nSyte Project: ESL in Rural Areas
January 2009

At the request of the Colorado Dept. of Education’s Migrant Education Program, Acadium was charged with providing a solution to bring ESL curriculum to preschool children in the migrant worker community and to out-of-school youth.

The solution was an adaptation of the nSyte technology* using off-the-shelf hardware to bring a live teacher right into the homes of the families using their televisions as the primary visual display.

Then, on Sunday nights, the older youths would use more typical curriculum resources while their teacher, again showing up on their televisions, would step them through the paces of learning English.

Technology
Absorbed in the interaction with their teacher, the children click a camera icon and the webcam located just above their televisions would flicker on and classmates throughout the region would see his or her video interaction with the teacher. Orchestrating the class through web-conferencing tools, the teacher provided a forum for all the learners to take turns participating live with the teacher and the content

A 3G cell phone network, not even available just a year earlier, allowed the transmission of all of the content and video into these remote areas.

Benefits
“The program was a success from the minute we started,” according to the program coordinator. “No one would have ever believed these families were capable of a project like this.”

Indeed these families showed a commitment to education rarely seen in this rural Latino community. “Not only were the children learning English, but so were the parents,” reported the program director.

“And as an unexpected outcome the nSyte installation has helped the parents overcome their initial fear of computers. It is empowering our parents to become global citizens.”

Next Steps
The families are enthusiastic about continuing with the program but the program director must balance providing a variety of services for these families on a fixed budget. Meanwhile, Acadium is refining the nSyte technology solution to make it easier to use and more cost effective for future teachers and learners.

For more information contact an Acadium representative at 303-718-4829 or info@acadium.com.