DigiLab@17000ft

The Covid-19 Crisis has exposed the deep Digital Divide in India especially in the the Indian Himalayan Region (IHR) with the most glaring effect of this being seen in the Education System, with schools being shut and Governments and Civil Society alike scrambling to ensure that their children continue to learn. While a variety of methods ranging from Online Digital Solutions, Offline Content to Whatsapp/ SMS/ TV/ Community Radio/ phone based learning approaches have been tested and used across the country with varying effectiveness and results, Ed-Tech Solutions have emerged as the clear winner for their ability to 

1. Deliver up-to-date learning content to children

2. Be personalized and cater to the individual learning of each child

3. Enable two-way communication between learner and teacher for timely monitoring and feedback.

However, all the Ed-Tech solutions that exist today are online and depend on the presence of electricity and at least intermittent mobile connectivity to be able to work. The few offline solutions that exist are able to deliver content to children in unconnected areas, but are uni-directional and lack the capability for teachers to monitor and hand hold children through their performance.

India today has a significantly large population of children who live in remote regions which have neither continuous electricity, internet or even basic mobile connectivity to be able to benefit from these solutions. 

Of particular note, are the children who live in the extremely remote and inaccessible villages of the Himalayas, where the terrain is harsh, the weather extreme and development is minimal. The Indian Himalayan Region alone has over 5 million children studying in Govt. Schools in areas which are off-grid and off-network and have been unable to learn during the entire period of school closures. With entire families moving back from urban areas to their villages and enrolling their children in the Govt. Schools to avail of free education, this problem is now likely to be compounded with more children without access to the internet.

The DigiLab@17000ft provides Personalized Digital Learning to K8 Students in remote, off-grid and off-network areas, 17000ft has designed and built a specialized Solar Powered Offline Digital Learning Solution specially for regions which have no electricity and no internet/mobile connectivity

The DigiLab brings together all required components in an offline, but connected system, delivering personalized and adaptive content through a hyperlocal internet to students, while also enabling stakeholders to monitor performance through the presence of a last mile connectivity App that relies on the periodic travel of stakeholders from their school to a connected zone. 

Implemented as a blended learning solution at the school, the DigiLab aids the teacher’s traditional face-to-face delivery through highly visual and interactive content and provides an individualized learning platform for each student. The design of the DigiLab also enables children to take tablets home to study, making it an effective solution during the Covid Lockdown periods and school holidays.

The uniqueness of the solution is the GetData App developed by 17000ft to carry data back from the school to the cloud via the School Headmasters’s’ Mobile Phones during their bimonthly/monthly trips to their Administrative Center which are usually in connected areas

Along with the GetData App, each school is provided with the necessary Solar, Electrical and Digital (tablets and a T.V. Monitor) infrastructure needed to install the DigiLab, along with a Personalized and Customized Learning App for children, a specialized Monitoring App, a customized Reporting Dashboard, bi-annual centralized teacher training sessions, quarterly in-school workshops and community mobilization events and maintenance and support over 3 years. The solution was built as a customized version of an existing off-the-shelf Learning App to make it available over the local server.

The DigiLab@17000ft has been designed with a vision of a world where children everywhere, irrespective of the lack of infrastructure, have access to high quality digital learning resources to learn better.

The Indian Himalayan Region (IHR), consisting of 97 Districts across 11 states and 2 Union Territories, largely in the North-East and North of India, borders 7 countries and makes up a large and relatively ignored part of India, owing to its unique, high-altitude geography, inclement weather and rough terrain. This region faces significantly higher challenges of delivering quality education to its children than the rest of the country. Also, with fewer Non-Profits and lesser corporate support diverted to this region, development is a slow process.

The Covid-19 Pandemic has further exacerbated the situation and disrupted education, specifically for children in the IHR, leaving millions of them unable to learn during lockdowns. The deep dependence on EdTech to ensure continuity in learning has exposed the large yawning gap in infrastructure and resources in this region, highlighting the urgent need to design and develop solutions for its children.

• 70% of the Schools in the North-East remote IHR districts do not have electricity, as compared to just 30% of the rest of India

• 95% of Govt. Schools in the IHR do not have access to internet connectivity

• 90% of Govt. Schools in the IHR do not have access to digital facilities

• Over 70% of the children under 18 surveyed in the North-East remote IHR Districts never had access to a mobile, computer or internet (ASER 2017 Beyond Basics Survey - an annual nationwide survey of status of education in the rural districts of India). This situation has escalated since Covid-19 when more students are enrolling in Got. Schools

There are today 5 million children in the Indian Himalayan Region who do not have access to opportunities of quality education owing to the inherent challenges of working in the regions they live in. The DigiLab Solution has been designed to benefit students living in the remotest of villages in the Indian Himalayan region, from the age of 3 to 15 years (Grades Nursery to Grade 8).

17000 ft Foundation is a Non-profit Organization committed to improving the access and quality of education in Govt. Schools of the Indian Himalayan Region to ensure that children have access to the same quality education as their urban counterparts. 17000ft programmes focus on upgrading school infrastructure, providing better learning resources, training teachers, mobilizing communities and demonstrating success at scale to further support the Govt. to bring in systemic reform in education.

