Nokia has launched education delivery project set to use mobile technology to bring up to date content to schoolchildren in Kenya’s remote regions.
The project dubbed ‘Nokia education delivery’ is already on a pilot phase in Kimuchu primary school in Thika and a primary school in Kibera under Raila Odinga Foundation.
Nokia’s administration assistant Lawrence Ndonga told HumanIPO the pilot phase would be expanded to cover more schools in due course.
The project, which was on demonstration at the Nokia’s Open innovation Africa summit (OIAS), is mobile-based and will enable schools to download the content from the dedicated site, and then project the content on a screen. The phone will be connected to the screen using a cable.
The content will be downloaded from the Nokia’s open source Nokia education delivery site. Once downloaded, the file is saved and can be displayed at any time.
With the Nokia Education Delivery software, hardware which are phone, TV/projector, cable and content software needs to be installed on a mobile phone and on an administrative computer; a teacher can then access, download and display a catalog of media files, which are stored and managed on a remote server.
Ndonga said many rural schoolchildren fail to access to the latest content and the new initiative aims at bridging the gap.
“With the screen costing on average KSh80,000 and the phone that costs about KSh15,000, the whole school can get access to good educational content on rotational basis,” Ndonga said.
With most of the schools in rural areas yet to be connected to the electricity, the challenge however remains lack of electricity that can be overcome by investing in solar power, Ndonga said.
