The document proposes ISECED, an ICT infrastructure to integrate various parties involved in early childhood education in developing countries. It aims to address issues like lack of resources, limited parental involvement, and poor child health. The system connects nurseries, teachers, parents, doctors and donors through a web portal. It allows standardized teaching, health monitoring, parental empowerment, and efficient resource allocation. An evaluation of the system in two Sri Lankan nurseries found improved parental response and data management. The system could be expanded nationwide and to other developing countries.

1. ISECED – an ICT infrastructure for Early Childhood Education and
Development
Ruvindee Rupasinghe, Anuruddha Ranatunga, Sanjaya Ratnayake, Amila Sajayahan
Favulty of Information technology, University of Moratuwa
ruvindee@yahoo.com
1.0 ABSTRACT Therefore, UNESCO has given top priority for
Early Childhood Education in their agenda for
Early Childhood Education is considered to be “Education for All” [15, 3].
one of the most important aspects of a country’s
education process. Unlike other areas of However, most of the countries are still
education early childhood education needs an struggling to provide a satisfactory Early
integrated approach from various parties Childhood Education for the children within
including the Government, teachers, students, their territories [20]. Especially developing
parents and health care services. However most countries are faced with several problems with
countries especially developing countries, have related to development of Early Childhood
so far failed to integrate those systems Education [6]. Among these, three prominent
effectively resulting low quality and inefficient issues could be identified. They can be
systems for early childhood education and mentioned as, lack of resources, inability of
development. Further locating the resources for parents to spend time on their children and poor
children is not properly organized. health conditions of the children [18, 1, 4].
Therefore an integrated approach is important in
Therefore we are proposing an ICT achieving the success in early childhood
infrastructure which could be implemented as a education process [7, 2, 19]. The objective of the
government portal that supports an efficient proposed solution is to develop an IT
management of Early Childhood Education and infrastructure which could facilitate the
Development within a country. This integrates attainment of above mentioned requirements.
all the parties relevant for the early childhood
education and development (Government, The proposed system is called ISECED
teachers, nurseries, parents, doctors/health care (Integrated Services for Early Childhood
officers etc.) enabling a cooperated actions Education & Development) a web application
among them. We have kept a strong eye towards that integrates all the parties related to Early
the research and other recommendations of the Childhood Education, including the nurseries,
international organizations like UNESCO day care centers, teachers, students, parents,
regarding the same domain. We believe that by doctors, local authorities and Non Governmental
implementing this type of a networking model, Organizations (NGOs). So, the main
governments can accelerate their drives towards functionalities provided by the system can be
the Millennium Development Goals. This type of specified as follows.
an ICT infrastructure is also capable of 1. Integrate all parties important for early
enabling common masses to achieve high childhood education through a single system and
quality education for their children. enable communication among them.
2. Let parents to actively get involved in child’s
2.0 INTRODUCTION development process.
3. Give Government the opportunity to monitor
Early childhood education is considered to be and guide all nurseries, day care centers,
the most important stage of the human education teachers and children with the help of a single
process [12, 16]. Reason for this is that, it could system.
have direct impacts on the secondary and tertiary 4. Provide training, syllabuses and e-learning
education processes of a person and hence could materials for teachers.
effect to the overall literacy of the country.