17000ft started its journey in 2012 in Ladakh, one of the most inhospitable high-altitude regions in the world, where it has adopted and transformed over 25% of the Govt. schools spread across the most inaccessible and remotest villages and demonstrated success in improving student learning and reducing student migration.

Till date, 17000ft has impacted over 60,000 children of the Indian Himalayan Region and has set an audacious Goal to make quality education accessible to 500,000 children living across the remotest districts in the Indian Himalayan Region by 2025.

17000ft is backed by a philanthropic board with a strong background in education and decades spent advocating for the cause of marginalized high-altitude communities. 17000ft was founded by Sujata Sahu, a senior IT professional and educator, who quit her corporate life to work with children in the Himalayas and Sandeep Sahu, a serial entrepreneur who has worked and trekked extensively in the Himalayas. The Foundation is run on the ground by a committed team of local youth who come from the villages that it is trying to impact.

17000ft is looking for technical help and financial support to scale the DigiLab solution to benefit a larger group of children who live in similar off-grid and off-network areas.

As all current Ed-Tech solutions depend on the presence of electricity and at least intermittent mobile connectivity to ensure a personalised learning experience for children, 17000ft has conceptualised a unique solution called the DigiLab, designed especially to ensure learning in off-grid and off-network areas. The DigiLab@17000ft provides all the necessary power, digital hardware, learning solution, content, connectivity architecture, monitoring, training, support and reporting needed to ensure children everywhere are able to continue learning at their own pace 

 The uniqueness of the DigiLab Solution are as below:

• Easily deployable in the remotest villages of IHR due to its modular architecture

• Includes its own power source and hence not dependant on grid electricity. The Solar Power output and Digital components are designed at 12v, removing the risks of misuse and ensuring usage only in the school and for the purpose it was designed for

• Works in areas without internet, but has the capability to connect to the cloud through a “travelling” connector app to enable stakeholders across the state to monitor performance

• Is offline, yet allows students in remote areas to get access to up-to-date content, while also allowing stakeholders across the state/ country to monitor performance.

• Is designed to work under any circumstances, as both, a teaching as well as a self-learning tool, benefiting both, the teacher and the student

• Is low maintenance and installed with the help of the local community and is operated and maintained completely by the School and the local community

• Is future ready and can continue to be used even if better power infrastructure or connectivity becomes available

• Can be replicated with any existing off-the-shelf online/offline Ed-Tech solutions by changing the connectivity architecture to connect to a local server instead of the cloud

• It is designed to work within the system, by supplementing existing processes and run by existing stakeholders (teachers, headmasters etc.), making it a part of the process and hence uniquely poised for success in replication

The design of the DigiLab allows it for easy replicability to any geography, with all known infrastructure and resource limitations provided for in the design of the system, with only adaptations & contextualization of content, medium of instruction and Board of Education.

The immediate goal for 17000ft is to replicate the DigiLab solution to 2 more states of the Indian Himalayan Region and by the year 2025 impact at least 5 million children living in similar challenging geographies to provide them access to quality learning opportunities that enables them to achieve grade level competencies.

The DigiLab has been successfully piloted in over 150 schools of Ladakh and recently the solution was replicated to Sikkim, its second State in the Indian Himalayan Region, where it is currently operational in 30 remote rural off-network schools.  

The specific indicators that measure the success of the DigiLab@17000ft solution is the improvement in student learning outcomes, the increase in school enrolment and decrease in dropout rates.

In just the first academic year of implementation of the DigiLab, the students demonstrated an average learning improvement of 14% in Science and Maths across grades 1 to 8. The DigiLab@17000ft has also contributed to significantly increasing enrollment in Govt. Schools by 30% and decreasing migration/dropout by over 45%. 

A two-month pilot during Covid Lockdown conducted in Ladakh with 1500 children who took the tablets home to study independently showed extraordinarily high levels of engagement and significant learning improvements. An average of 35% children scored between 25% to 90% improvement in their learning outcomes. 

One of the key impacts for 17000ft is the adoption by the State Governments to mobilize their funds to scale the DigiLab to cover all schools in their State based on the success of the pilot conducted by 17000ft in 25% of the schools in that State. Recently, the Govt. of Ladakh has recognised the DigiLab as an effective EdTech solution and is scaling it to cover more schools in their region and have already scaled it to 30 more schools in the Leh district of Ladakh.

17000ft adopts each remote school for a 3-year period during which it sets up a digital lab (DigiLab), builds the capacity of teachers, mobilizes communities and provides better governance systems to ensure that children get access to quality learning opportunities at school and even at home.

