SHIELD OF INNOCENCE INITIATIVE

Edu-Toons is an educational solution that makes use of animation to learn and teach. It is provides curriculum-based education for primary school-aged children between 5 - 12 years. Edu-Toons is designed to solve problems associated with learning losses caused by low or non-attendance of school. It was originally targeted at Out-of-School and displaced children, who are victims of poverty and insecurity albeit, primary school pupils suffering from learning losses have been on the rise and have now been included among the beneficiaries of Edu-Toons.  

Edu-Toons as an educational solution became necessary due to the rising numbers of Out-of-School and displaced children, shortage of trained teachers and learning losses incidental to the Covid-19 pandemic, alongside issues of poverty and insecurity in Nigeria. 

According to UNICEF, Nigeria has the highest number of Out-of-School Children in the world numbering over 10.5 million. These numbers have been increasing with the large number of displaced children caused by insecurity in Nigeria. In addition, the Teachers Registration Council of Nigeria has reported that the Nigerian teaching force is grossly understaffed with many public schools only having 2-4 teachers employed there. The shortage of teachers coupled with the learning losses caused Covid-19 pandemic have made qualitative education inaccessible to learners. To compound matters, many parents are illiterate and innumerate and cannot help their children to learn. Besides, many parents are either confounded by poverty or insecurity or both and cannot afford to send their children to school or buy textbooks for them. With more and more children not learning or learning inadequately, the existing problems of poverty, inequality and other vices involving children are bound to escalate.

In Nigeria, the pervasiveness of poverty and insecurity among others, have not only affected school enrollment but actual learning outcomes for those children still at school. Thus, it has become imperative to re-think teaching especially in terms of delivering qualitative education to learners and how to make such education affordable, relevant and ubiquitous, in the face of diverse learning challenges. Edu-Toons is one of such solutions that brings education to learners (instead of only waiting for learners to come to school before they can learn curriculum-based subjects or accepting inadequate learning outcomes for pupils enrolled at school), by making use of mass media channels such as televisions to present animated school lessons to children in languages of their choice (Edu-Toons can be downloaded at minimal cost and will also be aired on major television stations, based on a learner's preference). 

Edu-Toons also aims for children to learn irrespective of low or non-school attendance, low digital literacy and illiterate/innumerate parents, among others. The animations present class lessons to learners in fun and simple ways using characters and storylines, children can relate with. With Edu-Toons, learners only need mass media channels such as televisions or phones to showcase the lessons to them. Edu-Toons can also be used in schools as a learning aid that comes in handy for children without textbooks. Edu-Toons can equally be used to promote literacy and numeracy among parents who watch the lessons, alongside their children. This is helpful for children in their learning journey as learned parents are more supportive of their children's education. Edu-Toons can be used anywhere, anytime and can fit into any learner's schedule.

Edu-Toons makes provision for feedback from learners, teachers or other users, as the Edu-Toons team have their contact information on their lessons. Any questions or contributions can be directed to our team who will get in touch with the learner or teacher via calls, text messages or e-mail. 

* Edu-Toons was featured on the 2020 mEducation Alliance (Play Every Day) Symposium (Sept 14 - 16) for its role in incorporating PLAY into learning activities. The Edu-Toons' Pilot on fractions (English Version) can be accessed via 

https://youtu.be/YwAS9xIxr0E

The Pilot of Edu-Toons is a Math lesson on fractions. While designing Edu-Toons, we needed to perform a Rap in two scenes of the animation, to explain further on what fractions meant. Initially, the animator required an adult to perform the rap to avoid mistakes and re-work albeit, it was finally done by a primary school pupil at Ibadan, Oyo State, Nigeria. The boy was chosen because of his passion for music. Besides, he showed real commitment to learning and performing the lyrics of the rap within the set time we gave him. We have since become committed to having children perform the songs or raps in all our animations. 

Also, we had just one adult doing the voice-over performance for the Edu-Toons' Pilot during the production. All other voice-over performance were done by primary school pupils.

