Hello all. Bob Rollins here, Ed Tech Specialist with the Brooklyn-based NGO USACF (U.S.-Africa Children’s Fellowship). We launched the Bridge Project in 2016 in Zim and SA.
Our first pilot in SA is at a primary school in Randfontein, Gauteng (less than an hour from central Joburg).
In 2017 we deployed a RACHEL-plus and a set of tablets in the school’s library. This was very successful and the teachers and headmaster were eager for additional Learning Hubs. In October, 2018 we deployed a second RACHEL-plus which now travels to different classrooms.
We are working on plans for a Rollout Phase in 2019. We envision a 5 schools cluster in Joburg, and then three additional 5 school clusters, likely in Eastern Cape.
A special interest is to start a parallel program where local youth assemble Pi-based servers for wide-scale deployment.
I welcome any questions or comments regarding deploying RACHEL resources and devices.
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The Bridge Project has set its first SA “Build Day” on 16 October, 2019 at Matlapaneng Primary School in Randfontein. We have sourced components for 8 “Bridge Pi” digital libraries - solar powered, portable, Raspberry Pi based servers. A “Tech Club” of 7th and 8th grade learners will be leading as the participants assemble the Bridge Pi’s. We hope this is a stepping-stone towards more Build Days and expansion into Eastern Cape. Here is the link to the prototype we have online. http://75.3.247.200/html/wordpress/
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It’s great. I used your website and I’m sure students like it. I use the default home page. When I see your home page, I’ve an idea that I’ll group the related modules and change the home page layout. Thanks.
Are you using Rachel+3 ? For uploading contents, are you using upload modules (or) Wordpress upload?
Kind Regards,
Khine Lay
Hi Khine. We have “builds” for both the Raspberry Pi Model 3 B and the Model 3 B+. Happy to make available for you - it’s a regular Wordpress site so customizing menus, etc. is easy. For the contents: some are Rachel content modules such as the Bloom books. Other content such as the math workbooks I added. First I downloaded them from SA website, then renamed the PDFs using a naming convention, then uploaded them using Wordpress media upload.
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