2. 5. Support to allocate scarce resources US government portal for Early Childhood
efficiently. Education provides useful information for
6. Develop a comprehensive information multiple parties engaged in Early Childhood
system, which could support government to Education. Here, the information for parents,
develop policies and plans for early childhood service providers, researchers, agencies and
education. policy makers are available [9]. Resources
available for the parents include various guiding
A pilot project was carried out with two materials covering different aspects of Early
nurseries to evaluate the system. The project was Childhood Education. Service providers are also
a success and got positive responses from the provided with various guiding materials. Data
teachers, parents as well as the health care sets, statistics and funding details are available
officers. for the researchers. However, the functionality
of the portal is eventually limited as only an
3.0 EXISTING WORK information provider.
Several ICT initiatives exist in the domain of When we look at the existing work, it is clear
Early Childhood Education [11]. These projects that in most of the situations ICT has been used
are ranging from the government information for either supporting the in class education or as
portals to ICT enabled class room education. a mere information provider. These kinds of
Two such examples are discussed below. systems might be sufficient for developed
countries. But, for developing countries there are
3.1 ICT infrastructure project in New
certain other issues that can be effectively
Zealand addressed by incorporating ICT [11]. Especially,
An ICT infrastructure has been developed in enhancing the parent participation in child’s
New Zealand for supporting the Early education process, keeping a better awareness on
Childhood education. This concentrates mainly the child’s health condition, coordinating
on using the ICT as a supporter for the in class resources for the needed and integrating all the
learning. Here, various related issues like IT stakeholders in a particular child’s education
applications, Ergonomics, Cyber Safety and process can be addressed by creative
network designs have been addressed [10]. introduction of Information Technology. The
However, this project does not try to utilize ICT contribution of this project comes here.
beyond the class room environment and address
other important issues faced by the Early
4.0 USAGE OF INFORMATION AND
Childhood Education. COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY
IN EMPOWERING EARLY
3.2 “TEChPLACEs” Project CHILDHOOD RELATED ACTIVITIES
Technology in Early Childhood-Planning and ISECED integrates all the related parties to the
Learning about Community Environments early childhood education and development.
(TEChPLACEs) was funded in 1997 by the U.S. Therefore it Empowers parents on the progress
Department of Education's Office of Special of child’s education process in an effective
Education Technology.This involves the manner. Further ISECED provides a common
development of a web site for linking local interface for parents and teachers to interact and
schools. Pre schools and kindergartens were also share their knowledge with the experts in
involved with the project. Basic objective of the education field as well as the health sector.
project was to enhance the learning experience Through these processes it is able to utilize the
of the children [8]. available resources in an efficient manner. The
main features of ISECED are as follows.
3.3 US government portal for Early
Childhood Education 4.1 Empowering parents

3. Fig1: The high level architecture of ISECED
In Sri Lanka most of the parents are engaged in maintaining education related health records is
various kinds of jobs. Especially the parents in important for improving the child’s long term
urban cities are busy with their work schedules mental and physical health [17]. Therefore the
[14]. Therefore they do not have enough time to local midwives are provided with a PDA
attend children matters in an efficient manner. application in order to store the health data of
ISECED portal breaks those barrios for parents the children in her village. She may collect data
by implementing a way to empower electronically through the devices provided and
communication among parents and other later will upload the data to the portal.
relevant parties.
4.4 Manage resource distribution among
4.2 Standardizing nurseries relevant parties
Currently the nurseries are maintaining their There are many donors located locally as well as
own syllabuses which may be ineffective in internationally having lesser information on the
most of the time [5]. Therefore ISECED resource requirements of the developing
brings up a way to provide daily learning countries like Sri Lanka. Therefore the portal
materials for nurseries to follow. Therefore provides a way for donors to come to know the
resource requirements of the nurseries in the
all the nurseries will be following the same
region. Further the system implements a one to
guidance in teaching the children. one donor concept by letting individual donors
4.3 Maintaining education related health to select individual nurseries or children and
contribute their education. This will encourage
records of children
small donors to take part in the child’s education
The education and health has an unbreakable process.
relationship between each other [13]. Therefore

