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ACR GCD is excited to participate in CIES 2023! Our team will be facilitating two sessions, participating on a panel in a third, supporting our awardees and partners during their presentations, and hosting a booth in the Constitutional Ballroom. Our sessions and presentations align with the theme of this year’s conference: Improving Education for a More Equitable World—and at our booth, you can get hands-on experience with free, open source digital resources and tools that have demonstrated the ability to increase reading outcomes and access to education for children all over the world, including children in low-resource contexts and children with disabilities. Learn more below!
Try or download Feed the Monster, a literacy learning app available in more than 50 languages, including Ukrainian.
Saturday – Wednesday, February 18 – 22
ACR GCD Booth: Be Part of the Solution!
Constitution Ballroom | Constitution Level
Stop by our booth in the Constitution Ballroom (just off the foyer on the Constitution Level) and learn about dozens of free EdTech solutions, including digital libraries, learning games and apps, book creation platforms, and more! Try an ACR GCD-funded solution at our booth or download one on your device and you can enter a raffle to win a $50 gift card! Many of these open source and accessible solutions can be adapted, scaled and implemented in programs and regions all over the world. We will also have information about additional tools and resources as well as ideas on how to expand use in low resource settings, in and outside of school, and in crisis contexts. (To access the Constitution Level, take the escalators just outside the Grand Foyer on the Declaration Level up to the Constitution Level. See a floor plan.)
Wednesday, February 15
Highlighted Session: Screening children for disabilities: a review of tools, evidence and implementation practices | 7:45 – 9:15 a.m. EST | On-Line Component, Zoom Room 105
There are an estimated 240 million children with disabilities worldwide. Though education systems across the world may not adequately support children of all learning abilities, efforts are being made to change these systems to better include all learners- not just those who are ‘able-bodied’. Among the many facets of making this shift, the need for better data on children with disabilities is key for making better policy decisions that support them. To that end screening practices play a role of considerable importance in the foundation of systems that can provide support to all learners.
However, challenges exist around screening and identifying learners with disabilities within education systems. Should these screenings focus on medical definitions of disability or consider social systems and practices that may inhibit individuals as well? How accurate are current screening tools? Once an individual has been identified as disabled or having a functional difficulty, how might one assess the learning environment for how it can support this individual? And to whom is this data available?
This panel will offer evidence and insight from four organizations and institutions working to answer these key questions and provide programming that supports all learners. UNICEF and the Washington Group on Disability Statistics (WG) will share findings from tests of the Child Functioning Module (CFM) and Inclusive Education Module (IEM). These screening tools aim to identify learners with functional difficulties and evaluate social and structural supports for learners within and outside of school environments. School-to-School International will put forward results and lessons learned from a validity study examining a teacher version of the CFM in Nepal. Humanity & Inclusion (HI) will describe application of screening tools in the Reading for All program in Nepal, which aims to improve reading outcomes for children with disabilities in grades 1–3. Finally, Inclusive Development Partners will present conclusions on screening efforts in Nepal and Cambodia from the Multi-Country Study of Inclusive Education (MCSIE), a formative evaluation of USAID’s inclusive education programs there.
Wednesday, February 15
Highlighted Session: Supporting literacy development for young children | 9:30 – 11 a.m. EST | On-Line Component, Zoom Room 102
This refereed roundtable session is chaired by Ilfa Zhulamanova, University of Southern Indiana, and includes presentations by Rochester Institute of Technology/National Technical Institute for the Deaf and Creative Associates International:
- Project TREE: Improving deaf children’s emergent literacy skills and caregiver collaboration (Philippines, Fiji and Papua New Guinea) – Christopher Kurz and Patrick Graham of RIT/NTID presenting
- Scaling up access to Supplementary reading materials (A Case from Morocco’s National program for Reading) – Linda Wafi of Creative Associates International presenting
Sunday, February 19
Every child deserves books: How the Global Book Alliance gets books into children’s hands | 8 – 9:30 a.m. (Eastern)
Children can’t learn to read without access to books or reading materials to support them on their learning journey. Literacy leads to better health, broadens employment opportunities and creates safer and more stable societies. However, more than 90 percent of primary-age children in low-income countries and 75 percent of children in lower-middle income countries (more than 330 million children) are not expected to read or do basic maths by the end of primary school. For the more than 93 million children living with disabilities globally, learning outcomes are even lower as they are less likely to go to school and be provided with appropriate learning resources. Having the opportunity to engage with books is known to boost a child’s literacy potential and despite the importance of books in learning to read, there is a global shortage of books for children in many underserved languages especially in accessible formats. This is the challenge known as the “book gap.”
