Have there been any conversations around creating a module to house Educational Offline Compatible Android Apps? Data can be expensive or hard to get in some contexts, and if people were able to download curated educational apps from RACHEL directly onto their wifi connected phones they might be able to continue the learning process once they go home. I’m sure you would need to get the proper permissions from the developers, but apps produced by groups like http://www.starfall.com/ strike me as something that might be really useful examples. Many of these apps are already being shared peer to peer through methods like the Xender App.
Great question! We have been talking about this a lot lately, as the folks at Curious Learning literacy apps are interested in getting their Android apps on RACHEL. We’re still working on the details, as we want to find the most user-friendly way possible, but hopefully we’ll have a solution sometime in the next month or two. In the meantime, if anyone has suggestions for more open-source educational apps they’d like to see on RACHEL, please share them here!
I work in Sierra Leone. The types of apps I would be most passionate about seeing would be apps focused on building basic numeracy and literacy skills among primary level students and or adults who haven’t been to school bearing in mind that its primarily an ESL crowd, and then anything that can help students successfully prepare for their WAEC exams at the end of primary school, the end of junior secondary school, and the end of senior secondary school. The WAEC exams are administered in five West African countries Nigeria, Ghana, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and the Gambia and so resources geared at this crowd have potential for quite the reach. Perhaps the Android App module once its designed could also include a function for device administrators to upload their own additional apps that maybe they’ve built or found access to.
I’ll keep my eyes open for any additional resources, and would love to hear what others have found to be helpful. On a different, but related note the starfall apps I mentioned in my last post I now realize also have an online website version of their learning activities. Perhaps their material could also form its own future offline RACHEL module separate from the downloadable android learning apps?
I have been looking for the module from Bernard Poole with tutorials for Office Suite Software. He is the person that told me about Rachel and said his software was included, but I have not been able to find it.
I have installed 7 Rasberry Pi Servers in schools of the Kasama Primary School District in Zambia. We are running this as a trial to see how the teachers will use them in class, get feedback of software loaded, etc. First comments have been good.