School Meet Learners Digital Platform

Global forced displacement tops 70 million- UNHCR,  and in Nigeria, displaced persons, children and women mostly from poor family backgrounds accounts for more than 80% of total population of more than 2.5million (ref: https://www.internal-displacement.org/countries/nigeria). According to World Bank, children from poor marginalized family backgrounds learn the least due to many factors (ref:World report 2018 world bank), COVID-19 lock-down of schools magnified this problem, these groups need access to tailored made formal and informal education.  

 SML digital learning infrastructure is a complete learning and facilitation solution for dwellers of IDP camp communities accessible 24/7 free of charge over network area of 15km or more in English and native languages.

We will work with donors and various government partners to deploy this infrastructure in more than 2000 settlement communities in Nigeria while building the capacities of drop-out young adult girls as digital technicians, learning facilitators and bridging the digital gender -barriers.

There are more than 1.5 million girl-children and women living in many IDP camp settlement communities in many states in Nigeria (https://displacement.iom.int/reports/nigeria-%E2%80%94-displacement-report-26-january-2016), they are poor marginalized people who cannot afford the cost associated with online access to education using Internet. Girl child and woman need access to quality education, this is not available within the communities they live, public schools are often far away from where those communities are located, so many of the girls ended up abandoning schooling at early stages of their education. The young adults that dropped out of school because of displacement need livelihood to survive, but without any skill they ended up in seasonal peasant farming and working as helpers at construction sites located in the metropolis of the settlement communities, this make them unavailable in the camp during working hours of the day for learning. Crossing gender education and digital barriers for school age girl-child and illiterate woman living within IDP settlement communities require well thought out innovative approach that take into account their peculiar living conditions, SML digital infrastructure is such robust solution with many incentives for this marginalized group to get quality education, digital skills and contribute positively to the society   

School Meets Learners (SML) digital infrastructure is learning platform that host formal and informal educational contents aligned to Nigeria educational curriculum. It operates in offline and online mode and offer free of charge access to learning and facilitation to all categories of learners.

 SML comprises Non Line of Sight (NLOS) TVWS network that covers 15km radius, 3km last mile WLAN access into homes within the community, solar system provides electricity, Tablet PC access devices, Central Charging bay for Tablets and the people that support, administer and maintain the entire infrastructure. This base network can be extended over a 50km NLOS distance.

Formal and informal learning contents in English and native languages hosted on the infrastructure accessible from schools and people living within the IDP settlement communities using shared-use Tablet PCs provided. The platform is used by professional teachers and volunteers to plan and facilitate blended and self paced learning in classrooms and homes.

Professional teachers and volunteers (selected grade 12 school drop-out within IDP camp) also use the platform for their continuous professional development. The volunteers facilitate illiterate women learning in native languages, while some of the volunteers receive digital technology skill acquisition training on support and administration. 

School age girls in formal school, young adult school drop-out girls at various levels of education, professional teachers, illiterate women and marginalized children are the focus group living in IDP settlement communities, they are about 80% of more than 2.5 millions total population displaced persons in Nigeria(ref:Nigeria—Displacement Report 26 (January 2019)) spread across many states in Nigeria. According to IOM(),  site assessments were carried out in 2,415 sites, 14 of such sites exist in Abuja, the number in other states varies but they share similar characteristics. 

 Evidence from our intervention in 1 of such settlements out of total 2145 settlements within Nigeria indicates that for out-of-school young adult girls, livelihood incentives like on the job training, support and administer the infrastructure, facilitators for informal adult illiterate women program on how to read and write using digital tools will lead to better participation and help drop-out young adult girls earn living while learning to advance their education. 

We will work with donors and various government partners to deploy this infrastructure in more than 2000 settlement communities across many states in Nigeria while building the capacities of drop-out young adult girls as digital technicians, learning facilitators and bridging the digital gender barriers.

School-age girls children, drop-out young adult girls and illiterate women are more than 70% of the people living in the internally displaced persons settlement communities in many states in Nigeria, they need access to free formal and informal functional education accessible 24/7 based on their peculiar living situations. 

Post COVID-19 lock-down of schools require education delivery system that allow for blended and self paced individual learning interactions, that is what SML digital infrastructure offers to these marginalized group, it is cost effective and could be deployed in a standalone single community or cover larger area of affected communities over 15km.

Television White Space Technology (TVWS) is one of the new entrance into the WLAN category of wireless networks, it is Non Line Sight (NLOS) and uses the analog TV frequency spectrum, combined with 802.11 WLAN typical wireless network can be deployed over larger access areas, but this has to be powered by electricity which is often not available in IDP settlement communities, we use solar PV system for electricity, a 32 tablet PCs charging bay, 50pcs of 7" tablet PCs, a NAS Server computer and temperature controlled IP65 cabinet are provided in each IDP SML administrative office. This innovative design of the infrastructure is contextual, we cannot depend on central air-conditioning system provided in the admin office, the equipment, especially the Lithium Ion battery lifespan would be adversely affected by high temperature. 

