Could I have a copy of you training materials too please Jseni.
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@Jseni, I am still not clear - is there specific Tanzania curriculum content, that can be added to a default Pi installation? I too, worried that the content might not be relatable directly to local teachers.
As for technical skills of children - i agree access to information is important, but also hands on experience is important, to feel comfortable around computers. And if they get this, I guarantee, they will outstrip your knowledge within months. so it happened to my elders when I first got my hands on a computer aged 12. so it will happen to us all, who are now parents, teachers or aged over 30! :).
cheers,
Colin.
@c_desilva We have got a module on Tanzania National Examination. We are working very hard to customised the contents to fit Tanzania curriculum. Currently, we are working and finalising with teachers and other private local contents provider to get the contents that suits Tanzania context asa soon as possible. We are working out contracts with Smart school, Ubongo kids, T.O.VL (Tanzania Online Virtual Library), studi Academy.
I have been support digital library as a teacher in rural Iringa. At first, you can be wondering if students in rural context can they be comfortable using computer and browse contents in Rachel? I am speaking of my hands on experience for over a year working with Teachers and students in rura community. It can be tough if the head teacher is not cooperative and there is very poor relationship between students and teachers. But, other schools are very cooperative, I tested this in Kisutu girls secondary school in Dar and Udzungwa secondary school in rural Iringa. Students can learn very quickly. In a very remote schools can take up to two weeks to be comfortable connecting and exploring the Rachel without support. Teachers in school that are coopertive, are always very excited and the Heads of these schools keeps on calling and pressing me that they want to start the program as soon as possible, They even bring reports for missing parts(Wi-Fi adapter) of the computer that without the gadget it will not host our Rachel.
My advice is to make sure you work along the local government to make sure they are actively involved with what is going on in your deployments. I learnt this from Camara Tanzania that installed the computer in one school in Bagamoyo and after six month, they found missing computer and servers) So, they informed the local community and the school was liable for the lost.
Try to make sure the agreements between schools and digital library project are clear from the beginning, who will be responsible for the security, who is liable for the loss of equipment? Approval from local government to authorize establishment of library in their school who will be giving feedback and on which frequency? Who will be ensuring opening the library for students and assisting them to learn and ensuring their learning are tracked, so that they can get accurate report on students progress, etc
Regards
Jackline,
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@c_desilva In Kenya we have found that most teachers with their own laptop or access to a laptop are eager to use the GCF LearnFreeās modular lessons that cover e-mail, Internet browsers, Apple, Windows, Windows Office applications, and many other needs for adults. (All of the content of RACHEL is accessed via a browser.)
Email this link to your contacts in Tanzania as soon as possible. If they can access their email from a computer, they can try some lessons out before you arrive. First take a look yourself to see if these lessons look appropriate to you:
GCF Learn Free http://rachelfriends.org/previews/rachelplus-full/modules/en-GCF2015/index.html
Working with adults is actually much easier than using RACHEL in a formal class with fixed time periods and a fixed curriculum. Once you tell adults they cannot spoil the videos on RACHEL or the computer they are using, they should relax and get going, not as fast as the kids, but faster than you would expect.
With several adults working in the same room, they can help each other. If you can afford and instructor, keep the lecture time to a minimum, setting out the assignment and doing a quick demo. Then the lecturer should walk around the room while the learners struggle. An instructor is not necessary. The computer lab monitor, possibly a student who likes computers, can get people started.
I would then focus my time during the trip with the people who have already accessed the link and can tell you what they have found most helpful. If you do not identify interested people and create some demand before your trip, you will find you are just beginning to see benefit when the trip is over. After many trips, I would focus on helping a few people really benefit rather than interesting a lot of people.
Focus on what people will put to use immediately, probably e-mail and Word and then Excel and Power Point for teachers and others who need to make presentations. I have used spreadsheets since Visicalc was released in 1980. I have never set up a database in Access or any other database program, although I find these covered in most introductory courses. For adults and university students, avoid broad coverage, focus on what they will use immediately, otherwise they will forget.