EDU-TOONS’ THEORY OF CHANGE

OBJECTIVE: Mitigating learning losses of primary school aged learners caused by low or non-school attendance using curriculum-based animated lessons

EDU-TOONS' INPUT: What is needed to produce Edu-Toons

1.  Manpower – Teachers/School Administrators, Parents, Script Writers, Animators, Volunteers

2.  Materials – Funds, Textbooks and other animations, computer, projectors, office space, phones and data

3.  Institutions – Ministry of Education and other relevant Ministries, Departments and Agencies, NGOs, Corporate Organisations

4.  Other input  – Mentors, Communities being served

EDU-TOONS' OUTPUT: Animated School Lessons for primary school-aged learners

1.  PEOPLE DIRECTLY AFFECTED BY OUTPUT: Out-of-School Children, Displaced Children, Children suffering from  learning losses in primary schools, Adult learners, Teachers/School Administrators.

2.  PEOPLE INDIRECTLY AFFECTED BY OUTPUT: Parents, Ministry of Education, Corporate Organisations, NGOs

EDU-TOONS' OUTCOMES: Benefits of Edu-Toons:

1.  All children will be able to access qualitative educational  content irrespective of school attendance or language barriers using Edu-Toons.

2.  Edu-Toons will make Traditional educational content available to pupils in fun and animated series during and after school.

3.  Edu-Toons will make animated learning aids achievable and affordable.

4.  Edu-Toons can support teachers as a teaching aid in class and assist meet some of their training needs.   

5.  Edu-Toons can foster diverse discourses and collaborations, especially community engagement needed for increasing support for elementary and advanced forms of education.

INCENTIVE STRUCTURE SUPPORTING EDU-TOONS’ OUTCOMES

1.  Poverty and insecurity have made school enrollment and attendance almost impossible in many locations. Edu-Toons will continue to bring qualitative educational content to learners wherever they are. Also, poverty and insecurity have made learning aids like textbooks unaffordable for many learners. Edu-Toons is an affordable learning aid accessible to every child on Mass Media Channels.

2.  Training and re-training of teachers are often under-funded or not prioritized enough, in many developing countries. Edu-Toons can help teachers in need of training.

3.  Many learners only understand their native languages and can be in different categories with different needs. Edu-Toons will be produced in various languages to meet as many learning needs as possible and will accommodate different genres of learners, even those in need of adult education.

INTERNAL BEHAVIOURS FROM THE EDU-TOONS' TEAM THAT WILL SUPPORT THE ADOPTION OF EDU-TOONS

1.  Edu-Toons should leverage more research-based evidence in its content development, animation quality and usage.

2.  Promotion of Edu-Toons must increase. Stakeholders like the Ministry of Education, Association of Private School Owners, religious organisations and Parents must be actively informed about Edu-Toons. Advertisements must also be leveraged. 

3.  Increasing viewership of Edu-Toons by making it available to more parents and children on social media channels and also airing on major television stations. .

4.  Making Edu-Toons available to children in informal or social settings such as church gatherings.

5.  Making Edu-Toons available to Out-of-School and displaced children in their communities.

6.  Edu-Toons should sponsor competitions on their lessons and give rewards/incentives to pupils, teachers and parents, among others, who use their lessons.

EXTERNAL BEHAVIOURS/CONDITIONS THAT WILL SUPPORT THE ADOPTION OF EDU-TOONS

1.  The Ministry of Education should recommend it. This will make public schools use it often to meet gaps in teaching which is predominant in Nigeria.

2.  Private schools should encourage it. This can be achieved by organising short training sessions for teachers on the adoption of animation in class activities and motivating teachers to explore it as a teaching aid.

3.  Parents should embrace and include Edu-Toons into the cartoon time of their children and also watch alongside with them.

4.  Corporate organisations and other educational stakeholders should be open to supporting Edu-Toons’ initiatives.

We are currently at STAGE 2 of the Nesta's Standard of Evidence. Our data is majorly drawn from pupils attending primary schools due to the controlled environment and the presence of usable sample sizes which are available in schools. We typically do a post-evaluation of ALL THE PUPILS that see the animation. 