Providing the generally available learning contents would not also serve the purposes of improving the education and learning outcomes, so we align the contents to national curriculum, translate critical subjects- mathematics, biology, chemistry, and physics into native languages spoken by learners while offering the literacy program for adult illiterate women mostly in native languages.

Elpis solar SOLVED solution is the closest to our solution however, the context is different, while the two solutions provide learning contents, our solution is in context of solving larger educational problems in Nigeria, other local solution use Internet as access platforms.

This solution is unique in that we attach value derivable from education which by reasons of many problems  

 Digital infrastructure depends on reliable source of electricity to function, reliable source of electricity is not available in any of IDP settlements, we use solar home system (SHS) to provide electricity for back-end and front-end equipment, however.

TVWS NLOS wireless technology based on ieee 802.11af standard is gaining traction, this technology is positioning for broadband Internet delivery to rural areas, however, we are using the technology for community internet without much interactions with the Internet. We will activate interactions with Internet on demand for specific use case. We combine 802.11af with 802.11a/b/g to create NLOS and  line of sight client access over large areas.

Kolibri studio is an offline learning contents platform, open source and in active development, we currently are running the version 0.1.3. This is the heart of our solution and is the part users interact with either for learning or learning facilitation. It also has facility for lesson plan, quizzes and generate useful metrics. We are running it on Ubuntu server NAS computer.

Client side user access hosted services using cheap Tablet PCs, but any smart device with WLAN and web browser can access the platform. 50pcs 7" Tablet PCs are provided in each settlement community for shared use. 

Multi user mobile devices charging bay with 32 or more charging points is provided in SML administrative office in each IDP settlement community for charging of users devices.

The core technology that enables delivery of learning contents to communities at no Internet bandwidth cost is the TVWS. There are many deployment of this technology in conjunction with widely known WLAN technologies such as the 802.11a/b/g working on 2.4 and 5GHz spectrum. Below are some evidence;

1. http://www.ajer.org/papers/Vol-7-issue-3/E07033645.pdf

2. http://venturesafrica.com/first-commercial-tv-white-spaces-services-launched-in-ghana/

3.https://unctad.org/meetings/en/Presentation/CSTD_2014_IPanel_ppt12_ApurvaMody_en.pdf 

4. http://dx.doi.org/10.4314/njt....

Below are the specific technology use case evidence for the technology we are deploying;

1.  https://drive.google.com/file/...

2.  https://drive.google.com/file/...

3.  https://drive.google.com/file/...

4.  https://drive.google.com/file/...

5.  https://drive.google.com/file/...

We use ieee 802.11a/b/g presently in our intervention at the New Kuchingoro IDP camp settlement, delivering access to learning for more than 50 learners concurrently, this access network is a consumer grade, but concurrent access of thousand of users, the setup will involve industrial grade NLOS, and 802.11a/b/g running many stations to guarantee access. 

SML digital infrastructure is the bridge  over which poor school age-girls, young drop-out girls and illiterate women use to cross the gender education and digital barriers. There are more than 39,000 of these poor people living in 14 peri-urban settlement communities in Abuja, FCT. There are 2415 similar settlement communities in Nigeria (https://displacement.iom.int/reports/nigeria-%E2%80%94-displacement-report-26-january-2016)

We deployed SML digital infrastructure in one of the 14 IDP settlement communities in FCT, and currently provide educational services to more than 103 learners for about 3 hours per day,excluding the illiterate women who could not read nor write during the COVID-19 lock-down. At the partial lift of lock-down, it was evident that the young drop-out girls may not always be available for classes because she had to go to farm to seek livelihood.

So providing digital learning infrastructure with high quality learning contents, professional volunteers for facilitating learning and access devices (Tablet PCs) for free was not adequate to guarantee active learning, the network must be accessible 24/7 with flexible facilitation schedule for the young drop-out girls and illiterate women to learn at their convenient time. Also some young drop-out girls at senior secondary school-levels could be engaged and mentored to support, administer and maintain the digital infrastructure with livelihood incentives, this produces the outcome of having them available to learn during normal class period to improve their credit to further their education and also help in facilitating illiterate one-on-one literacy read and write program.

The availability of learning infrastructure, professional teachers and volunteers, mentoring on support, administration and maintenance  of young drop-out girls and engaging them through livelihood incentives, access to one-on-one private facilitation for illiterate women to read and write using digital technology should have  inclusive, equitable, and quality learning outcomes and

SML digital infrastructure was deployed in New Kuchingoro IDP settlement community during COVID-19 lock down, data obtained from our system showed 5000 learning interactions. We provide lessons for Primary 3, 4, 5, and 6 total 56 students, Junior Secondary 2, 3, Senior Secondary 2 and 3, and young drop-out at Senior Secondary levels 56, a total of 102 learners excluding the illiterate women.  The illiterate women are three times the number of the group.