If you find that rare person who will truly have webmaster access to edit a website, introductions to HTLM, CSS, and Javascript are covered in KA-Lite. We can then give them the contact for Powering Potential in Karatu, (northern) Tanzania about setting up a Google Coder Raspberry Pi for a practice offline web server with an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) that makes programming much easier.
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Thank you Jackline and edresor,
There is some very good information in here. I am cognizant of the need for ensuring technical solutions fit into that community. My company was quite pleased with my proposal, and i will continue to develop this.
I have some detail meetings with previous volunteers to understand a bit more about this institution, with a focus on identifying a ālocal championā. I have yet to get any feedback on the schools themselves (our project has been based around the management, basically). I am hoping that we can identify someone technically interested, to maintain the project once we have left (we have only two weeks there). If we could demo local Tanzanian curriculum content, I am sure we would have some takers!
Currently to date, I have built a prototype using a Raspberry Pi 3, with a PiJuice card, that will manage power sources intelligently on-the-fly, and shutdown gracefully if power falls below a certain threshold. I just need to make some further tests.
Given the apparent size of the institution and across different campuses and cities, I may need a solution bigger than the Pi, perhaps on a number of locally-networked laptops. Internet access is prohibitively expensive on the rural site, this much is known. The schools they manage in Dar should have better access, but our primary assignment focus is not there.
Right now, we hear the airport in Songea is closed, so we have probably quite an arduous journey to travel with a lot of IT.
cheers,
Colin
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Hi Giakonda,
somehow I missed your comments. Yes, I had the same thoughts. if Jackline is working on actual curriculum content, then this would be best, to have alongside the ācontentā. But I donāt underestimate the ācontentā - wikipedia and loads of free books is a valuable resource for a rural community.
One of the concerns is a lot of the content is in English, but I understand the kids at primary school level are Swahili speakers, with English in the secondary level.
my dates are also October! when/where are you going? Can you tell more about your plans?
cheers,
Colin.
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Thank you all for the insights and observations. this is really useful to me a beginner. from the volunteers we had last year, computing is very much at its infancy in this location. This does not discourage me, but maybe limits the initial investment this year.
The basic thing here is āyou donāt know what you donāt knowā, so initial interest, based on initial computing efforts last year, may take some time. If it develops, I am sure my colleagues next year will expand on this.
So far, I intend to take a Rachel installation based on a self-built Pi with a UPS card (āpiJuiceā) and on-board battery, which should manage graceful shutdowns and startups, minimise the corruption issue and make it self-sustaining if there is no local IT champion to manage it. It will run off a number of power sources including solar. I will make a separate post on this, as it is inexpensive, and can be built with very little expertise in 10 minutes.
As for other ideas to encourage interest, keep it coming 
I am new to this.
cheers,
Colin.
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Sorry Iāve not contributed for a while. I have been rather unwell. This has meant I have had to postpone my visit to Tanzania. I hope to be well enough to go sometime in November.
I am still trying to find an image for the Raspberry Pi 3+ that works. Does anyone know of one?
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Lotās of great discussions going on here! Hi all, Iām Given Edward, CEO of Mtabe Innovations. We work to use Artificial Intelligence to deliver offline learner support via SMS. The way our platform works, a student messages the question they are struggling with via SMS to our number and our teachers as well as the AI system will answer them in seconds or a few minutes.
We are now keen to see whether we can help students access digital learning materials offline via desktops and are keen to provide RACHEL content to them freely as intended. Would love to meet up and connect with any RACHEL Friends in Tanzania.
You can read about mtabe here - > Mtabe Offline e-Learning
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Dear Jseni
I am interested to know what content you have secured and generated to support the Tanzania environment, Can you list it and are you also able to share it with my Tanzanian partners??
Best wishes Aaron
Im from RUVUMA mbinga HAGATI SEKONDARY ,WE ORDERED IT through our peace corp volunteer,and they are working now , students and teachers are enjoying it,though the challenge is now the syullbus is turning from content to competence based,so teachers are using rechel as the main centre of materials which they transform into students practise,that means we allow students also to asess and makes some discussion and relate with their social realities
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