1bot Education

Low income students in rural areas have always suffered from lack of access to quality education, and the global pandemic has worsened the situation due to the lack of connectivity and alternatives for distance and hybrid learning in these communities. The gap in terms of equality in education is at its worst point and closes future opportunities in these students life. 

Our program covers topics that include STEM, Robotics, Financial Education and Entrepreneurship. This program can be expanded to rural schools using preloaded local servers and educational robotics kits, giving low connectivity schools the opportunity to access state of the art educational content and tools. This would empower local teachers with a solution to implement their physical, hybrid and remote learning environments with tools to help pupils explore their creativity, collaborate and experiment hands on. 

Access to quality education opens the doors to life changing opportunities. 

As schools went into lock down the challenge to all of them was presented regarding how to continue keeping in touch with their students and parents, delivering educational materials and grading at a distance. 

For urban schools and families with access to internet and computers, the challenge was easier to tackle than for rural families and schools with limited access to the internet and restrictions on download size of the contents due to their limited data plans. In addition to this rural teachers were not ready to generate their own quality digital teaching materials with their limited training and resources. 

Some schools have even opted to going back to sending printed teaching guides back and forth every two weeks. This is generating a very significant step back in the pupils education and widening the gap for them even more. The problem becomes even bigger when the data of progress of these students is taking so long to be collected  back and analyzed to respond. 

1bot will equip schools in need with local servers deploying an intranet to access contents locally through our educational platform that comes preloaded with a curriculum designed in collaboration with a local university and aligned to meet the Ministy of Education needs and standards. The platform and servers also remain open for teachers to load contents from their other classes and benefit from the technology. 

Based on a recent survey to the affected families, it was found that a vast majority have access to mobile devices even if they lack constant internet on them due to limited pre-paid data plans.  

Students or parents can then visit the school and download the contents on their mobile devices without the need for an internet connection and work on them from their homes. On their next visit they can download their new contents and their work, grades and data will automatically upload back to our servers, so the teachers can then give the students feedback and support. 

As schools start to reopen the same tools will be accessible during either hybrid or physical education. 

The families we aim to serve reside in marginal rural communities across Central America. They have limited access to the internet. Their children attend rural schools with limited resources that also lack connectivity and are attended by teachers who lack the training and tools to affront the current learning environment. However, the vast majority of them have access to a smartphone and are familiarized with messaging apps such as WhatsApp. Most of these schools are public and lack access to tools and infrastructure, in fact only 5% of those schools are equipped with a proper technology lab and materials. 

We have been working with around 1600 students and their families this year and have conducted various interviews and surveys to understand their needs, possibilities and better design a solution that adapts to their reality. These families have been in a constant feedback loop with us to help us reach the solution we are proposing after several iterations and learnings. 

The solution contemplates the needs of the following actors in the following ways:

• School headmasters and coordinators: Need to ensure the educational contents and curriculum to be implemented fulfills the requirements of education authorities in the county. The solution is aligned to national standard and backed by a University.

• Teachers: Need to prepare and program the contents of their class and then create the exercises, homework and exams of the unit. In the present situation they also need to convert that into videos or some sort of material to be distributed to their students for further collecting and grading each individual assignment for every student. They need to keep track of the students performance and report to heir superior and also to the parents. Grading the assignments usually shared via WhatsApp has proven to be an enormously time consuming task, teachers also lack equipment, training and resources to generate audiovisual content for their students. The solutions already consists of all materials and educational content in an audiovisual format aligned to standards and professionally put together, so teachers don't need to start from scratch. The platform automatically collects students progress and grades their assignments generating real time reports for all stakeholders.  

• Parents: Need to understand the progress that their children are making and be able to support them at home. The platform generates individual progress reports that can either be accessed directly by the parents or sent to them via WhatsApp

• Students: Need to learn and have fun using tools and contents that are relevant for their future and open opportunities for them. The solutions put at their disposition state of the art curriculum resources and physical kits for them to build and interact in project based learning environments.

The solution enables access to quality learning experiences in low-connectivity settings by providing access to quality learning materials and a fully developed curriculum inside a learning platform that can be operated without the need of internet. The activities in the mentioned curriculum include imaginative play, collaborative projects, and hands-on experiments by providing students with project based learning experiences that they culminate by building prototypes in teams. As an example of that, the students can use the provided robotics kits and programming skills learned to create, build, program and present (pitch) a machine that solves a problem in their community.

We are currently operating the solution in 11 rural schools in collaboration with a local Non Profit Organization in the areas of San Juan Sacatepequez and Sanarate. Around 1600 students are active in the platform. 

The solution combines curriculum, teaching materials, educational platform and hardware for both experimenting hands on in the classroom but also to provide an intranet through which schools with connectivity restrictions can distribute the contents. 

Every aspect of the solutions is created with expansion in mind so other actors and content providers can join. The previous and the low cost of implementation turn this into a scalable solution that has the potential to catalyze the closing of the gap in educational equality between low income families and the rest of the world. 

Current: 1600

1 year: 100,000

5 years: 1,000,000

In the immediate time we measure academic performance of these children, their willingness to remain in school instead of dropping out and their interest in continuing their studies in STEAM related subject at university.

In the longer term we measure university inscription rates from these students and their career paths. 

10 full time staff 

Juan José, founder, studied business administration and was inspired to fund 1bot by his little brother as a user. Oversees sales, PR and strategy.

Gabriel, co founder, studied law and economics in IE MBA Madrid, in charge of finance.

Yeffri, president of the arduino community in Guatemala and director of a hacker space. Now is in charge of technology and educational platform. 

Billy, ran a similar program for a big Telcos NGO focused in education. Now is in charge of 1bots educational program. 

Mercy, accountant.

+ 5 tutors that visit schools as support personnel 

+3 Mentors in the areas of technology in education, schools and social business.

In our county, it is hard to create a non-diverse team. Further on we plan to only hire local tutors from the villages we are serving since they are so remote that the logistics make it complicated otherwise, but it's also a great way to ensure that talented young people remain inside the village instead of migrating. Also it is a new source of income above the possibilities of the villages and will also remain and be spent inside the villages. Also its proof and an example to follow for our students that there are good job opportunities in STEM. 

The main value we find in Solve is the fact that is backed by MIT and that is validation beyond what we can find in our country. This would open further networking opportunities for us and hopefully bring us closer to better strategic partners. 

We sometimes dream of partnering with the creators of Entrepreneurship 101 at the Sloan Business School from MIT and adapt those contents for our students to create a collaboration in an entrepreneurship course for our students. 

We also want to roll out our blockchain and cryptocurrency course soon since it's a solution to include our students and their families in the financial system.

Our solution focuses on Digital Inclusion and Equitable Classrooms and is also looking into a blockchain to ensure safe data collection for our students.

In the near future we aim to expand our curriculum into blockchain and cryptocurrencies to educate our students and their families on how they can join and benefit from the industry and access to a new financial system.