In Kenya, a Digital Classroom in a Box

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

At Lighthouse Grace Academy in Nairobi’s Kwangware suburb, students are using a new learning tool. It’s the “Kio Kit,” a digital classroom in a suitcase designed by local technology company BRCK.

“The Kio Kit is a way to turn any classroom into a digital classroom,” said Nivi Mukherjee of BRCK Education, the subsidiary that launched the product in September 2015.

“You open the box, and there are 40 tablets inside; there is a BRCK inside, and on the BRCK there is a Linux [open-source] server — so we can locally cache educational content and serve it up to the tablets.”

Blessing, a 7-year-old student, taps away on her new tablet in her crowded tin-walled classroom. “It’s fun,” she said. Her teacher, Josephine Boke, said the kit “is nicely designed for the young hands, and it’s easy to use and easy to adapt to the technology. To the kids, they get excited when they are using it. It gives me an easy time as a teacher.”

The tablets and the BRCK are symbiotic. The modem is in a watertight, plastic, wheeled suitcase that has slots for the tablets and wirelessly charges both. New digital learning materials are uploaded to the BRCK wirelessly during the night when more bandwidth is available, and is then shared with the tablets during classes. Kits costs $5,000, but each one can serve hundreds of children.

“We see this kit being rolled around from one classroom to the next throughout the day, throughout the week, children sharing it, having access to the kind of content and e-textbooks they wouldn’t otherwise have access to,” Mukherjee said. “We don’t think it’s beyond the reach of public schools to spend $5,000 giving digital access to 400 children.”

Just five primary schools and libraries were using the Kio Kit as of November 2015, but BRCK Education already has 300 preorders, and Mukherjee soon hopes to be producing “thousands each month.”