Central Asian EduHub

I am Chorobek, from the Kyrgyz Republic, Central Asia.

I am an apologist for the development of education in Kyrgyz language and the widespread use of IT in education. For the past 10 years I have been contributing to solve the problem of lack of educational content in Kyrgyz. This is a typical problem of the former Soviet Republics, where the Russian language dominated. So I started by digitizing books (bizdin.kg), led the Kyrgyz Wikipedia community, created the largest online Kyrgyz language dictionary (el-sozduk.kg). Fought for the availability of textbooks produced by state on internet under the open licenses. I organized and led the Kyrgyz community of translators and we included the Kyrgyz into Google Translate. The last couple of years I’ve been working on the monetization of our websites to achieve financial stability and providing trainings for teachers of rural schools on digital literacy.

Problem that we want to solve is the shortage of educational content for rural population in their native language. This is a typical problem of the former Soviet Republics, where the capital city speaking and acting in Russian and rural in their native. Formally rural are majority as population, but they are the minority in the matters of access to modern knowledge, IT and new skills.

We intend to create educational hub for naive speaking rural people.

1. Create equipped training center to train teachers and students on digital literacy from zero to creation of online lessons and courses.

2.  Create own online learning platform based on openEdx to train teachers, create and distribute online lessons and courses.

3. Produce tone of educational content, online lessons and courses in Kyrgyz created in cooperation with teachers and experts.

4. Try to become first distance online school with state license.

4.2 million or 65% of the KR population live in rural areas. 73% of the population are Kyrgyz speaking (4.75 million). 56 000 (72%) of 78 000 teachers are in lives in rural area. 75 000 (68%) from 1.1 million schoolchildren study in Kyrgyz language schools. 

But all significant events, educational content, information about new skills are produced and concentrated in the capital and mainly accessible only for Russian speakers. An exceedingly small part of the information is available Kyrgyz. Even websites of government organizations provide information only in Russian. So rural people still have huge shortage of educational information and are poorly involved in development processes.

Creation of educational content and online learning could help to solve the situation. But here we meet another problem - very low digital literacy of the schoolteachers, who should use internet for education, for example in situation like Covid-19. 

Digital literature of schoolteachers in the Russian Federation was 16% (2018). As a rule, the situation here is worse than in Russia. On training, I see an extremely low level of digital skills of teachers and students from regions and want to help them.

The educational hub for teachers and students to use digital technologies in education from zero to hero in Kyrgyz.

We will create an equipped training center and an online platform for training based on open Edx. Will conduct online and offline training. And we will create with teachers and other experts involved, a tone of online lessons and localization of open licences content too: school subjects + vital skills for youth as basics of finance, media literacy, computer programming, English, etc. Further, we want to create the first online distance school in Kyrgyzstan. Obtaining a state license for the provision of distance education services requires an own building and a team of teachers. With the equipped training center, working online teaching platform and a team of teachers we could obtain state license and provide the certificate of graduation. The distance online school will open educational opportunities for children with disabilities in the country. We will have hybrid learning system: a live lesson with a teacher and the benefits of online technology. Rural children will get the opportunity to study live with the best teachers of the country without leaving their home.

Our aim is to develop education for rural people. The vast majority of them are Kyrgyz-speaking. They believe the Soviet education was the best and internet interferes with education. They are ashamed to admit that they do not know Russian. But don’t understand because of shame, they are deprived of access to knowledge. Statistic says 44% of the population speaks Russian in the Kyrgyz Republic. But discussions with real people in regions shows - most of them do not understand Russian.

Kyrgyz state and Russian media covering regions continue to praise the Soviet education and criticize technology and it forms the relevant concepts and fears.

Now WhatsApp have become the main channel of information for youth. The lack of critical thinking, which is a direct consequence of Soviet education has created the problem with fake information.

But, the COVID-19 pandemic showed, we need the online education. Teachers and students must have digital skills.

Our project will help the rural population to use IT technologies for education, involve teachers to production of educational content and developing the potential of the rural people by providing modern skills.

Getting access to modern knowledge and required skills in their native language could elevate opportunities for rural people. Now because of the language they are lagging behind. With the means of internet and the efforts of our team of like-minded people, we can increase their capabilities in a short time. For this, we have insight of the question, sufficient experience in implementing of a national scale projects and support from the local community. And most importantly, we inspired with creation and spreading knowledge in Kyrgyz.

