Collage: A Presentation Tool for School Teachers

We present Collage, a software application designed for classroom presentations for K-12 teachers in the developing world. An in-depth investigation of teaching practices in several schools in India led us to believe that a simple tool that enabled the display of images and textbook materials while facilitating blackboard-like interactions would be very helpful for these teachers. Collage is a simple media viewer with a small number of features that enables teachers to prepare lessons with little overhead and then present them in classrooms with maximum flexibility. The tool was deployed in three schools in suburban India for use in real-world classroom teaching. All teachers who used Collage uniformly praised it, and students’ learning of visual concepts seemed to improve through it. Interestingly, some teachers continue to use the tool now for their own teaching needs and have spontaneously shared it with colleagues from other schools.

To appear in ICTD 2010.