Digital Literacy for Rural Schools

Lack of learning and teaching platforms for  rural communities during  covid19 era. Children have been home for 15 months with no access to learning materials. Teachers have lost touch with their subject content and learners. Parents have no clue on how to facilitate reading and learning activities. 

Create an ICT hub through which teachers, learners and parents will  access Information Communication Technology (ICT) tools and equipment, reading and learning materials. Primary school teachers will be trained in digital literacy skills, guided and facilitated to create content  in curriculum subjects. The content will be printed and distributed to learners at household level utilising the community based library structures.

It will enhance the capacity of teachers to adopt to remote learning and facilitate household based learning. It will increase access to ICT tools and resources, reading and learning materials. 

Digital literacy for rural schools aims at addressing lack of learning platforms and opportunities at a time when schools remain closed and children are at home due to Covid-19 lockdown.  Over 95 % of children in rural communities are not accessing learning at community and household level because they do not have access to electricity, internet, smart phones and ICT tools and resources. Children have lost 15 months worth of learning and the continued covid-19 crisis is likely to accumulate to over two years of lost learning. The teachers are not in touch with their learners and teaching content and instead are engaged  in other survival activities that include agriculture, boda boda cycling, casual labour and running small business enterprises.Digital literacy for rural schools seeks to provide access to ICTtools, resources, reading and learning materials. Through the community based ICT Hub teachers will be trained in digital literacy skills, be guided and facilitated to create content in the curriculum subjects.

Digital Literacy for rural schools entails creation of a community based ICT hub through which teachers, learners and parents access Information Communication Technology (ICT) tools and equipment, reading and learning materials.

Through the ICT Hub primary school teachers receive training in digital literacy skills are guided and facilitated to create content  in key curriculum subjects (mathematics, English, social studies and science). The content created will be printed and distributed to learners at household level utilising the community based library structures.

Through the ICT hub online educational resources and readers for children will be selected, printed and distributed to learners at community and household level.

Students from higher institutions of learning  will access internet and be able to carry out educational research and participate in other online learning opportunities.

The solution will entail training of teachers and creation of online digital literacy skills tutorials, creation of curriculum subject content and compilation of online readers and educational materials/resources. Google documents, hang outs, whatsapp groups and videos, tablets, smart phones and computers will be used

The target population are  we are working to directly and meaningfully impact are primary school teachers and children. The teachers are currently at home and have limited access to  in-service teacher professional development opportunities. They rarely get opportunity to review their subject content, work with other teachers to improve their content and support one another in the teaching process. The rural school teachers lack digital literacy skills and have no access to ICT tools and resources that could help them adopt remote learning. 

The children in rural communities have remained home for over 15 months due to covid-19 lock down and they are exposed to learning oppotunities at home since the parents lack access to internet, digital skills, smart phones and electricity. 

We have worked with 56 teachers in the area of digital literacy for rural primary school teachers. We conducted a Digital literacy survey for teachers and school headteachers to assess their knowledge levels, to assess the existance of ICT infrastructure and commitment to provide a supportive environment for ICT integration into teaching and learning. 56 Teachers were trained in digital literacy and 20 teachers are creating content in the curriculum content subjects.

Creating a venue through which teachers can access ICT tools, resources, digital literacy training opportunity will enhance teachers capacity to utilise ICT tools and create content that can be used for learning at household and community level. The teachers will get to interact with their learners and parents/care takers and provide educational  resources that can be used to facilitate learning at household level. 

We  are testing the product from Nyarushanje Subcounty, Rukungiri District in Uganda. We are working with 56 primary school teachers through Nyarushanje Community Library and Empowerment Center. We conducted a digital literacy survey with the 56 teachers to assess their knowledge, skills level, availability of ICT infrastructure in the school and supportive environment for integration of ICT. 56 teachers were trained in digital literacy skills and 20 teachers are creating content in curriculum subject content. They are also accessing ICT tools and internet through the community library. We also have 12 community based libraries in Nyarushanje Subcounty through which teachers can continue to link up with parents and learners to guide and support houshold based learning and reading activities.

Our solution is providing a platform to reach out to disadvantaged rural teachers and learners who currently have no access to internet, ICT tools, equipment and who are missing out on remote learning opportunities during the covid19 lock down.

It will serve as a benchmark for teacher capacity building. Through the ICT hub and available online resources, tutorials  teachers will be in position to create content and avail the content to parents/care takers for learners to use at community and household level.

The sharing of ideas through the platform and also through interactions at the ICT hub will give teachers capacity to adapt and evolve to meet the ever changing demands of the teaching process.

The current number we are serving is 163 people 

In one year we hope to serve 326 people 

In five years we hope to serve 2,000 people (these include teachers and learners reached through the household structure

We will conduct baseline survey to serve as benchmark upon which progress will be measured. Monitoring and evaluation framework for the solution will be developed to capture indicators like the number of teachers receiving training in digital literacy skills, number of teachers creating content in curriculum subjects and number of teachers, parents and learners accessing ICT tools and equipment and through the ICT hub. An evaluation will be conducted to evaluate the contribution of the project and derive ideas to improve education interventions.

Full Time  7 staff

Part Time - 6 staff 

Community Based Volunteers --17 

Our team comprises of team members with multiple skills with different education back grounds and expertise. We have educators including teacher trainers, in-service teachers,  pre-service teachers and school administrators.  We have team members with skills in  information technology. We have a legal technology experts, finance and administration skilled individuals and team members with expertise in providing learners with literacy skills. 

We plan to integrate team capacity building sessions in the solution. Training Needs assessment of the team members will be conducted and trainung offered in view of the observed training needs. PeerLink Initiative Uganda (PELI-U) is an equal opportunity employer. The team comprises of members of different sexes, age groups and varying academic qualifications. PELI-U offers an inclusive environment where the contribution of different team members is greatly valued.

I believe that Solve will help to link us with innovative team members that will provide us with the know-how to polish our idea, get volunteers and technical experts that will support us to develop relevants applications for the ICT hub to enable teachers upload and share content,  through the ICT hub  to link the key educators to collectively engage in continuous professional development for quality education. Through Solve we will get teams to work with to pitch our idea, link us with other members that can add value to our idea. We seek to attract potential partners to enable us implement our idea and scale it up to reach more educators.  

Technology - support in developing easy to use technology for low resource rural areas with limited supply of electricity.

Brand development 

Market survey 

Human capital - volunteer skilled personnel in technology 

MIT Faculty and Initiatives - Product development, developing relevant applications, resource mobilization, volunteer service 

Mentorship, coaching and strategic advice

Publicity and visibility through media and MIT events

Solve Members - Provide technical support, networking and partnership building 

Monitoring and evaluation support

Publicity and visibility through media and solve events

Access to resources such as software licences and legal services

Our project focuses on teacher capacity building and integration of information communication technology. We would also provide ICT access to the disadvantaged teachers and learners and hence bridge the digital divide.

Through our project we would like to reach out to more female teachers and build their capacity to integrate ICT in teaching and learning. We also plan to reach out to female care takers at hosuehold level and empower them to spear head and failitate household based reading and learning sessions.