Reimagining Education Through Technology

I didn’t know what to expect when I traveled to Malaysia for the very first time. I knew my mission: connect zero client technology — desktop solutions composed of a screen, a keyboard and a mouse that function entirely by remotely connecting to a central server — in rural and urban classrooms that had never been equipped with computers. But I never could have imagined just how life changing the process of executing that mission would be.

My journey to a particular school in the jungle of Sabah, the easternmost state of Malaysia located on the island of Borneo, started with a five-hour car ride down a dirt road. We then loaded all of our equipment onto long boats, on which we rode for another hour and a half, before finally reaching our destination. Upon arriving at the school I saw classrooms full of simple desks and chairs and dormitories with beds stacked three high, all protected by window bars. Why, you may be wondering? To keep away the orangutans.

All Malaysian children must attend school by government mandate, no matter where they live. So while my journey through the jungle seemed extraordinary to me, I quickly learned that it was commonplace for the children of Sabah.  Each week, they make the sojourn to school and stay overnight in dorms for a few days of instruction before returning home to their families.

As unfamiliar as such a trek felt to me, the things I experience as ordinary and familiar — access to desktop, mobile, virtual, ubiquitous technology — were entirely foreign to many of the children I met. Some had never seen a computer before, never moved a mouse, never typed on a keyboard. But they knew something about learning. They were so energetic and passionate about their studies, making the experience of bringing technology to their classrooms all the more meaningful.

As we began setting up zero clients, I knew we were doing something that would help satisfy the children’s curiosity about the world around them. It’s not that they weren’t already learning a lot. They have amazing teachers who follow regimented curricula, and Malaysia sets high standards of education for its people. In fact, investment in education is a top priority for its government. Bringing this technology into their classrooms would open more doors to information, teaching tools, digital capacity and enrichment for an excited group of kids, regardless of environmental and geographical conditions.

The children watched with great interest and anticipation as we connected their classrooms. We brought wiring and power resources with us to supplement the solar panels and generator the school already used for electricity. They had a satellite link that enabled an Internet connection as well. The connection was strong enough to support a remote server. The zero clients use only 15 to 20 watts of power each so we can power a lot of them; traditional computers would have demanded 200 watts per unit. Despite our low power needs, we faced some wiring challenges as we worked. The wires fried as we tested the system. We heard a beep and lost all power. Luckily, I had extra wire with me, and after this experience we made sure to bring it to all the other schools where we installed the zero clients.
The day the kids used the technology for the first time was the highlight of my trip. The technology come to life in the bright-eyed enthusiasm of the children.  The prototype development, the testing and re-testing, the rigorous steps required to beat out the competition in collaboration with Bitara Induk (an information and communications technology systems integrator) and VMware, all culminated in that instant. We had “passed the test” with a high score from The Ministry of Education, Malaysia.

I was fortunate to repeat my experience in the Sabah jungle at several other schools throughout Malaysia. By March 2014, our partnership afforded 25,000 zero clients across 1,250 rural and inland schools. It’s all part of the Malaysian government’s ambitious vision for preschool through university education called the Malaysia Education Blueprint, 2013-2025, which will ultimately have an impact on six million children at 10,000 schools. Among the key tenets of the plan is an investment in information and communications technology to improve educational outcomes, advance Malaysia’s competitiveness in the global market and bring about educational parity between urban and rural schools.

The success we’re seeing with the PCoIP-enabled zero clients across the country has exceeded the Malaysian government’s expectations. With minimal onsite IT setup or modification to the classroom environment, high performance computing and educational resources are being delivered across devices to enhance teaching and learning. Children from remote village schools are accessing the same digital resources as kids in urban areas, and they’re doing it through a centralized computing model that simplifies IT management and reduces hardware costs while enhancing data security.

No data live on the zero clients themselves, which is how they consume so little power and why public education administrators don’t have to worry about securing thousands of individual machines. Data stays in the data center and encrypted pixels are sent to zero clients via the PCoIP protocol, which decodes the pixels and create displays that resemble traditional desktops.

Currently, Malaysia is evaluating the potential to adopt the same model for digital classrooms on a national scale, which could make it the first country in the world to use PCoIP to empower an entire public school system with centrally managed desktops. Through this program, Malaysia is demonstrating the potential for bridging the digital divide between urban and rural schools in educational systems in other regions of the world. In fact, it’s caught the interest of neighboring countries in ASEAN — and beyond.

I’m profoundly honored and humbled to have had the opportunity to travel throughout Malaysia, and especially to spend time with school children and teachers in Sabah, alongside my newfound colleagues and friends at Bitara Induk. I look forward to embarking on similar missions throughout the world aimed at leveling the playing field and reimagining education with virtual desktop technology.

info:http://innovationinsights.wired.com