It’s time to celebrate Urban October – a UN-HABITAT initiative to highlight positive urban development through sustainable action. We felt it was the right time to host the first public demonstration of our offline eLearning innovation – a solution that will improve access to quality content in the classroom and provide a virtual link for students between the classroom and their homes.
Developed by US-based Learning Equality, Kolibri is an edtech platform designed for offline use especially in under-resourced environments. Elimu Resource Centre in Malindi has been working with Kolibri in-house and in the community since 2018.
We had launched Kolibri in a few schools in Malindi at the start of 2020. Then, with the arrival of COVID-19 this year, we set about finding a solution that would deliver our Kenya-specific educational content on Kolibri to learners in their homes. The innovation we have designed hosts the Kolibri platform on a robust computer server and gives access to the content to users in the community via a mesh bridge network set-up. This arrangement remains true to the original offline design which does not use the internet and does not require data bundles. It also protects children from malicious internet sites and there is no cost to the user to access the content.
Our goal is children studying on Kolibri in the classroom and seamlessly continuing their studies via their virtual Kolibri classroom from their home. This is an effective solution to a phased return to full time learning.
Teachers can set up their real live classrooms as virtual classrooms in Kolibri. Students can work at their own pace, even in class, and the platform keeps track of usage and performance, individual and aggregate data. Multi-choice exams can easily be digitized and allotted a specific time for completion. The system does the corrections and provides results for the student and teacher. Teachers can set assignments to be done either in-class or at home and they can create and upload their own educational content in a variety of formats. The platform also comes with existing free open source content which includes Khan Academy, African Storybook Project and PhET Interactive Simulations
interactive math and science simulations.
Names and Titles of Speakers
1. Mr. Kevin Omondi, ICTA Malindi;
3. Mr. Kerema, ICT Kilifi County ;
4. Hon. Dr. Anisa, CEC Youth & Gender Kilifi County;
5. Dr. Flaura Kidere, Pwani University, Entrepreneurship;
6. Hussein Rage, Safaricom