As the end of the year approaches, students and teachers were preparing for the important national exams, while continuing to access the learning platform to help with their teaching and studies.
There is now even more content on the learning platform, as we have added new Life Skills content in the form of the ‘Good Schools Toolkit’ by Raising Voices, which educates the teachers and students on how to introduce a happy and productive environment in the school. There was also the addition of various new eBooks for standards 3, 4 and 5. These eBooks are in addition to the African Storybook stories that are already available on the platform.
Many teachers informed us of an increase in pupil attendance due to the growing anticipation of new content being launched on the learning platform. It’s clear to see that iMlango has certainly become an integral and important part of these students’ daily lives.
Another interesting observation is that digital attendance monitoring, popularly known amongst the students as “sQuidding”, is now so ingrained in the schools and has become routine for the students in the morning and afternoon. As there are many schools who experience power outages and rationing, we sourced and distributed solar chargers for the attendance monitoring tablets to address this issue - so attendance can always be taken, even if there’s no power.
We have also initiated the first phase of our Community Internet Sustainability Initiative, which will provide iMlango communities near the schools with the ability to access the internet via their own mobile phones, or via the school’s PCs, using iMlango’s satellite broadband connectivity.
We were honoured to have been part of the 5th Annual mEducation Alliance symposium late last month which was held in Washington D.C. The 3 day event brought together over 200 participants from +100 organisations from around the world. The symposium is designed to facilitate knowledge exchange and networking with the main focus being the use of technology in education to support the Post-2015 SDG (Sustainable Development Goals).
As a presenter and exhibitor at this year’s symposium, we had the opportunity to showcase our programme to delegates and a team of experts. It was another great event and we look forward to being a part of next year’s symposium as well.
Lastly, we received a message from Daniel K. Sadikiel, a teacher at one of our schools and a member of our community, which illustrates the impact the programme is having here in Kenya.
“A.I.C. Na manga primary school is really proud of iMlango. The programme has really been of help to learners and the school at large. Most of the learners who've never used a computer are now very proud of themselves. Maths-whizz has made most of our learners interested in learning due to the practicality of the lessons. This has improved the school attendance.”
Until next time,
The iMlango team