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