We usually show pupils the animation before the commencement of their Math Class (the animation is a Math lesson on fractions). After showing pupils the 5-minute animation, we assess their level of actual learning by questioning them on the content of the animation and also questioning them on the quality of the animation. For the content of the animation, we ask questions on the lesson such as "What is the difference between a numerator and a denominator" or we introduce one of their class items such as a broomstick or chalk and ask them to divide them into specified fractions. 

For quality of the animation, we ask them if they like the cartoon, the rap in the cartoon and if they would like to watch it again or tell their friends about it? 

For information on animation content, we observed that for younger learners (Primary 1 and 2 pupils), who have not had lessons on fractions before, may need to see the animation again to fully grasp the lesson. Some of their teachers who watched the animations alongside the pupils commented that even though the children were quite young to understand the concept of fractions, the lessons were helpful nonetheless, as it brought the topic of fractions to life and is a child-friendly way to introduce a seemingly abstract topic in Math to relatively young learners. Nevertheless, the teachers propose that they may need to  expound on the animation to the younger pupils (Primary 1 and 2 pupils) after they view the lesson for the first time and thereafter, re-play the animation to them. For information on whether they like the animation or would like to see it again, the pupils responded in the affirmative. 

For pupils in (Primary 3 and 4), many of them said they understood the topic of fractions better after seeing the animation. The children revealed that their  knowledge of fractions were just to add or subtract them particularly when the denominators were the same. The children upon watching our animation also stated that they did not initially understand the real concept of a fraction and how it was useful in real life. However, after watching the animation, they better understood what a fraction stands for and how it can be used for sharing in real life. Most of the assessment questions we asked the children after seeing the animation were answered correctly, by many of them except for a few. Besides, majority of the children valued the opportunity to see a cartoon during school hours especially, the one that focused on their school work and the fact that it made their lessons fun for them. 

However,their teachers noted that for animations to be used successfully in these classes, it had to be shown to pupils regularly, though they had concerns about the duration of their classes being insufficient for them to teach. On the other hand, they agreed that the animations could be used in schools whenever the children's minds were saturated and when their absorption capacities had dropped significantly especially, in the early afternoons. Also, the teachers believed that the animations will be helpful to get pupils intrigued about an upcoming class and can promote actual learning. The teachers however, could not extrapolate if the outcome of the animation with children in schools will be similar with children who have dropped out of school for an extended period of time.

More research however, still need to be done on Edu-Toons especially as it concerns making it relevant for learning for Out-of-School and displaced children who have left school for an extended period of time and may also not have teachers or adults to put them through when watching the animation. Also, teachers' involvement and commitment to actual learning outcomes for pupils using animations and the need to leverage solutions like Edu-Toons for training purposes has made the need for more research vital (teachers need the intervention, too). Furthermore, there is need to prove that actual learning outcomes come from Edu-Toons by incorporating control groups alongside, getting independent evaluation and replicating its learning outcomes globally, while remaining viable.

The three main indicators that we are measuring for Edu-Toons at the moment, are three, namely:

1.  Actual learning: Are our lessons and learning objectives being met? How easy is it to understand, retain and apply lessons learnt?

2.  Preference: Do children like the quality of Edu-Toons? Can it keep them riveted on the channel it is being aired if they are watching at home?

3.  Suitability for teaching: Can it be adopted by teachers to meet some of their training needs and Is it helpful as a teaching aid?

Currently, the data we use to track and measure our impact is primary data from predominantly pupils and teachers at schools. We have not started getting feedback from parents yet due to the challenges of accessing them in relatively large numbers for an extended period of time but we plan to include parents as another source of our data collection very soon. We typically measure our impact by examining the pupils who have seen the animation using class work assessments and interviews. Our assessments cover the content of the animation while our interviews cover their preference for the animation. 

The interviews are equally for teachers to get their feedback on the animation as a teaching/training tool and to assess their willingness to adopt it in their classes as a teaching aid. 

Some of the interview questions are open-ended and we draft them for pupils and teachers though, most times, pupils and teachers do not have ample time to answer all the questions due to time constraints for such activities at school. 