We have long known about the problem of lack of knowledge for the Kyrgyz-speaking rural population. For 10 years we have been implementing various internet projects to expand the availability of knowledge in the Kyrgyz language. For the last couple of years, I have been providing training in the regions on digital literacy for schoolteachers. The ability of rural teachers to apply digital technology is just terrible. It is needed to explain elementary things. Trying to change the situation, we created a series of 45 videos. It was first time when the idea arose to make a training courses for teachers.

We also get statistics from our sites. They are looking for quick answers in the form of short lessons and tips. We have already set out to create online lessons for high school students on the Kyrgyz language and digital skills. Then the quarantine has arrived. And teachers with zero digital skills started teaching online. There was a lot of criticism of teachers from parents, their inability to use applications.

And I realized that urgently need to help 56,000 schoolteachers and their students with lessons and training.

I would like to live in a well-developed country. But how we could develop if a large part of the population does not participate in development matters because of knowledge? The country consists of two poor communicating parts and each lives its own life. Between them is the language barrier. The progressive ideas of Russian-speaking urban do not find understanding in Kyrgyz-speaking regions. Urban sure that the rural do not want to understand them. But how do people in the regions understand them if they never had the information that the urban talk about?

I come from a countryside and know very well that Kyrgyz-speaking youth has a huge potential for growth. They need to organize access to knowledge, and I believe that the Internet is the best way to do this. Language separation should not deprive rural children of access to the same knowledge as their peers in the city in Russian. I want to make sure that the native tongue of children does not become a barrier for development in my country. I want to build a bridge of knowledge that could link urban with country to develop whole country.

I have been working for a long time to realize my vision of the issue. I have successfully implemented a number of projects that really work to expand the availability of knowledge in the Kyrgyz language. Our projects are interconnected. One comes from the other. So the digitalization of various reference books, encyclopedias and dictionaries led to the idea of developing Kyrgyz Wikipedia. With Wikipedia we began to translate a lot and created an online dictionary of the Kyrgyz language. Translation issues have led us to include Kyrgyz in Google Translate. We advocated the availability of school textbooks online, as a solution, when schools were provided with textbooks by only 40% -50%. Here, too, if Russian-language schools can use textbooks of the Russian Federation, for Kyrgyz-speaking students only textbooks published by the state remain. Accordingly, the lack of textbooks for rural schools was more acute. Now only on our site more than 10 thousand downloads of textbooks daily. And now society is discussing the quality of these textbooks, not the amount.

So, gradually became apologists for the development of IT in education.

Now is the time to unite all our resources - sites with textbooks, experience in translating and localizing knowledge, expertise in digital technologies and community experience to create a completely new resource - a hub for the development of knowledge.

I believe that perseverance is the main quality in overcoming adversity.

So our websites bizdin.kg (2010), el-sozduk.kg (2013), orfo.kg (2016) have not received grants from sponsors for a long time. All these sites were created for viewing from computers, without the task of making money. А couple of years ago there raised a question - further development or closure. Because website support requires money. We decided to redo them so that they earn money from advertising. Here it must be said that websites that provide content in such small languages as Kyrgyz cannot earn on Adsense advertising. If they can (with content in Russian, English), then very little. Therefore, such sites do not seriously consider advertising as a source of income.

In 2019, I took part in a grant competition and won small funding for a website redesign. The task of making money from advertising has completely changed our vision of how to make websites and delivery content. We have optimized sites for search engines to display ads. With the beginning of the last school year, they began to make a some money on advertising and bigger auditory. This inspired us to take new steps.

When I started the country was very pessimistic about the possibilities of the Kyrgyz language. People were sure that it was impossible to translate into Kyrgyz, for example, legal, technical, medical IT terms. Accordingly, it was concluded, nothing to talk about the use of Kyrgyz in the public life. Сontestation established views on the helplessness of the Kyrgyz language was perceived as nationalism.

With our successfully implemented projects, we have shown that people themselves can raise problems without a state. After all, we took up the problem, the solution of which is considered the prerogative of the state. In a society where people are used to waiting for a solution to significant problems only by the state, this is very important.

Until we made a library of books in Kyrgyz, people expected this from the state. This happened with Wikipedia, with an online dictionary and Google Translate. 2015, when we started the campaign to include Kyrgyz in Google Translate, hundreds of volunteers took part in our campaigns. We surprised how much people support and trust us.

Thanks to our projects, the society has understood that in the Kyrgyz language everything can be done that is done in other languages.

To provide online training on digital literacy for 3000 teachers within next year and for 50 000 teachers within next 5 year. 

The Soros Foundation-Kyrgyzstan sponsored most of our projects aimed to develop Kyrgyz language for education. Now we started to create online training course for school teachers on Informatics for 7-9 grades in Kyrgyz and Russian.