Website: https://areseducation.org
Realities of Digital Education in Rural Kenya
Why is it hard to scale, and what can be done about it?
Topics
Website: https://areseducation.org
Realities of Digital Education in Rural Kenya
Why is it hard to scale, and what can be done about it?
Topics
About ARES Education
Mission: Supply turnkey digital learning systems for rural Kenyan schools. – at scale: entire school, region, country (eventually).
How/where we work: Rural Kenya.
Accomplishments:
Wealth & Education Gap: Urban vs. Rural
Prosperity Level | Kenya | World | US |
Life expectancy at birth (years) | 67.1 | 72.8 | 78.8 |
Median age (years) | 20.1 | 30.9 | 38.8 |
Poverty rate (% of population living below national poverty line) | 36.1 | 10 | 11.4 |
Internet access (% of population) | 26.2 | 64.4 | 90 |
Rural population (% of total population) | 68.9 | 43.5 | 14 |
Population with secondary education or higher (% of total population) | 23 | 66 | 90 |
ARES Components
*****************
4G Modem
Classrooms
Classrooms
Computer Lab with Server
Wireless Mesh
Wireless Mesh
ARES School Design
Objectives: scaleable
Classrooms
3 Year Results
ARES Impact
Offline education systems are not new, but scaling up is often slow. Why?
Challenges
Observations
Success is possible, but it requires:
We are still learning every day, but making progress!!
Lessons Learned
Situation | Impact | Actions |
Environment: Electricity limited/irregular. No internet. | Frequent outages; surges cause invisible failures. Static content. | Battery protection every device. All content is offline/Hybrid network. Constant staff checks. |
Personnel: Heavy teacher, principal turnover. | No continuity of training; new principal can cause resets. | Increase ARES support staff, adding trained teacher support reps. Yearly commitment required to continue program. |
Training: Teachers, students often have limited, no digital skills. | Tendency to avoid computers; frequent accidental damage. Often reluctant to report issues. | Provide ongoing basic computer training. Avoid using cheap equipment. Increased staff to find problems proactively. |
Challenges
Situation | Impact | Actions |
Relevance: Teachers need to strictly follow Kenyan curriculum. | Tendency to avoid ARES content if not tightly linked, tied to Y/E test results. | Integrate curriculum system into ARES with links/search to content. |
Acceptance: Western English hard for Kenyans | Tendency to avoid content that is not localized. | Increase the amount of Kenyan sourced content. |
Coverage: Starting ARES configuration has 20 notebooks, but schools often have 300+ students. | Teachers and students compete for access to limited digital resources. | Setup wireless network to cover entire school. Provide more projectors to increase class-wide teaching. |
Challenges
Situation | Impact | Actions |
Sustainability: System updates and support difficult without internet. | Significant delays to upgrades, fixes. | Support staff increased to perform in-place upgrades via swaps and local repairs. |
Metrics: schools lack rigorous, consistent performance tracking. | Very difficult to establish impact metrics for funding. | Carefully track and compare ARES vs. non-ARES schools. Include graduation and college entrance. |
Funding: most sources cover new schools, but not ongoing sustainability costs . | Budget constraints without new source of support funding. | Engaging new sources of fund-raising: social media, newsletters. |
Challenges
4G Modem
Classrooms
Classrooms
Computer Lab with Server
Wireless Mesh
Wireless Mesh
ARES School Design
Objectives: scaleable
Classrooms
Success is possible, but it requires:
We are still learning every day, but making progress!!
Lessons Learned
Online demo: https://areseducation.org /demo.html
Local demo: Wireless: ARES; in browser: ares.edu or 10.42.0.1
Questions?