1.What is the problem that you are committed to solving?
Teachers in Tanzania, and other Swahili speaking countries, face many obstacles throughout their working day. Lack of resources and content is a big problem. Teachers receive limited training and lack opportunities to connect with other like-minded teachers.
Although there are many resources available online, financial or infrastructure limits result in intermittent access to the Internet. In 2018, teachers are more likely to be using smart phones than desktop computers and a lot of professional development content is not designed for smaller mobile screens.
Another problem is that although Swahili is the national language for Tanzania, Both students and Teachers are much more fluent in Swahili and will generally use this as a preferred language for conversation. Secondary Teachers are required to deliver and assess in English.
2. What is the solution you are proposing?
The solution we are proposing is to offer short online courses for teachers in Tanzania. These courses will be designed to work on small and large screens with content available for downloading and offline use.
During the course, and afterwards, participants will be encouraged to form a community of practice in Kiswahili empowering teachers to use technology. The online space will use gamification techniques to encourage ambitious and capable Swahili teachers to interact with less confident or less experienced teachers.
The first series of courses will introduce Moodle LMS, Wordpress CMS, and H5P (HTML5 Content Creation tools). These courses will be developed in Swahili with discussion forums for support and collaboration. A few Swahili speaking people in salaried positions will help facilitate forums and provide technical support.
3. How will your solution change the world?
Education is the key to breaking the poverty cycle that exists in Tanzania and other Swahili speaking countries. This project will result in thousands of teachers feeling more confident and motivated to explore the use of technology in classrooms to provide better education.
Tanzania has a constantly growing GDP and needs highly skilled young people to support the growth. Having good quality teachers who can provide a solid educational foundation is essential to support this growth period. The standard of living will increase for the next generation if they have stable employment.
