In Napo, life starts around four or five a.m. The locals understand that it’s easier to get moving earlier in the day while temperatures are still cool and before the morning mist dissipates. In these refreshing mornings, people often try to get a headstart on their activities, setting a foundation for the day before the sun emerges and drives up the temperature. This can mean anything from getting the kids fed, dressed, and ready for school to milking the cows and leading them out to graze—anything that helps prepare for the oncoming heat.
This model of life is exactly how my work at the Unidad Educativa Bilingüe Pano (UEBP) has transpired. The Excel workshops I completed with the teachers at the school acted almost as a diagnostic test in which both parties could understand how the other works. And it was these workshops that laid the foundation for the real work—setting up an online education platform through Canvas by Instructure.
Canvas by Instructure is an open-source learning platform that allows instructors to upload and manage course material that students can access anywhere with an Internet connection. Launching a digital education initiative in a rural area with connectivity challenges might seem counterintuitive, but in actuality, it is absolutely imperative.
For the first time, teachers have a way to share unlimited online resources with students as well as provide students with crucial tools that may be too expensive to purchase in print. Additionally, working with an online education platform affords students the opportunity to participate in today’s digitized world despite their rural background and hone key technological skills in addition to social media sites, such as working with Google documents and accessing online articles.
Canvas encourages digital literacy at both the student level and the instructor level, and I have been especially impressed by the level of engagement, interest, and dedication from instructors at UEBP who are working to set up their course pages. It is their passion—their willingness to work through the heat of the day—that gives me confidence in the success of this project.
from nomad to native 