iMlango wins Dóchas “Innovative Programme of the Year” Award

Students were greeted with new and engaging content as they returned to the iMlango classrooms after the short break this month.

The team behind the learning platform’s encyclopaedia, Q-Files, have added an online question and answer feature. A new question will be posted each week (e.g., why is the sea salty?) and the question will be answered with the aid of pictures, diagrams, videos, and an accompanying article. This is a great way to learn about new topics. We are working with Q-Files to generate specific questions that will help develop the iMlango students’ knowledge of key Life Skills topics, such as sanitation.

We are extremely excited to be working with the Great Debaters competition and television show in Kenya, and will be running our very own competition in schools using the iMlango learning platform to capture student responses to thought-provoking questions. Look out for more on this in next month’s update.

As ever, we continued to progress the Support Initiative and are making good progress. We aim to have parents and students in 130 schools benefiting from conditional payments in the coming weeks. The team are also working hard to deliver new community Wi-Fi sites in Makueni and Uasin Gishu County.

The field team have been busy accompanying the Girls’ Education Challenge team around schools in Makueni County for the programme’s quarterly review. They met with participating merchants and beneficiaries of the Support Initiative, observed teachers using content from the learning platform to conduct whole-class learning sessions, and witnessed one teacher give a presentation – with content sourced from the learning platform - on the importance of washing your hands. This was followed by a practical demonstration outside of the classroom. What this presentation demonstrates is that iMlango provides teachers and students with the necessary tools and skills to source and deliver information that is vitally important to the students’ health and wellbeing.

We’re very proud to announce that the iMlango programme was the winner of the Dóchas “Innovative Programme of the Year” Award. Presented by the President of Ireland, Michael D. Higgins in Dublin to Camara Education, who made the application on behalf of the consortium, the Dóchas Awards celebrate innovative and inspiring work by people and organisations in Ireland working for global justice

Lastly, we have lots of great new content on the site - make sure to check out the Success Stories and Gallery pages to see how iMlango is making a real difference in Kenya.

Until next time,
The iMlango team

Latest iMlango project update

The following is a post from Changez Ndzai, Vetting Officer at Camara Kenya

It is 7.30 am at Malindi Central Primary school. The temperatures started to rise and even though it’s early, I can see the pupils very determined, settled in their perspective classes revising their work.

I am in Malindi, a tourist town located at the north side of the coast region of Kenya. Here the main challenge, as far as education is concerned, is girls dropping out of school at a young age due to ”child labour” and early marriage. I am delighted to learn that this scenario is about to change with the introduction of iMlango Project and the maths-whizz software in the school.

During the ongoing training, I was happy to see some of the students trying to fool me saying that they did not finish their maths-whizz assessments so they could stay longer working on the computer. When talking with the young pupils, they told me that mathematics is their main challenge when studying.

The good news is that since the introduction of the iMlango project in the school the ones who used to hate maths are now enjoying and finding the subject friendly and easy to understand due to the help of the ”maths-whizz” software.

Another iMlango and maths-whizz advantage is that students are developing higher understanding skills and excelling in the English language as the software uses tools such as audio, graphics and visual designs to show maths problems to students to solve. They also told me that they find it easy to understand them because it can be related to their daily activities hence making it much less complicated to be solved.

 Until next time,
The iMlango team

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