classGroom - The Global Classrooms

1. Underdeveloped regions and refugee camps increasingly have internet access but lack teachers. Developed world school classes would benefit from more interactive learning pedagogies and student diversity. 

2. Schools register in our platform vacancies for remote students defining ages/grades, languages and subjects. Students from all over the world enroll in the platform to become part of a class. That class then uses classGroom technologies to enhance learning activities and integrate remote students. All in-class and remote students use the same tools, namely augmented reality markers, to interact and collaborate.

3. These classrooms, scaled globally, will improve students learning through communication dynamics and bridging cultures. Remote students feel as belonging to normal classes and schools, having the exact same schedule (shifted to their timezone) as their in-class colleagues. The impact on students will be huge and future opportunities radically improved. Their communities will benefit from those life-changing experiences resulting in new possibilities of development.

Our aim is to give children all over the world access to quality education. In the 5 to 18 age bracket this implies having a teacher and classroom colleagues. Even when there is internet access, children often do not have self-learning skills to use educationalonline resources in an autonomous way.

From our experience in Kinshasa, D.R. Congo, even private schools have a hard time hiring qualified teachers, especially women. To circumvent this problem, Bridge International Academies distributed in hundreds of schools in Africa tablets with software to step by step assist less qualified teachers.

According to SaveTheChildren (savethechildren.org) “by the end of 2019, there were nearly 26 million refugees in the world (...). Half of the world's refugees are children”.

According to EDUCATEACHILD (educateachild.org) “enrollment in primary school is only 76% globally and drops dramatically to 36% at secondary levels.”

UNHCR states that “Quality education is the anchor that will keep children in school” and this is certainly true whether or not children are in a refugee camp. 

The problem we address is clearly a priority for the UN Sustainable Development Goals for 2030, particularly goal 4C - Increase the Supply of Qualified Teachers in Developing Countries.

Our solution aims to share qualified teachers' classrooms with children all over the world. It consists of a Classroom Response System that turns traditional classes into more dynamic and interactive learning experiences. At the same time it allows students who can’t attend class for health or other reasons to continue to participate as if physically present thanks to video conferencing and the use of our augmented reality (AR) markers.

Those AR markers are printed on simple A4 white paper and folded in tent mode so that they can stand on the desktop. We distribute AR markers with unique codes, one per student. Using the teachers’ cellphone camera or classroom computer's webcams, markers orientation can be detected and a number of tasks can now be automated like attendance control and other pedagogical activities such as quizzes, polling, group creation and games. 

Remote students in a video conferencing like setting, have one or more webcams in front them so they can also use the same kind of AR markers to participate in classroom activities. In low-connectivity settings, only the AR markers information needs to be shared and video streams can be suspended.

Our solution, integrating remote students in a traditional classroom environment, is well suited to serve underdeveloped regions and refugee camps giving their children access to quality education with qualified teachers.

In the extreme case of a refugee camp, one computer and webcam can be enough for many children to participate using very cheap AR markers which can be easily printed on site or sent from abroad.
In underserved communities, children can be divided in groups to integrate these global classrooms. For instance, children is a small village in Guinea Bissau may be integrated in a normal school class in Portugal which they will attend having the same schedule adjusted to their timezones. Specific needs in different situations are addressed joining educational NGO together with partnering schools through our platform.

Our solution impacts:

1. Students already having qualified teachers will experience more dynamic classes and will contact other cultures having classmates from faraway.

2. Remote students from underdeveloped regions, refugee camps or other isolated context gain access to teacher lead quality education. The impact on students will be huge having their future opportunities radically improved. Their communities will benefit from those life-changing experiences resulting in new possibilities of development.

Enabling access to quality learning experiences is the main purpose of our Global Classroom solution, extending quality education classes to regions where children, for many reasons, do not locally have access to qualified teachers.

We address low-connectivity issues by locally processing our classroom response system’s AR markers, sending and receiving collaboration data in just a few bytes.
When possible, as 4G/5G and systems like Starlink become available, full video-conferencing can be enabled to improve empathy which contributes for better learning outcomes. Nevertheless, even having low-connectivity, students and teachers have access to everyone’s images.

These global classrooms are, by their nature, equitable.

We consider classGroom to be at a prototype stage because our Global Classroom solution is merging two of our technologies. These are integrated in our following products:

ARatSchool (aratschool.com) - Implements a Classroom Response System technology and had a pilot in a Vocational School (pictures in the pitch video). It is now being extended to become the classGroom (classgroom.com) prototype.

EuPasseio.com (towalk.me) - Conversation based in photos and specialized scripts aimed at elders in nursing homes, using our own video conferencing technology integrating image transitions, image zooming and video synchronisations. This service already received media attention in two local newspapers with full page articles on a nursing home enjoying virtual walks and conversations with guides.

