Enterprise &Ideas

CONTENTS High tech teaching venture pays o 50

Number of children wholl have access to 100 tablets in 4 pilot schools

500

startup

High tech teaching venture pays o

BY AAMERA JIWAJI

ivi Mukherjee spent her spare time working with underprivileged children in Nairobi. One day she asked them to paint a house and then watched as the entire class painted a square box with a triangle on top. You expect kids to have a great imagination, she explained, but our mechanised education system sties creativity. It sties children from growing up and becoming free thinkers. That is when she decided to set up a social project called Maisha ni Matamu where once a month, she would take underprivileged and d orphaned children on a trip to do something new such as a musical event, the water slides or a factory visit. Something that would broaden their minds and encourage creativity in their thoughts and ideas. Its easy for young minds to be discouraged by the world around them and fall into a cycle of negativity, she said. We want these children to appreciate the greatest gift of all: a sweet life! And the more I worked with these kids, the more I realised that they learnt more when they were stimulated, she said. You cant teach kids anything when you ignore fun and play. In an interesting twist, Ms Mukherjee found that the monthly outings also oered a reprieve
| Nairobi Business Monthly June

Learning happens not just when you hear or see things, but even when you touch things. All the senses are involved
to the teachers who suered from a dull learning environment, and lack of discussion and exploration in their classes. The idea for an education-themed tablet application grew from her interactions with children and teachers during the Maisha ni Matamu excursions.

In August 2011, Ms Mukherjee developed elimu. It is an interactive, engaging and fun app for children in the Kenyan primary schools to learn and revise for exams, and has been customised for use on android tablets and smart phones. Today, she and the elimu team are a group of 10 people including h advisory board, application her developers and researchers and in M March 2011, it won the App Develo oper contest held by Mobile Web East E Africa. A study by Uwezo East Africa has shown that while the introduction of o free primary education in East Africa increased enrollment in A schools signicantly, performance among children aged between six a and 16 continues to be poor. In Kenya, for instance, Only when K pupils reached standard 7 did p almost all of them acquire basic a Standard Two numeracy and S literacy skills. One of the reports key ndings was w that more attention needed to be b given to strengthening the link between school attendance and b learning. And for Ms Mukherjee, the t way to do that is by increasing creativity in the Kenyan education system in an approach that brings together the pupil, the teacher and the school. If you dont get kids to have this (enthusiasm) they will lose interest and they wont want to go to school, she said. Whereas if they are interested, they will nd ways to learn more about a topic. And those are the real movers and shakers and innovators of today! So she began to engage more actively with pupils at three schools in Nairobi: Gachichia Primary School in Gachichia, Elimu House in Kawangware and Mogra Star in Mathare. This helped her to come to terms with the challenges that the everyday learning environment faces. She approached a Kenya Institute of Education approved publisher, and with his guidance developed an education app that draws on the Kenyan school curriculum but integrates 3D animations, cognitive games, songs and mnemonic devices and quizzes in order to make the learning process more engaging. Learning happens not just when you hear or see things, but even when you touch things. All the senses are involved.

FACTFILE

Are our children learning?

40% drop-out rate after standard 8: only 60% of students are enrolling in secondary school. 10% of Standard 8 students cannot solve class 2 maths problems. Acute teacher shortage: At any one time, there are four classes without a teacher in each school. Shortage of textbooks: Typically, three pupils share a Kiswahili, English and Mathematics textbook.

Ms Mukherjee (centre) has found a tech savvy way of teaching children.

(Study by Uwezo, 2010 and 2011) The app oers a teaching aid with lesson plans and tips for teachers. elimu is, by nature, interactive. While textbooks make it dicult to track the progress of a student, it allows teachers to track how long a pupil spends on each question, whether a question has been answered wrong because it was not clear or because the pupil did not understand it, and caters for instant alternations. Learning has always been thought to be a one way street, Ms Mukherjee explained,but with an application that can instantly modify and alter content, the opportunity for collaborative learning is oered. She referred to the TED talk by British educationalist Sir Ken Robinson in which he said that what every education system in the world needs

is a complete revolution through investment in innovation. In addition to an interactive learning forum, elimu also tries to promote responsible citizenship by encouraging pro-social behaviour amongst Kenyan youth by including content on environment, agriculture, ICT, business and entrepreneurship for instance. Learning today is leading tomorrow, Ms Mukherjee said, and even if you cant lead, you can at least become a good voter, underlining the close link between education and citizenship. elimu is in line with Kenyas Vision 2030 goal of promoting the development of digitial content and it will initially be distributed to public schools but Ms Mukherjee and her team also have plans to oer it as a retail product. In the rst phase of roll-out, approximately 100 tablets will be issued to four pilot schools enabling 500 children in each school to access them during and after class and in free periods. Tablets are going to be in school. We know that, Nivi said making reference to the tentative use of tablets in dierent learning environments across Africa. But how many will have culturally engaging content for children? The onus is on us to create the right content so that the youth do not only use technology to look at youtube and facebook.
June Nairobi Business Monthly |