsible staff etc.)

How "Knowledge Works" works is students are enrolled into classrooms (maximum of thirty per class) and they will be accompanied by a responsible supervisor who will be in charge with booting up the Knowledge Works program on the computer. The program is either a prerecorded or a live recording (depending on time zone differences) of an assigned teacher from around the world - teaching the weekly literacy lesson. The video stream will be projected to a projector screen for maximum visibility by all the students. Once the lesson is completed, students who have general questions or require extra help from the teacher are able to either book appointments, or send an email to the teacher with the help of the attending supervisor. These appointments can then be handled through a 1 to 1 video conference session in the future (via Skype) when a time can be worked out accordingly.

- Illustration of what exactly students will see before them during each session.  The main idea here is we are providing a safe, and viable alternative method of education that can be accessible to anyone possessing a low literacy rate. These lessons from renowned, cream of the crop literature teachers from around the world strive to significantly improve the literacy of every child/young adult attending. With this new method of education, students attending will be stimulated with the power of technology and will be thoroughly engaged throughout the lesson. After the lesson, students are free to openly discuss the lesson with their peers over light snacks provided by UNESCO, promoting comraderie and growing friendships that will hopefully carry over outside the building.

In terms of protection from the Taliban, teachers are protected from behind their computer screens and so risk nothing but helping out the Afghani youth. Addressing the fear of globalism and corruption of one's values through imperialistic influence - all content produced by Knowledge Works and its teachers will be carefully scrutinized and monitored by UNESCO. If for any reason a teacher or a staff member intends to imperially influence their students they will be immediately relieved of and will face further consequences in the future. According to a 2007 report by the UK National Academic Recognition Information Centre (NARIC), Afghanistan’s teachers face several problems that undermine the overall effectiveness of the Afghani Educational system. Since the communist era, a system of teacher training and qualifications was set up in order to produce competent teachers for both lower and higher education levels. However, since the rule of the Taliban regime and subsequent US invasion, this system has been abandoned (NARIC). As a result of the years of violence, the number of teachers in the country has almost halved, with the government estimating that around 30,000 new teachers are needed to meet current demand (NARIC). This extreme shortage of teachers has lead to an influx of unqualified, inadequately trained students playing the roles of teachers. Reports show that in Afghanistan today, many teachers have not even graduated from high school. It is not rare to come across teachers who have a grade 9 education and a crash course in teacher preparation (NARIC).

The Afghani government recognizes the serious problem on their hands and have endorsed distance-learning programs through the use of radio and television (NARIC). However, these technologies are limited in that the do not allow for communication between the teacher and pupils, with the teaching method focused on memorization rather than understanding. Furthermore, the teachers often suffer from the same lack of qualifications as in-class teachers. This lack of skills and broken and teaching method has left the country’s educational system in desperate need of alternative approaches. This is where KnowledgeWorks comes into picture. KnowledgeWorks makes use of modern technologies to provide a quality education to those in need. The KnowledgeWorks software allows for instant communication, as well as the ability to move at the pace of the students to ensure that they truly understand what they are being taught.

Link to NARIC report http://www.refugeesintoteaching.org.uk/OneStopCMS/Core/CrawlerResourceServer.aspx?resource=E2B83866-A8BC-40EE-8C29-D3A8764874F9&mode=link&guid=ecf2236a54db4396a6e409c146f26de6

http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/afghanistan_statistics.html http://www.oct.ca/publications/professionally_speaking/december_2006/afghanistan.asp