The Rise of After School Clubs

It’s been another busy month for the iMlango team - a raft of new content has been uploaded to the learning platform, significant progress has been made on our initiatives and we continued to register new students into the programme, with over 23,000 students registered since the start of the year.

Learning platform content

We’re very pleased to announce that new and interactive Standard 1 eBooks from our content partner, eKitabu, were added to the learning platform this month. This is in addition to new eBooks from our new content partner, Tusome. Meaning “Let’s read” in Kiswahili, Tusome is a collaboration between Kenya’s Ministry of Education, Science and Technology; the United States Agency for International Development; and the UK’s Department for International Development that aims to improve learning outcomes by providing literacy content for Standard 1 & 2 students, in English and Kiswahili. Students are now able to access the Tusome syllabus eBooks – with an accompanying guide book for teachers – and various African-focussed stories on the learning platform.

On a recent visit to one of our schools in Makueni County, it was clear to see iMlango’s impact on the students as they were connecting projectors to laptops with consummate ease and accessing the applicable subject in preparation for whole-class learning sessions. Students are also regularly assisting other students to troubleshoot basic ICT issues - demonstrating a significant overall improvement and application of ICT knowledge.

After school clubs & initiatives

There are now 167 iMlango schools with child clubs taking place after school. That equates to a total of 222 clubs, as some schools have more than one, and 84 schools that run girls only clubs. These clubs offer extra access to the learning platform and regularly discuss pertinent topics.

It’s evident that students simply cannot get enough of the content available on the learning platform. They are regularly accessing the ICT labs after school hours – although not part of a formal club – to read the African StoryBook stories, Life Skills content and Q-files’ online children’s encyclopaedia.

The support initiative is progressing well with over 100 local merchants on board to provide food and goods to families that need support. Each merchant is provided with an iMlango tablet to accept payment, and families are given a small amount which is distributed on an iMlango contactless payment smartcard.

UNESCO Mobile Learning Week 2016

We were delighted to be invited back to this year’s UNESCO Mobile Learning Week event in Paris, France, where we were given the opportunity to share our experiences in analysing the large amount of attendance data captured in the field. It was a great turnout with over 70 people in the room for the presentation – a big thank you to all of you that could make it and we hope you enjoyed the talk.

Lastly, the team from the Global Business Coalition for Education spent a day with us at an iMlango school in Kajaido County, where they witnessed the excitement that iMlango has brought to the school and students. It was great to be able to share iMlango’s progress with another organisation, and you can read their blog on their time with us here.

Until next time,
The iMlango team

And the Winner is…

This month saw the team from the Girls’ Education Challenge visit us for the programme’s quarterly review. Accompanied by our field officers, the team visited 5 iMlango schools in Uasin Gishu during their two-day visit. They had the opportunity to view students accessing the learning platform, attendance monitoring in action, as well as teachers using content from the learning platform to deliver whole-class learning.

Whole-class learning is an important variation of how content is delivered in the classroom, as one-on-one access to the ICT equipment is not always possible. Reading eBooks, searching the online encyclopaedia and accessing other engaging content is delivered through a projector, providing large class sizes with collective access to the learning platform.

Discovery Learning Alliance, part of Discovery Communications, also visited our schools this month, where they saw first-hand how exciting attendance monitoring is for the students. We then accompanied them to one of their schools where they are implementing a programme that utilises media to transform education - improving student learning and teacher effectiveness in the classroom.

You can view their blog on their time with us here.

We continued with the Community Internet Sustainability Initiative (CISI), which had the first school go-live with Wi-Fi last month, and an additional 4 going live this month in Kajaido. We envisage that CISI will provide a lasting service that helps iMlango go beyond the classroom, helping the wider-communities by providing digital access.

To ensure schools and teachers continue to be engaged in the programme, the field team averages over 70 school visits per week. No easy feat, but the continuous communication, supported by programme data and reports - a school-by-school breakdown of student attendance, learning platform access and time spent on specific educational content – allows schools and teachers to quickly identify areas of concern and implement change.

We progressed the conditional payments initiative, holding meetings with parents in the community to gain further understanding of how it can be used to improve student attendance. When talking to a mother of a student beneficiary, she told us of how iMlango has made her realise how important her daughter’s education is, saying: “I am very grateful for iMlango and I promise that Mukes (her daughter) will not miss school again. I will put more effort to make sure that my daughter’s education will be a success not only to her but to the entire community... Asante sana iMlango kwa msaada mlionilitea AIC Namanga Munguawabariki (Thank you very much iMlango for the help brought to AIC Namanga may God bless you.)”

Finally, a big congratulations to Maths-Whizz as they were announced as the winner of the best International Digital Education Resource award, at the 2016 BETT Awards in London last month. A truly fantastic achievement and well done to all of the Maths-Whizz team!

Until next time,
The iMlango team

Registering Over 5,000 New iMlango Students – There’s an App for That

A very Happy New Year to all involved in the iMlango programme and to all of our followers that eagerly await these updates.

This month saw the field team tackle the large task of registering all of the new students into the programme, which included new standard 1 students and older students as well. Over the course of the month, we enrolled over 5,000 students into the programme, issuing them with their very own iMlango contactless smart card.

In preparation for this influx of new students, we developed a brand new Registration App for our Android based attendance monitoring tablets.This native application has been built from the ground up to make the registration process quicker, and ultimately more efficient for the field team.

Students’ details are simply entered into the registration App in the classroom by the field team, linking their details to the student smart card in the iMlango data system. The smart card then enables the student to access the interactive learning platform, and for the teacher to monitor and capture their daily attendance. The entire registration process takes less than 30 seconds per student. Although, we found the process somewhat of a challenge with some of our younger students, as many did not know their full names, or how to spell them.

The field team also provided teachers with refresher training at many of the schools this month, which will continue over the next two months. We also held meetings with numerous communities to discuss and progress our sustainability initiatives. As a result of these meetings, we acquired over 90 local merchants for the support initiative, which involves distributing conditional payments and measuring their impact on the students’ attendance.

We’re very pleased to announce that a further 10 additional iMlango schools in Uasin Gishu County are now live with attendance monitoring, and that all schools can now access the Literacy Quiz on the learning platform.

The Community Internet Sustainability Initiative trial at the Arthi River Primary School, which provides Wi-Fi access to the wider community, has been very well received and we’re currently seeing the community consume 10GB per day on their own devices.

Lastly, we were delighted to welcome the Sustainable Rural Growth Development Initiative (SRGDI), a non-governmental organization from Malawi, at one of our schools in Kajiado County, where they were able to see students access the learning platform and attendance monitoring in action. It was a pleasure to host them and we look forward to their next visit.

Until next time,
The iMlango team