As a panelist, Chief of Party Sergio Ramirez Mena will talk about how, to address this challenge, ACR GCD in collaboration with the Global Book Alliance (GBA) launched in 2020 the Begin with Books prize competition challenging innovators globally to assemble cost-effective packages of high quality, accessible digital books for beginning readers in more than 30 designated underserved languages both (spoken and signed) such as Malian Mamara, Nepali Tamang, Malawian Tumbuka language and others used in more than 15 countries. As part of the prize competition, solvers are required to upload the books they develop to the Global Digital Library (GDL), a mobile and web platform offering a collection of high quality, open educational early grade reading resources in languages that children and their communities globally use and understand. The platform also facilitates translation and localization of GDL resources to more than 300 languages and growing.
Ramirez Mena will provide a retrospective view of the lessons learned from our work with awardees in Nepal, Mali, Malawi and Pacific Island about the production of high-quality digital storybooks, especially production of visual and audio content for deaf or blind children. The challenge of reaching the minimum standards for production of digital books in both written and local sign languages taking into account that most of these languages are fast evolving their own vocabulary and signs linked to their own context. Beyond completing the production and upload of the digital content, the next level is reaching the intended audiences: finding channels for the use of these digital content in remote and marginalized communities. The presentation will conclude with key recommendations based on field data about how to enable effective and greater use of these materials through existing education programs.
Organizations represented on the panel in addition to ACR GCD include Room to Read, EDC/GBAIA and Norad/Global Digital Library.
Sunday, February 19
How has an EdTech innovation fund supported innovators to promote reading for children? What lies ahead? | 2:45 – 4:15 p.m. (Eastern)
ACR GCD has been investing in reading, with a specific mandate to support greater access to quality reading materials, promote inclusion leveraging technology so that all children read – especially those with disabilities where more than 90% of these children do not attend school regularly. ACR has invested over $25M through a partnership of the Australian Government, USAID, and World Vision US. The grand challenge promotes new ideas through competitions, prizes and research to support EdTech for reading using high-quality and accessible content. Currently, All Children Reading is in its third round of investments focused on three core areas: provide digital books in underserved languages including local sign language, support solutions for children with disabilities at scale, and test new methodologies to promote foundational literacy with preschool children, including those who are deaf.
The panel will bring together contrasting perspectives on how a leading EdTech innovation fund – like All Children Reading – brings together government funders, social entrepreneurs, application developers, and reading experts to the table to foster new solutions or scale those that prove to be most useful to support literacy in for the most marginalized in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Two presentations will include fresh testimonies from key innovators supported through the life of the challenge to increase and expand their solutions. They will explain how this innovation fund provided them with the momentum to improve their platform and scale their solutions. The next presentation will elaborate on the lessons learned from the funding agency’s experience with this grand challenge to spur new solutions. The final presentation will reflect on learning agenda, impact, and lessons learned from the second and third rounds of funding through ACR. The panel will reflect on the past 10 years of legacy promoting EdTech in low-resource environments to bring digital content to more children. The presenters will identify challenges but more importantly opportunities to expand Edtech leveraging the synergies between funders, solvers, and implementers to scale applications, games and reading resources.