The main innovation we introduce is to expand a video conferencing system with advanced classroom oriented features taking advantage of having webcams in front of the students. We developed in ARatSchool a most advanced and affordable Classroom Response System (CRS) which requires the use of the teacher’s mobile phone camera or the classroom computer webcams. Now, having what became a standard video-conference setting in front of remote students, we extended the classroom activities to seamlessly integrate them.

Technologically, it implies to have each computer or teachers' mobile phone to detect and process locally the augmented reality (AR) markers, that data to be shared between all computers and the teacher’s computer or mobile phone to turn it into pedagogical useful information. At the right time and under the teacher's control, that information can be shown to all students, those in the classroom and those remote, and eventually stored in a central database or Learning Management System.

Our solution integrates well with Google’s Classroom, Microsoft’s 365 for Education and LTI compatible solutions like Moodle. We can say that our solution expands classrooms to the edge, enabling many remote students, through a single computer, to be integrated in a 21st century school with qualified teachers and modern learning pedagogies and management systems.

The classGroom solution integrates many layers of technologies, open standards and open source algorithms we developed (https://stamm-reis.org/) to turn Global Classrooms into a practical and affordable reality.

Currently none: being in the prototype stage, all our users are programmers and act as beta testers.

In one year 2 teachers and 50 students: we expect them to use classGroom in-class and remotely whenever they cannot go to school (hybrid learning). Their feedback will be crucial on fine tuning the platform and scale it to many more classes and to permanently remote students.

In five years we expect hundreds of classes to accept thousands of remote students. 

Our initial KPI grouping is the following:

Use of classGroom:
KPI 1: number of teachers.
KPI 2: number of classes.
KPI 3: number of students.
KPI 4: number of students’ hours.
KPI 5: number of remote students  (SDG).

Use of classGroom marketplace:
KPI 6: number of registered vacancies for students.
KPI 7: number of remote students applying to vacancies.
KPI 8: number of remote students engaged in classes  (SDG).
KPI 9: number of hours of learning by remote students  (SDG).

KPI 10: students’ satisfaction and performance scores (SDG).
KPI 11: teachers’ satisfaction and improvement scores.
KPI 12: school managers’ satisfaction scores.
KPI 13: community leaders’ satisfaction scores  (SDG). 

SDG - contribution to UN 2030 Quality Education Goals.

Two people, one full time and the other part-time.

Francisco Reis is full time on the Umniverse platform that powers classGroom and its educational and communication technologies.

Filipe Santos is part-time dedicated to classGroom relevant services which includes ARatSchool, EuPasseioCom and VISITrue.

Consultants: Eduardo Marques, Assina Kahamba, Pedro Rebelo, Paula Santos.

Francisco Reis, computer science engineer (IST), PhD, MBA. Ex-patent examiner at the European Patent Office in the data carriers field, lecturer and main responsible for software engineer graduations.Expert in cloud technologies, mainly PaaS.

Filipe Santos, software engineer (UNova). Has a long experience in the banking sector building rock solid software with user experience and security being hand in hand priorities. Strong expertise in the database field, has left his footprint in many complex database architectures and data integration projects.

Our unique position to implement classGroom successfully has to do with:

• Having developed the platform Umniverse (umniverse.com) where the original solutions were developed (aratschool.com and towalk.me).

• Having already developed a marketplace solution called VISITrue (visitrue.com) for tourism also powered by our Umniverse platform.

• Having teaching experience and have been in close contact with situations in Kinshasa (DRC) where finding qualified teachers even for private schools is a challenge.

• Having experienced the changes from 2009 up to 2019 in Kinshasa where the internet access was a rare commodity with very low connectivity and now, thanks to 4G, it is widely available and stable. It is still expensive but prices are coming down specially when purchasing large data packages.

Our team works closely with Universidade dos Açores Social Service department reaching many youngsters that dropout of school for lack of quality or accessible education.

Some of our solutions are already in production. Our Hospital21 (https://hospital21.com) Indoor Navigation and Assistance solution relies on the same AR markers’ detection as the classGroom solution.

Our leadership team has been working and promoting inclusive work policies. When working in Kinshasa (D.R. Congo), Francisco Reis gave talks at UNIKIN (University at Kinshasa) about Object Oriented Programming to up to 300 african students from which later some were selected to work at a nearby hospital (Monkole Hospital). For many years Francisco main collaborator in Kinshasa is Ms. Assina Kahamba, a software engineer graduated from UNIKIN and now a director at a girls private school.

Whenever this project is incorporated as a company, eventually as an NGO, hiring access, equal pay and promotion opportunities will be offered no matter the race, gender, sexual orientation or religion of the candidates. Strong policies will be enforced and audits put into place to avoid discrimination and moral harassment. Collaborators in remote regions will tend to be 100% native from those regions and have gender parity.

