A bilingual whiteboard has been used in the Ullens School in Kathmandu.

This is my opinion about a very interesting article I have read that it was recently wrote by Helen Swire. She is talking about how to adapt interactive materials to teach Nepali and English simultaneously.

She is first giving a background about the Ullens School in Kathmandu.

Apparently is the first school in Nepal to teach the International Baccalaureate. However they also teach their mother tongue Nepali. Nepali language is really difficult to learn and can often be sidelined. On the other hand the school thought it could be use an interactive whiteboard in order to teach both English and Nepal. However a problem with the power cuts and electricity shortages was identified. Ullens School has been the first school to introduce those boards and they had invested in a backup power system to overcome to the reality of the main problem.

The interactive whiteboards Ullens School has used are the Promethean Activboards, which are really language friendly user however they lack content made for the device for teaching Nepali said Helen.

Ullens School has been nominated for the UNesco Wenhui award for the Educational Innovation.

Just to remember that this technology could also be used with some other languages so far I believe Chinese is one of them.

I personally think this technology could be really beneficial and useful to use in the UK. At least here there are no major power failures, most of the school got the technology in their hands but I haven´t actually seeing the use of it at this degree. Haven’t you? This could be extremely beneficial tool to teach children a second language, Spanish, French German …

Please, please, please… I am not talking here about the different software or suppliers that the schools use to provide MFL during curricular lessons as we also do. It is a great powerful tool where all the UK children could benefit from it.

In Helen’s article you will also find some tips and things to consider if you decide to implement this technology.

We hope you like this article about the Nepal School in Kathmandu (Descriptive writing).