Presenters
- Mark Lynd, School-to-School International
- Ayan Kishore, Benetech
- Paul Frank, SIL
- Meredith Perry, USAID
Monday, February 20
Highlighted Session: Sign Language Storybook Production: Leveraging Lessons Learned | 9:30 – 11:00 a.m. EST
The Asia Foundation, eKitabu, RIT/NTID, and SIL LEAD have had the privilege of working with Disabled People’s Organizations (DPOs) to create sign language storybooks. We will share the lessons we have learned with each other and with CIES 2023 attendees who are interested in the creation of digital storybooks for the Deaf. Our organizations use different platforms and may have differing approaches, but one thing we have in common is how much we have learned from members of Deaf communities around the world. We also share the strong conviction that we still have much to learn.
For the more than 93 million children with disabilities, there are few storybooks in local languages and accessible formats to support the development of foundational literacy skills and nurture enjoyable reading experiences. The Asia Foundation (TAF) is challenging this book gap by working with DPOs to create and publish locally created books on its free digital library (letsreadasia.org) with sign language video, alt image tags, and synchronized audio tracks.
eKitabu established Studio KSL in 2018 to produce sign language video storybooks in Kenyan Sign Language. Since then, content has been developed in the sign languages of Rwanda, Tanzania, Zanzibar, Ethiopia, and Malawi. Along with the other organizations on this panel, eKitabu has built on and contributed to emerging standards for sign language storybook and textbook production, including UNICEF’s Accessible Digital Textbook Initiative, All Children Reading’s Minimum and Gold Standards for the Sign Language Video Storybook, and eKitabu’s Accessible EPUB Toolkit.
The Rochester Institute of Technology/National Technical Institute for the Deaf (RIT/NTID) of the United States developed the World Around You (WAY) platform to promote reading for deaf children and their families, including those in remote areas with limited or no Wi-Fi access in low and middle-income countries. WAY is an open source, web-based editing and publishing platform. On the user interface, users can view stories and training materials. In the creator interface, content contributors (e.g., storytellers, writers, artists, signers) can design new stories combining images, text, and video of signing storytellers into web-based visual storybooks with ease in their local languages and cultures.
SIL LEAD has had the privilege over the past two years to work with DPOs in Mali and Papua New Guinea to produce sign language books using SIL International’s free, open-source software Bloom. Digital versions of these books are available on bloomlibrary.org and can be downloaded for use with the free Bloom Reader Android app and as ePUBs. Bloom will soon provide a tool to seamlessly create videos suitable for sharing via Youtube, Facebook, or WhatsApp.
TAF will share its experience working with local DPOs in Nepal, Fiji, and Indonesia to produce sign language video storybooks for children. From creating new signs within the language that more effectively convey the stories to efficient video compression that allows users to better access the videos, these experiences point to practices relevant to organizations across the globe that aim to support DPOs to produce children’s content. TAF will use video clips and behind-the-scenes images to share the incredible talent of DPOs in the Asia Pacific region and to demonstrate early learnings in the production of content to increase inclusion in education.
eKitabu will address the potential impact of scaling sign language video production in multiple local sign languages in Africa to provide leadership, employment, and training opportunities for persons with disabilities. Through its efforts, eKitabu has demonstrated that accessible digital content production provides leadership and employment opportunities for people with disabilities. Such Deaf leadership is consistent with “Nothing about us without us” and “design with users.” They have also demonstrated that sign language video storybooks contribute to Ministry of Education and international development partners’ goals to implement inclusive education policies and access to early grade reading materials. These goals can contribute to a steady demand for local content production and a more sustainable and inclusive local ecosystem. And, developing sign language video storybooks and textbooks contributes to digital content with multiple means of representation in support of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and WCAG 2.1 accessibility guidelines.
