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

A farewell to 2015

As an eventful year comes to an end, iMlango continues to provide access to important learning resources as students prepare for the short break.

The iMlango field team conducted 90 interviews with head teachers or iMlango champions, to understand in greater detail how they were delivering after school clubs that provide additional time on the learning platform for students.

We continued to progress the Community Internet Sustainability Initiative and conducted surveys at 6 schools to understand if it would be supported by local merchants, as well as the wider community.

The learning platform now has even more content, with an additional 30 African Storybook stories available in Swahili being added this month, further supporting the students’ literacy development. We’re also continuing to work with our content partner, Raising Voices, to deliver additional Life Skills content for teachers and students.

The team travelled to a large number of communities to explore the possibility of using conditional payments to improve school attendance, resulting in them meeting with over 50 merchants.

We have seen numerous success stories emerge from students who attribute their motivation in attending school and improved performance to the programme - keep your eyes peeled for these as they’ll be uploaded to the website over the coming weeks. Schools have also expressed their gratitude in being part of this programme.

Moving into 2016, we look forward to the new school admissions and class one students who will be issued with Attendance Monitoring smart cards and ushered into our exciting programme. We will be utilising our new Registration App that has been developed for the Attendance Monitoring tablet, which improves the speed and efficiency of the sometimes complicated new student registration process.

From all at iMlango, we would like to thank you for your support and wish you a very Happy New Year!