Belize Facts and Figures Workbook App

The problem is that the education system has become too theoretical with little practical relevance to the everyday lives of most students.   For example, in Belize many of the societal problems in poor neighborhoods is because of lack of communication skills.   Thousands of people are affected by inability to speak and write clearly.  This is because the education is not engaging so students communicate colloquially and this leads to problems in life.   Our books equips students with good knowledge of almost everything in our jurisdiction, from history and business and we get the students to communicate among themselves and their teacher either via a printed textbook with tear out pages or an app that is used either on Android devices or Windows machines.   We get students to engage in high order conversations using a fun app.    

We have created a lot of good relevant content that students find very engaging.  We have also created a workbook.  With this combo, motivated students can learn life changing information as self learners in a fun and engaging way.   Our activities have many real world and out of classroom activities that teach them practical life lessons.  

Because of the pandemic we engaged partners to create smart phone apps with the content of the textbook and workbook.   Although we were late, we eventually launched the workbook and textbook apps.   

THe textbook and workbooks have been converted into cloud ebooks.  The textbook has a note taking feature that the reader can write notes on the content.   The workbook is interactive whereby students use the submit function to send their work to their peers or teachers.  The teachers either get graded work or work that they need to evaluate and grade.   

The apps are decentralized so any teacher and assign any work to any student or a class and students can collaborate in the work.

Or apps are beginning the process of creating digital learners.  We had the problem of poor internet at schools during the pandemic so many schools could not use it properly.  However, access to the internet is improving and a number of schools are using our digital products.  Because of the reduced  cost of the digital products, a number of schools have told us that they will again use in the school year 2023-2024.   We have had feedback with some map works on the app and I have sourced styluses on Amazon for the students and the teachers have recently told me that the styluses are working well.   We have an arrangement that if they styluses work, they schools will use the digital workook for the school because a new internet provider is entering the rural market where many of these schools exist.  

We are well positioned because we have gotten the trust of many schools from one end of the country to the other.   We sell over 1000 physical books per year and we hope to transition at least a half of these to digital over the next 3 years.  This is why we need the help of MIT and Solve.   We need help to understand how to make the digital option irrisitable and we are committed to make our earnings modest per student but profitable over the entire school system.   

We need your guidance of how to transform our books from printed to digital because we have two more books that we want to publish over the next 3-4 years and we would like sell these as digital because they have lots of video content and because we want to avoid the cost of printing.

We are applying because we would like to collaborate with similiar minded people in countries in the Caribbean and Central America who have similar communication problems in their educational system so we can write similar books and widen the market.  We may also need better technology to be able to ensure that our product works offline. 

Our solution gives teachers firstly (1) innovative content for teaching and evaluation that is not readily availalble in Belize, so much so that it decreases teacher workload to identify content and assesments; (2) the content stimulates imagination; (2) it gives the teachers full autonomy of their teaching agenda; (3) it gives the students ease of doing their work on their phones; (4) it evaluates the closed ended part of the work.  So its a new way of providing students with information and getting them to answer closed ended and open ended questions among themselves and then submitting it to the teachers.

We want to write 3 or 4 more books including one we are calling, "The Book of Opportunities".   The Book of Opportunities will be relevant to students across the Caribbean.   We have the concept mapped out, rich with video content, but we could use help from MIT to maximize the impact than we will have if we would do it alone.  We will do it but to have the MIT backing would be really great.   We can use the same platform, but we are hopeful that MIT programmers can help us create something even better than we currently have.  

We measure by:  The amount of upgrades that we have made to our book since 2019: We have had yearly publishings with content updates; we have launched two apps; our growth in annual sales has gone up but because of lack of funding we have fallen down in the ability to supply printed copies in 2021 and 2022.   So we would have wanted to create better uptake of the apps during the pandemic.   But Belize's internet at schools is not reliable and that has lost us thousands of customers.  Yet because we have shown serious levels of concern for our clients, some have recognized our dedication to them and they have in turn committed to try to expand the use of the apps if they get better internet.   

Our Long term goal is to create more innovative and creative students who can create more opportunities for themselves in Belize.   

To do this we operate through schools and teachers to whom we provide two new products and a new service for teachers and students.

(1) Fresh new and highly relevant content: We offer teachers new content to deliver to students:  a civics factbook with a wide important information  ranging from how we got here, to how most institutions work in our country:  from the people who have contributed to the development of a new nation in Central America to understanding how to calculate how much customs duty you will have to pay to import a phone that your mom purchased on Amazon when it arrives at Customs in Belize.   And we teach them how the Customs Duty help build the nation.

(2) Communication:  We facilitate communication between students and teachers using our workbook and apps.  We get the students to imagine using the content we have provided.  After they imagine, they communicate this imagination to one another and to the teachers.  Among the questions we pose to them:  how can you make income from your voice or the phone your mom purchased on Amazon.   

Our products are cloud ebooks which we have full control over in Belmopan.  Our sales provider is Woocommerce but in reality the schools that we provide pay us through banks in Belize.  The Woocommerce is for international buyers.   We can manage access of our ebooks from private to public.  Our ebooks are opened only on a specific number of either Windows or Android devices. To date, we do not have the books on the IoS platform because these are not common in students hands in Belize.   

Our team is made of two teachers and a professional writer.  The two teachers are women age 54 and 56 years and the writer is a male of 50 years.   The three are of three different ethnic origins including East Indian, Garifuna  and Creole.  Our IT associate is a 28 ys old male and pursing a BSc in Computer Science at the University of Belize.  Diversity and inclusion are largely natural among the middle class in Belize.  

We currently serve over 4000 high school students and thier teachers.   They have paid us over US $80,000 for our 2 books and there has been no complaints outside of us periodically not being able to supply printed books during the pandemic.   For this reason we created the two ebooks which have had limited success among the student population.   The books are fully functional and scalable but because of poor internet services, the uptake has been limited.  We need the help of MIT to make our ebooks more successful, so that when we launch our "The Book of Opportunities" it can be video rich, and interactive to sell widely in the Caribbean, Central America and North America.

To become financially sustainable we need to create two new books including our "The Book of Opportunities" as new imagination tools for students in Belize and revenue streams for our little business.  Although our content is novel and appreciated by thousands of Belizean students, we need to constantly come out with fresh new content with lots of technology and art, because the market has is innately very small, with less than 7000 students entering high school every year.  

1.  Since 2019, we have been viable because of organic sales we have managed to gain from schools.   We have sold over 4000 books in a nation that does not read.   Although 4000 may mean very little in North America, we have achieved our sales level despite great odds.

2. A number of rural teachers are using our ebooks on their phones.  We know exactly who they are.   So there are signs that the ebooks can catch on.   They have engaged us and asked that we help them so we imported some styluses for the students to see if these can improve the student experience especially in our drawing and map works in the workbooks.

3.  Our textbook got a US $7,500 via Beltraide from the Government of Taiwan in 2018.   This allowed us to pay for a number of art pieces which we used as illustrations in the initial book.