RIT/NTID will focus on their replication and sustainability model for creating and translating storybooks, providing training and best practice modules in each new partner country. Because RIT/NTID uses crowdsourcing content, local communities may choose to translate an existing book from the library into their local languages. RIT/NTID also encourages communities to create new signed stories that can be added to the library. RIT/NTID adapts the training and support to meet each country’s needs. Through its community-engaged training, RIT/NTID promotes “growing your own” communities of storytellers and creators to contribute to the WAY library and training resources.
SIL LEAD consultants in Mali and PNG will be interviewing Deaf workshop participants to learn about their experiences using Bloom to create sign language books and to share their perspectives on the strengths and weaknesses of the process. SIL LEAD consultants will also reflect on the lessons they learned from working with DPOs over the last two years, in particular the differences between making books for the Deaf and empowering the Deaf to make books for the Deaf. During the panel presentation, SIL LEAD hopes to share subtitled videos of deaf content creators and to reflect on some of the lessons learned by its consultants through their interactions with the Deaf.
Monday, February 20
Equity in assessments: How to design appropriate learning assessments to ensure greater inclusion of children with disabilities | 2:45 – 4:15 p.m. (Eastern)
The Girls’ Education Challenge (GEC) Fund Manager (FM), funded by the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), and ACR GCD collaboratively developed a technical brief that captures the importance of, progress towards, and lessons learned from the development of inclusive learning assessments for children. In this panel, contributors to the technical brief will share key insights, lessons learned, and next step recommendations from the donor, researcher and implementer perspective. Attendees of the panel will learn why including children with disabilities in learning assessments is imperative, how to take concrete actions towards inclusion, and how including children with disabilities in learning assessments can benefit project implementation. This panel will also highlight the Toolkit on Universal Design for Assessment (UDA), created by Inclusive Development Partners (IDP) with the support of the World Bank.
Chair
- Michelle Oetman, Senior Program Manager, Events & Convenings, ACR GCD
Discussant
- Joshua Josa, Inclusive Education Specialist, USAID
Presenters
- Michelle Hartman Sunyak, Senior Program Manager, World Vision
- Aimee Reeves, Evaluation Lead, Girls’ Education Challenge
- Purna Shrestha, VSO
- Anne M Hayes, Executive Director, Inclusive Development Partners
Wednesday, February 22
Highlighted Session: Screening children for disabilities: a review of tools, evidence, and implementation practices | 7:45 – 9:15 a.m. EST
There are an estimated 240 million children with disabilities worldwide. Though education systems across the world may not adequately support children of all learning abilities, efforts are being made to change these systems to better include all learners- not just those who are ‘able-bodied’. Among the many facets of making this shift, the need for better data on children with disabilities is key for making better policy decisions that support them. To that end screening practices play a role of considerable importance in the foundation of systems that can provide support to all learners.
However, challenges exist around screening and identifying learners with disabilities within education systems. Should these screenings focus on medical definitions of disability or consider social systems and practices that may inhibit individuals as well? How accurate are current screening tools? Once an individual has been identified as disabled or having a functional difficulty, how might one assess the learning environment for how it can support this individual? And to whom is this data available?
This panel will offer evidence and insight from four organizations and institutions working to answer these key questions and provide programming that supports all learners. UNICEF and the Washington Group on Disability Statistics (WG) will share findings from tests of the Child Functioning Module (CFM) and Inclusive Education Module (IEM). These screening tools aim to identify learners with functional difficulties and evaluate social and structural supports for learners within and outside of school environments. School-to-School International will put forward results and lessons learned from a validity study examining a teacher version of the CFM in Nepal. Humanity & Inclusion (HI) will describe application of screening tools in the Reading for All program in Nepal, which aims to improve reading outcomes for children with disabilities in grades 1–3. Finally, Inclusive Development Partners will present conclusions on screening efforts in Nepal and Cambodia from the Multi-Country Study of Inclusive Education (MCSIE), a formative evaluation of USAID’s inclusive education programs there.
