According to data by UNESCO, COVID19 school closures have affected over 200 million learners in Pre-Primary, Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary institutions in Sub-Saharan Africa. Over the years, integrating technology in education has been a major initiative in our operations in a number of African countries. Learners with limited connectivity are more disadvantaged during this pandemic. How can learners access remote learning materials under these circumstances? The following sections will highlight a number of platforms that have resources that could be accessed remotely and are also available offline after download and installation.
Kolibri is a tool that is available to download. Kolibri is an ecosystem of interacting products where students and educators login and directly use digital materials to support learning and teaching. Kolibri has always been free to download and use immediately. Once Kolibri is downloaded, installed, and provisioned with learning materials onto a device, you don’t need the Internet again.
AMI Maths Club Pack has a large collection of engaging games, problems, puzzles and activities for students. You can also print this document after downloading it.
Many of these resources are on the SAMI Maths Club App available on Google Play.
You can also utilize low-cost technical solutions such as the RACHEL (Remote Area Community Hotspot for Education and Learning) tool to create local hot-spots in communities.. You can reach out to World Possible country representatives to see how you can leverage this tool.
Kiwix is an example of a resource that can be used after downloading it to a device (Android for mobile). It has content from Wikipedia, Project Gutenberg and TED Talks.
SAMI Programming is an application that has a list of blockly games which is an excellent resource to introduce kids of all ages to programming. Students are given freedom to learn at their own pace over 8 different activities, covering key programming concepts in a fun way. These games are also available on Kolibri.
African Story Book Project enables you to download stories and send them to your students via WhatsApp. You can also print storybooks. These stories are in African languages as well as in English. These storybooks are also available on Kolibri and RACHEL.
AIMSSEC Aiming High is an android app that provides access to mathematical problems, resources, and discussions that students could work on from home.
Share this resources with friends, family, communities, and networks and let’s all remain hopeful that this will all come to an end and we will come out of it stronger, unified, and wiser.