Digital offline learning for remote communities – 10 years of field experience

Group Submission Type: Workshop

Description of Session

This workshop aims to provide participants with information on how offline digital learning can benefit remote communities without access to the internet. We will demonstrate how the Mobile Learning Lab (MLL) can enable student access to interactive games, classroom materials, government tests/curricular resources, e-books, and specifically curated, local, culturally relevant, language-specific content. The MLL which comprises a Remote Area Community Hotspot for Education and Learning (RACHEL) server, user devices, and solar panels, is currently available to over 700,000 children in more than 20 countries in the Global South.

The 60 million girls Foundation is a Montreal-based organization dedicated to girls’ education in the Global South. In 2014, with technical support from World Possible, the foundation pioneered a digital learning tool called the Mobile Learning Lab (MLL). The MLL offers offline learning resources for children who do not have access to the internet, making it an interesting solution to the lack of up-to-date, high-quality, culturally appropriate, and fun interactive resources in many rural schools. The MLL has three components: a RACHEL server which can hold up to 2TB of offline content; up to 30 user devices – computers, tablets or smartphones; and solar panels as needed. Content can be uploaded in an area with internet connectivity and educational resources can be curated by local communities to meet language needs and contextually relevant topics.

This workshop aims to introduce the MLL to participants and demonstrate how it can be used to expand the breadth and depth of learning materials available to remote communities. 60 million girls’ President and Founder, Wanda Bedard, will describe the development of the MLL over the past 10 years and how it’s use has evolved to include climate change modules/games and teacher training courses. We will showcase a new climate change game which is intended to offer young people a fun way to understand and engage with climate change issues affecting their communities. Wanda will also highlight how partner evaluations as well as feedback from children and families demonstrate positive learning outcomes for both cognitive and non-cognitive skills, and extremely low rates of school absenteeism on days that the MLL is available to children. The workshop will provide participants with the opportunity to use a RACHEL device.

Meanwhile, 60 million girls’ partners will offer lessons learned from implementing learning projects using the MLL across a diverse range of contexts for literacy acquisition, adaptive practices for children with disabilities, information on issues such as sexual health, and innovative teacher training. Each partner will explain how they integrated the MLL into learning opportunities through catch-up programming, more in-class interaction following teacher training, self-directed learning, or as an afterschool activity. In regards to implementation challenges, 60 million girls and partners worked with local implementing partners and World Possible to trouble shoot technical issues. Meanwhile, communities decided what worked best according to their situation to address security, or other concerns, for the hardware.

Participants will be invited to ask questions and, by the end of the workshop it is our hope that they will have a deeper understanding of how offline technologies can benefit remote communities and children’s learning through various means of implementation.

Sub Unit

• Book launches and Workshops / Workshop

Chair

• Wanda Bedard, 60 million girls Foundation

Workshop Organizer

• Tanya Guyatt, OISE University of Toronto

Presenters

• Wendy Fehr, CAUSE Canada

• Jeffrey Nyandoro, Campaign for Female Education (CAMFED)

• Lorraine Swift, Change for Children

• Peter Mark Timmerman, CODE