For the pupils, the interview questions we are interested in are:

1.    Do you like fractions?

2.    Can you differentiate between a numerator and a denominator?

3a.  What is your favorite part of a fraction - the numerator or denominator?

3b.  What is the reason for your choice?

4a.    Is this cartoon interesting?

4b.   Who is your hero or favorite character in the cartoon?

4c.   Why is he or she your favorite character in the cartoon

5.   What did the cartoon teach you?

6a.   Did the cartoon help you understand fractions better?

6b.  What do you not understand in the cartoon?

6c.   What do you not like about this cartoon?

7.   Will you watch this cartoon again?

8.   Will you tell your mummy or daddy about this cartoon?

For teachers, the interview questions we are interested in are:

1a.   Can this cartoon help you teach fractions better?

1b.   How can it help you teach fractions better?

2.   Do you think the cartoons will distract you or your class?

3.   Will the cartoon interfere with your teaching time?

4a.   Do you think this cartoon is necessary?

4b.   Specifically, how can this cartoon be of benefit to you?

4c.  What do you dislike about the cartoon?

5.   Do you think Edu-Toons can help children who have dropped out of school for a long time?

Edu-Toons animates curriculum-based subjects for primary school learners to mitigate learning losses caused by low or non-school attendance.

1.  Integrating stronger evidence into our Theory of Change would increase our organisational impact by:

a. Making Edu-Toons qualitative enough to teach Out-of-School and displaced children without external support or otherwise, with minimal support. The reason is because many Out-of-School and displaced children do not really have adults that can assist them to learn at home. Similarly, many pupils who have suffered learning losses do not have parental support that can help them with their studies. 

b. Making Edu-Toons viable and relevant enough to meet a substantial amount of learning needs. The learning needs we are targeting will be influenced by learners’ socioeconomic factors, learning history and mental health status. For instance, children who drop out of school or are displaced and cannot attend school for a long time, may lose interest in learning due to their full-time engagement in child labour or even suffer mental issues. Can children like these still learn with solutions like Edu-Toons?

c. Making Edu-Toons an educational tool that encourages children to be curious, think up problems around the topic and solve them.

d.  Making Edu-Toons a veritable source of teachers’ support and/or training in class and outside class.

2.  Consequently, we would want the LEAP Fellows to help us address the following issues:

a. Can evidence be leveraged to investigate if Edu-Toons can teach and achieve actual learning without necessarily employing external support or otherwise, with minimal support?

b. Can evidence be leveraged to find out if Edu-Toons can meet learning needs that are influenced by learners’ socioeconomic factors, learning history and mental health status. 

c. Can evidence be leveraged to determine if Edu-Toons can encourage children to be curious, think up problems around presented topics and solve them.

d. Can evidence be leveraged to find out if Edu-Toons can support teachers in class and also meet some of their training needs?

3.  The potential deliverables that will be useful to our organisation as outputs of the LEAP Sprint include:

a. Evidence that Edu-Toons can teach and achieve actual learning without necessarily employing external support or otherwise, with minimal support.

b. Evidence that Edu-Toons can meet learning needs which are associated with learners’ socioeconomic factors, learning history and mental health status.

c. Evidence that Edu-Toons can encourage children to be curious, think up problems around presented topics and solve them.

d. Evidence that Edu-Toons can support teacher to teach in the classroom and meet some of their training needs?

4.  The successful outcome of this project will help our organisation achieve the following in the next 5 years:

a.  Lessons in Edu-Toons will cover Math, English and Science topics comprising of 20 lessons each. We are targeting 2 million school-enrolled learners, 2 million online learners and 2 million Out-of-School and displaced children, in Nigeria. We will also continue to incorporate evidence into Edu-Toons during this time to reach Stage 4 of the Nesta Standards of Evidence

b.  Expanding Edu-Toons to cover 3 new subjects namely Cultural and Creative Arts, Civic Education/Social Studies and Home Economics/Agricultural Science

c.  Massive networking and collaboration with all Edu-Toons' stakeholders especially teachers, the Ministry of Education and Association of Private School Owners, among others.

d.  Organising Edu-Toons' competitions bi-annually.