Assumptions: Every child is assumed to be enrolled in their nearby Govt. School with an active School Management Committee 

Activities

• Recce and selection of Schools

  • Diagnostics survey and assessment of schools

• DigiLab Program Implementation

  • Customization and configuration of the DigiLab Software

  • Setup of the DigiLab infrastructure (Tablets, Server etc.) in a designated room

• Capacity Building of teachers

  • Centralized bi-annual multi-day Training for Headmaster and DigiLab Administrator

  • Quarterly in-school refresher workshops for Headmaster and Teachers

• Community Mobilization & Outreach

  • Activation of community members and parents through workshops

• Support

  • Quarterly monitoring school visits for refresher trainings, equipment maintenance, monitoring, support and data gathering 

• Mobilize Government: Develop Governance Tools and Structures and build capacity of Government Functionaries to ensure effective implementation, build accountability and enable scale

Outputs

• Schools will have a Digital Learning Lab (DigiLab)

• All teachers of the schools are trained on Blended Learning

• Parents are mobilized to participate in school activities

• All children of the school have access to digital learning resources

Outcomes

At the end 3 years the expected qualitative outcomes of DigiLab@17000ft are

• Children will be more interested in attending school

• Children will display increased confidence and awareness of the world

• Children will become digitally literate

• Children will display increased fluency in reading and languages

• Parents will have an increased sense of pride and ownership in their Govt. School system

• Parents will participate more in the school and their child’s education

• Govt. officials monitor performance of remote schools

The expected quantitative outcomes at the end of 3-year, are:

• 100% of children enrolled in grades 1 to 8 will be digitally literate

• Average learning improvement of 20% in learning outcomes 

• Average 30% increase in overall student strength 

• Decrease in migration/dropout by 30% 

The DigiLab@17000ft uses technology as below:

• Power: 

  • The solution is powered by Solar Electricity which is provided through the provision of 600W Solar Panels installed in the school, and connected to a special Foam Insulated Gel Battery to withstand the -50 0C temperatures of Ladakh

  • Power is delivered at 12v to the school to power up the entire DigiLab Solution

• Digital Hardware: 

  • Each school is provided with average 30 nos Android 8” Tablets, a 12v T.V and a Server (Raspberry Pi/Custom Server)

• Learning Software:

  • Each of the tablets is pre-loaded with a specialized offline version of an existing off-the-shelf personalized and adaptive Ed-Tech Software (purchased & customized), with contextualized and customized content for grades 1 to 8 in multiple subjects, allowing children access to personalized learning through the tablet. Some content is also streamed from the School Server.

  • The School Server is also loaded with other free and curated content which is accessible through the 12v T.V for the teacher to teach from

• Connectivity Architecture:

  • The Ed-Tech software is customized to connect with the School Server (instead of the cloud) to stream content, store analytics, ensure connectivity between tablets and to decentralize operations

  • The solution also consists of a “Facilitator App” that resides on the tablet of the Headmaster / 17000ft Facilitator which syncs data/content between the School Server and Cloud through an asynchronous process. The App connects to the School Server when in school, and downloads student analytics which is then uploaded to the cloud when the Headmaster makes periodic travels to his Zonal HQ (connected area) for routine administrative duties. When in a connected zone, the App also downloads content/software upgrades if any, onto the HM’s device, which is then downloaded to the School Server and pushed to each student tablet when the HM travels back to his school

• Monitoring & Reporting:

  • Each school is also provided with a specialized Dashboard for the Teacher to monitor individual student performance, which is built on the School Server and is displayed on the T.V screen.

  • A Cloud based dashboard is also built in with the solution for other stakeholders across the state to monitor performance, which gets its reports from the periodic syncing of data between the school and the cloud

17000ft core principle is to work with marginalized communities that have been excluded from development dialogues due to the terrain they live in. 17000ft also believes and follows an equal workspace with over 60% of its team being women.

Key resources

• EdTech 
• Digital content 
• Tech manager
• M&E manager
• Program and education team
• Donors

Partners + Key Stakeholders

• State Govt education department
• Headmasters of schools

Type of Intervention

• A highly specialised EdTech solution that is the only source of learning for children living in remote areas of the Indian Himalayan region. 

Channels

• MoU with Govt. to reach schools

Segments

• Beneficiary: Children of remote areas who live in off-network and off-grid areas
• Customer: Foundations, Corporate and High-network individual looking to create an impact in children's education

Value Proposition

• Children are able to achieve at least grade level learning

Impact Measures

• % of students showing improvement in learning
  % of students at grade level learning 
• % of students not dropping off from school

Customer Value Proposition

• Access to quality learning resources for improved learning
• Be at par with their urban counterparts

Cost Structure

• Infrastructure & Technology
• More focus on education team to support Govt. in scaling

Surplus

• As an NGO, we do  not have profits

Revenue

• Grants and corporate donations
• Individual donors

Being a non-profit organization, 17000ft will fund the DigiLab through sustained donations and grants from Foundations and Corporate organizations. This year, 17000ft has received 6x growth in grant with a large commitment for the DigiLab solution

17000ft has been advocating the loss of learning in remote areas which are off-grid and off-network. 17000ft implemented the DigiLab@17000ft solution in 100 schools in 2019. Since then, it has received multiple grants and donations from Foundations and Grants and the DigiLab is now running successfully in over 200 schools of Ladakh and Sikkim. The Govt. of Ladakh has also adopted this unique solution and is now scaling it to other schools of their state using their own funds.