Microsoft MultiPoint livens Thai math class

Mr. Somsak's students used to wish that they could go outside and play instead of attend his math lessons.

His classes were all "chalk and talk," he says, lectures and examples on the board. But one day, Thailand's Ministry of Education asked him to try out Microsoft MultiPoint, software in his class, which allows dozens of computer mice to be connected to the same PC, one per student, so they can all use it at once.

That may sound like anarchy, but it's not. Each student chooses their own cursor, often a cartoon character, an icon or their name. A projector displays questions and games on a screen for everyone to see and interact with. Instead of cursor chaos, Mr. Somsak found that after the initial excitement was brought to order, the kids liked lessons on MultiPoint so much that they started looking forward to his math class each day.

"They are more affectionate towards their teacher," said Somsak Noyvisate, who teaches fifth grade math at the PrasertIslam School near Bangkok. "When they see Mr. Somsak, or they know they have a math class with me, they come up and say 'Let's do MultiPoint! Let's do MultiPoint!'"

On a day he was teaching fractions, it became clear how MultiPoint changed the dynamic of the classroom. In most traditional classes one student answers a question at a time, but with MultiPoint all students answer each question, and software keeps track of the answers and tallies scores at the end of the session. And everyone knows who the last student to answer is because the software can make students' cursors disappear after they've clicked their answers.

The trials in 10 schools in Thailand told educators there they were on to something. The software gave more students a chance to use computers than before, and more importantly, the kids were more engaged in the lessons, said Sitthiporn Keeratiwattanakul, an officer in the Ministry of Education's bureau of technology for teaching and learning.

The software is part of a broad attempt by companies and nonprofit organizations to introduce more computers and other technology into schools in developing nations. Organizations such as Inveneo, Microsoft, NComputing and One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) hope to provide schoolchildren in emerging economies a way to keep up with kids in modern nations.

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