In one year, we will deploy SML in all the 14 IDP settlements in Abuja FCT. The average population of each settlement is targeting 29,400 learners living in peri-urban settlements in Abuja.

In each of the IDP settlement community, there are 3 males and 7 females young drop-out adults for mentoring to support, administer, and maintain the infrastructure and also help facilitate illiterate women read and write one-on-one program.  There will be 140 total at the end of next year.

In five years we scale up to other IDP settlement communities in other states 0f Nigeria, there 2415 such communities targeting more 1.5 million in Nigeria (ref: https://knoema.com/atlas/Niger...)

We plan to extend our work into Benin and Congo DR within the next five years.

SML presence in any community provides access to all learners in that community, those that are not directly target focus should account for about 20%.

Within the next year, our goals are;

1. Deploy SML digital infrastructure in all 14 IDP settlement communities in FCT increasing, provide learning facilitation through professional and volunteer teachers in all the settlement thereby reducing learning crisis in education.

2. We have full complement of team in our organization to undertake each aspects of our project activities, however, we need additional personnel to scale the solution to other states and countries, this we will accomplish through capacities building of technical institutions. 

3. Share design and deployment of SML digital infrastructure with technical institutions within Nigeria building their capacities through skill acquisition to deploy and administer the infrastructure in their institutions and the vicinity focusing on the female members of the community thereby creating new generation of digital technicians and entrepreneurs.

4. Scale up deployment of SML digital infrastructure in more than 2415 IDP settlement communities requires more deployment personnel, through our skill acquisition programs in technical institutions, we should raise more personnel for scale up to fast track the deployment in more than 1000 IDP settlements.

For other focus countries we will scale vertically and horizontally, Congo DR share some few similarities with Nigeria, however, Benin do not have any noticeable IDP community but they have large illiterate women population.   

SML intervention is modeled as social impact, we have our funding from donors, grant makers, government at federal and state levels. One major challenge to faster delivery of our services is funding to run our operations and reach out diverse government partners. We need funding for personnel, overhead and operations which may not be available. 

Technically, we have adequate hands to deploy at the level of the 14 IDP settlements, however, to undertake the 1000 settlements target we need to build other institutions capacities, the willing and quick turn around of such capacity building skill acquisition depends on the political and institutional governance readiness of the technical institutions.

Females in Nigeria and Africa generally have low value for education, it is a cultural problem coupled with poor educational outcome, this may impact the number of output from our activities

In Benin, legally we have formalize our presence, while in Congo DR, we are filing the papers, without concluding this, there may be a delay in our activities.

Also, TVWS uses analog TV spectrum for operations, each focus countries have licensing requirements for commercial service delivery using the technology, this may have some legal and technical delay to our activities.

1. On financing, we are actively involve in pitching for funding now. We require funding for personnel, overhead, operations costs, and lower percentage for commodities and supplies for our activities. This will enable us access additional funding from Federal and state governments. This works better in our environment.

2. Expanding the available skilled personnel for field deployment in order to scale for impact depends on our ability to engage the technical institutions, we already exploring this possibilities through innovative skills acquisition program targeting the institutions.

3. For TVWS licensing requirements, we are not into commercial service delivery, and already in contact with the Universal Service Provision Fund under the NCC, to model our need for safe use of frequency spectrum.

4. Incentives for 

We have 9 full time staff, 19 volunteers, and 5 contract staff. 

This is the composition of our team;

Program Coordinator-

Summary of Skills & Experiences

• Management of technology for development adoption in developmental programs and public institutions.

• Information and Communication Technology, Electronics and mechanical engineering technology practice for over 20 years with wide experience in design, implementations, deployment and support of information communication technology, engineering management and products

• Multi stakeholders management in corporate and development programs

• Capacity building in Information Communication Technology, Project Management, and Logical Framework

• Team Leader- Solar and Power System has more than 15 years professional experience deploying High and low voltage power systems and building capacities of support and maintenance personnel

• Team Leader- Radio and Network Systems has more than 10 years professional work experience deploying network systems using wired, fiber optics, micro wave, WLAN and other technologies supporting commercial telecommunications companies and government agencies.

• Team Leader- Contents and digital platforms. Together we have deliver for profit and not-for profit solutions to : UNAIDS, UNESCO, UNODC and UNICEF and their partners, this team is also pilot SML digital infrastructure in Bauchi under the World Bank SEPIP program. For this project we secured international donor funding of USD15,000 for hardware procurement. In 2010, we also secured developmental funding from Mark Shutleworth foundation to pilot SchoolTool Project in Nigeria 

We have a list of partners for the project;

1. Foundation for Learning Equality provides resources and support for Kolibri Studio, contents and external resource sourcing information

2. ICCN- Provide all TVWS and WLAN technologies products and support, capacity building and network optimization

3. EverExceed: Supply all solar System and accessories

4. Federal Ministry of Education, Nigeria provide access to Technical Institutions and over sees collaboration under the IDEAS project

5. State Government- Funding for project implementation

6. Existing NGO's working in each IDP settlement communities in areas of education