The Global Classroom concept can be the most ambitious and visionary project of our generation in what access to quality education is concerned. 

If the Solve community embraces the way our classGroom solution implements global classrooms, we can all make it happen.

The time is right. Internet access is reaching all corners of the world thanks to 4G/5G and low earth orbit satellite access like Starlink’s are coming.

Schools with qualified teachers are experiencing a pedagogical disruption and SOLVE’s community can certainly contribute to much needed brainstorming.

Children without quality education abound, increasingly in places like refugee camps with new educational challenges.  SOLVE’s powerful network will help us in reaching them.

SOLVE’s diversity of people is one of its strengths and an inspiration to, through global classrooms, foster inter-cultural exchanges and solidarity feelings among geographies.

The community support and recognition provided by joining SOLVE will be a huge step towards turning somewhat utopian concepts like global classrooms into reality.

Eventually, solutions inspired by ours can together make a significant impact providing qualified teachers to so many millions of children who currently lack it.

Finally, we look forward to reaching thousands of teachers in schools all around the world through the SOLVE program. Getting in touch with like minded peers with genuine concerns about access to education will keep us motivated and certainly more creative in our research and development efforts.

Product-market fit can best be reached with significant feedback from customers, beneficiaries. Mentorship can be crucial in speeding up the first prototypes and to eventual strategy change.  

Legal or Regulatory Matters are important due to the wide reach of our classGroom solution. For example, Bridge Academies are constantly having problems with local authorities who charge them for not complying with national curricula.

Public Relations and taking advantage of social networks and global media is nowadays a challenge to every enterprise. We are no exception and are keen to take advantage of SOLVE’s networking.

Monitoring & Evaluation is already part of our job description as engineers for many years. Measuring social impact, nevertheless, is a field where we are eager to learn.

There are many SOLVE members, MIT faculty and projects that relate to the approach we took to contribute to equality education.

One of those projects is CLIx: Connected Learning Initiative. As it states, “CLIx incorporates thoughtful pedagogical design and leverages contemporary technology and online capabilities”.

We know that the SOLVE member “Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation” (CGF)  has supported many education programs. Perhaps CGF will be the best fit if we want to bridge schools in Portugal with those in African portuguese speaking countries (having global classrooms spanning these countries become feasible due to similar time zones).

MIT faculty like, Daniel Seaton, Isaac Chuang (Office of Digital Learning) could be valuable collaborators namely in promoting a MOOC to train teachers to better take advantage of global classrooms and its technologies.

We are qualified for our solution aims to share qualified teachers' classrooms with children all over the world. It consists of a Classroom Response System that turns traditional classes into more dynamic and interactive learning experiences. At the same time, it allows students who can’t attend class for health or other reasons, can also participate as if physically present thanks to video conferencing and the use of our augmented reality (AR) markers.

Those AR markers are printed on simple A4 white paper and folded so they can stand on the desktop.  We distribute AR markers with unique codes one per student. It uses the teachers’ cellphone or webcams in the classroom computer.

In remote classes we have laptops and extra webcams so students can also use the same kind of AR markers to participate in classroom activities to achieve the desired global classroom with qualified teachers.

Having these low cost settings, we would use the ASA prize to:

• Buy $500 laptops and two $30 webcams to each remote class.

• Buy $300 big screens (> 40”) for remote classes.

• Buy power generators and fuel or, preferably, solar panels.

• Print and send thousands of AR markers to remote classes.

• Pay for the internet costs of remote classes.

These costs are adapated to each remote classe's current resources.

We qualify for the Andan Prize for our solution excels at delivering quality education in refugee camps. There are millions of children spending years in camps where there are no qualified teachers and no resources to invest in many computers and internet access.

With our classGroom solution all it takes is one laptop to create a remote class of up to 10 students that follows in real time all the learning activity in a faraway school as long as internet access is available, even with low bandwidth.

Developed countries no longer need to send their teachers abroad, which is expensive and may be risky, but only support their schools and teachers to open vacancies for remote students in their already functioning classes.

These global classrooms that our classGroom solution makes possible constitute a paradigm shift in what educational aid is all about. From now on, the same quality education that the so-called first world provides to their children can be provided to refugee camps. Cultural diversity is promoted this way as well, starting at young ages, language can also act as countries’ ambassadors broadening future possibilities to refugee children and their communities.

No, I do not wish to be considered for this prize.

As our solution leads to equitable classrooms all over the world, it would be important to test how blockchain technologies can contribute to secure distributed students data like names, origins, assessments and grades.

We would use the prize to achieve what in many areas, like in healthcare and now in education, is crucial: to implement privacy having a user's data belonging and being managed by himself/herself. 

Blockchain can certainly be used to implement this vision so we will, thanks to the prize, do R&D implementing pilots where users may additionally give access to parts of their data to the people or companies (often to be hired) they choose, all in a non centralized way