4. 5.0 DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION donors can easily identify and choose a child or
families to donate using online maps and details
The high level architecture of the system is provided through the journal. All the payment is
depicted in the figure 5.1. All the parties related going through secure payment gateways. Other
to early childhood education are connected than these services the system provides services
through the web portal. The system has been for government and researches also. They can
implemented considering the computer literacy view those summarized data to analysis and
of the users of the system. Most of the users of decision making.
the portal are people with little computer
literacy. Therefore the interfaces provided are The portal is implemented in three tier
implemented in a way that users can easily architecture with User Interface, Business logic
understand and use the portal. layer and Backend database. Backend layer
implements all data access methods and data
ISECED provides more facilities to the user to control procedures. The middle business layer
enhance the early child education. online supports all the classes and methods to access
meetings, daily progress reports of the child, those data. The front end or the user interface
SMS notification service for parents, special display those data in a more user friendly
vista side bar gadget to support donor’s manner.
participation, maintain health data of child,
maintain centralized database for all parties, 6.0 EVALUATION
analytical data tool for governments and
researches, one to one donor coordination, multi In order to test the system ISECED was
language facility and virtual community services introduced to two nurseries. The results obtained
are some of them. Services are provided to the were quite good. The parent’s respond was that
identified users through the log in. it was much easier for them to use the system
and they were able to manage their work
The doctors, parents, local child care officers properly. The nursery was happy as they could
and nursery teachers can use the online meeting maintain a proper data management system for
facility and video conference facility provided their nursery. Further the parent’s respond rate
by the system. Daily progress reports can be has been increased from 5% after implementing
viewed by parents and local child are officers. the system. We choose two nurseries form
User can analyze those data in various ways Kandy district, considering extreme ends. One is
using different visualizing methods in this very urban and other is very rural.
system.
Criteria parent teacher docto child
The SMS notification service which is s r
implemented as an additional service is used to
ensure child security as well as effective Number 24 5 1 6
monitoring. ISECED gets support from different of Users
service providers. Apart from the basic services
provided system provides special services for Per user 1 hour 4 hrs 2 hrs 1 hrs
doctors, child care officers, parents and teachers. duration
The portal maintains separate health records of
Total 24 20 2 6
each individual child and provides necessary
duration
guidance when a professional consultancy is
needed. Hit rate App 4 App 3 App .5 App
The donor coordination module which (per day) 1
implements the one to one donor concept Repeat 6 2 0 2
provides individual resource person to take care visits
of individual child. This would attract more
small donors for serving the needy children. The

5. Table 1: Performance evaluation of the ISECED the project participated the exhibition
portal “Unlocking Young Minds” organized by Faculty
of Information Technology, University of
We were able to collect data from urban nursery Moratuwa, 2009. The project’s feasibility was
very successfully. We educate 59 parents, 6 interviewed by Rupavahini Corporation, Sri
teachers, one doctor and 60 children. 40%, 83%, Lanka, for the live television program “Sedhe
100% and 10% contribution was there Nimnaya”. In 2009 ISECED was selected as a
respectively. These ratios are expecting to feasible business solution in Graduate
increase with the marketing and promotional Entrepreneur Challenge, organized by British
activities. By introducing more educational Council, Sri Lanka.
games and one to one donor module child and
rural parent involvement can be improve. Any It has been identified Sri Lanka as a very
user can use ISECED with very basic suitable region for the ISECED true implement.
infrastructure requirements. A computer Because, the society is well diversified and
connected to internet is more than enough. therefore, all the features can use in somewhere
down the line. For example, the parents can be
However, from the system administrator’s side categorized as urban busy parents, non urban
there are costs such as server maintenance, back busy parents, non urban wealthy parents and non
up and security cost and etc. Therefore a Web urban non wealthy parents.
business model is essential for the ISECED.
Therefore, we can allow parties such as Currently system has been implemented and
nurseries, day care centers, Child care peripheral tested locally within two nurseries. It has shown
suppliers, Other classes (English, Swimming, that a portal which integrates the related parties
Elocutions), Banks with child saving accounts, to early childhood education can improve the
Primary schools (international colleges), efficiency and quality of their education process.
Pediatricians and child psychologists, Leisure Due to the efficient handling of donor
activities (children films, children parks), coordination the resource distribution could
Nannies, NGOs, Government and etc to handle easily. As a future development we hope
advertise on the ISECED. Additionally we can to introduce several standards for nurseries and
charge subscription fee from parents, nurseries, implement the system island wide.
doctors, donors and government for the
additional servicers. Moreover, registration fee The localization capability brings a great
and download fees are also possible. opportunity to implement ISECED in other
developing countries as well. Further a Social
7.0 CONCLUSION AND FURTHER Networking module where users can interact
WORK very effectively will also be implemented. Also
this includes a community forum as well.
The project is three year maturity and during the
period it has gained many achievements. In 9.0 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
2007, ISECED won the Island wide
championship of imagine cup competition, Sri All the faculty members and our colleagues
Lankan, organized by the Microsoft deserve to be appreciated for contributing to the
Corporation. Also the ISECED project get success of this project in various ways. Also the
qualify to the world wide finals of cup authors of the references we have used
competition in Seoul, Korea in 2007. The throughout this project are highly appreciated.
project got a good impression from the
participants of the world wild finals. The theme
for the competition was “Technology enables 8.0 REFERENCES
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