Hi everyone, here’s a message from another RACHEL user in Papua New Guinea, Nawi Mobo. Congratulations on your excellent work and press, Nawi!
Nawi says:
"I am from Papua New Guinea and last Christmas I undertook a personal project while on vacation in my home region involving RACHEL servers. The project was titled “Giving RACHEL to the Underserved”. It involved the presenting of RACHELs to three villages and teaching people basics on how to access the content and apply the information in practical situation. The project was featured in our MAF Asia Pacific Newsletter and on the National, one of the major newspapers in Papua New Guinea. You can read of the stories in the links below:
Towards the end of last year, MAF PNG’s Finance Manager, Geoff Boer purchased the three servers on my behalf from World Possible for the personal project whose stories are covered by the various outlets in the links above. Because of this, many more places of learning and communities are gearing to buy RACHEL servers."
Great job by Nawi! I am from Bougainville, Papua New Guinea as well and would like to know how I can purchase the gadgets from World Possible. Please advise accordingly…
The servers were ordered directly from World Possible, here’s the link; https://store.worldpossible.org/collections/frontpage/products/rachel-plus. You can check with them (World Possible) if they are able to send to PNG through any of the major courier services. Jeremy and Nicole from World Possible may join in this conversation…. lately they have been receiving orders from PNG.
For my order, the RACHELs were sent to our (MAF) Cairns Office (Australia) where a member of our staff travelling to PNG brought them as part of his luggage and declared them to Airline, Customs and Airport Security.
If you need to get in touch with me regarding more information on the servers and the project I undertook, feel free to connect with me through LinkedIn via this link https://www.linkedin.com/in/nawi-mabo-8147548b
Hi Nigel,
We are about to purchase for Nissan Island schools. Let me know if we can assist. I live in Canada but am heading home at the end of June. We will be in Buka possibly the first week of July.
Regards,
Symone
Me and my students (DWU, Madang) will be doing a community awareness in Central Province over the holidays (specifically Kupiano Secondary School in the Rigo district). We have decided to setup Rachel-pi in that school. However being a student organization, sourcing funding can be a difficult task. The students raised enough funds to purchase the devices but found that they can be very expensive given the low PGK.
So we have decided to build one ourselves using the Raspberry Pi devices we already have. Will keep this list posted on the outcome.
And we managed to create our custom-built RACHEL-Pi using Raspberry Pi 3 B+ with a 128GB microSD. Now exploring options of adding local content modules.
Managed to create a separate module for the Past National Exam pages. Although there is the same module in the OER2Go website I could not update due to firewall restrictions with my internet connection.
So I decided to try create a similar module for the RACHEL-Pi we have. Managed to do up a simplpe website directory in an hour. Trouble was to change the module folder permissions so I could copy the site contents over. Did this with the help of PUTTY and FILEZILLA.
Hi Aaron,
Just doing my little bit in advocating RACHEL as an alternative especially to rural schools. We completed a small project in one school already. Trying to introduce RACHEL to another school this year. At the same time, I am looking for ways to collect empirical data on what works and what doesn’t. Setting something up is only half the job done but we want to know whether it is being fully utilized to better the goals of the school.
Hi Picky what is your background what are your interests, can you send a CV? are you able or interested to support similar assets computers with PNG curriculum on in other rural locations near you ?
Hi @NicoleC,
My name is Paul Henry Yauko , I am with working at the office of the Chief Information Officer of Vanuatu and I have been assigned to find and solution to bridge the digital learning resources gap between remote rural community and the urban, in Vanuatu. Since, my country is an archipelago of over 80 islands spanning over 900 KMs, it is very difficult for the government to reach the remote areas in terms of services and infrastructure.
I have come across the project RACHEL yesterday and I found that RACHEL is the perfect solution I was looking for. Therefore, I was wondering if I could get more informations about the project in terms of:
How to start a new chapter?
What do I need get started?
How to get the equipment?
The training involved, add update, maintain and trouble shoot
And maybe ‘wantok’ Mawi, could help support me with his wonderful experiences in the Pacific.
@phyauko I am from PNG and I am working hard to establish a World Possible Chapter in PNG. RACHEL is an excellent device that can be ustilised in our countries in like ours where Internet is very expensive, very slow and even cant reach rural schools and communities.
I was advised that @NicoleC is no longer working with World Possible. I have some documents that could help you regarding chapter. Kindly provide you email and will send them over. Have a top day. Laso Mana
@laso.mana, Thank you Laso for you kind help. As we have the same issue of remoteness, RACHEL is a possible solution to enhance education in our remote areas. Please Send the documents to my email bellow: paulhenry.yauko@gmail.com
Hello,
My name is Ryan Boldt I work with YWAM based in Kona Hawaii. I have spent some time in Kupiano and Rigo district. My team and I are wanting to use the Rachel Device to be able to able to share christian education in the islands throughout Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia. I am curious if you have found success with this device in its deployment? I would love to connect with you more and ask you some questions. I hope to hear from you soon.
Hi everyone, two weeks ago my workmate and I from the technical section undertook the task of building a Rachel Pi for 1 remote school out on the Islands of Milne Bay Province. I work for a non-profit organisation aimed at bringing free online education to those who missed out of the formal system. We have internet connection and Wi-Fi around the island where our student live to a central office on Nimoa Island. We have being operating for at least more than a decade in this part of the country, introducing electronic learning to many dropouts, and we had a lot of experiences. We previously built the E-granary which contained at least more over 60,000 books and hooked it up over our network, because of power issues on the remote islands we couldn’t continue using the machine, now We want to put the Rachel over our Wi-Fi to make up for internet outages, or an information bank where student can rely on when there is no internet. The project is underway and currently installing modules to build a genuine library for the learners who don’t have access to these resources. So far so good as we believe this project will bring most reading resources to an empty classroom. We drafted a proposal to our district government to fund the project, buy 14 Rachel devices from world possible to equip 14 remote primary school in our district. It was unfortunate that our politicians weren’t convinced, so we decided to custom build one ourselves with a Raspberry Pi. Also building custom modules to add to the current one, especially on topics in Papua New Guinea whicht are not found on the Rachel server list. Thanks to World Possible. My email is nrothman016@gmail.com, if anyone wants to share their experiences with me.
Thanks for the post and your continued work with RACHEL! You may want to connect with @laso.mana who is using RACHEL devices in Papua New Guinea. There should be some crossover there with content and devices.
