TEAMS

TEAMS : TEAchers Mentoring and Supporting fellow teachers to address challenges and to improve the quality of Education. 

Imagine working in a school with no basic teaching tools/aids (e.g. textbooks) and technologies (e.g. computers) among many. Imagine that under these conditions, the teacher student ratio is 1:150. This is the dilemma many teachers in rural parts of Uganda face. They are challenged and demotivated, yet they have to offer the 'best' education to the kids under their care. Year after year, poor results are obtained in the national examinations by children from such environments. 

What if teachers mentored and supported fellow teachers to address teaching challenges across schools? The solution we propose is TEAMS. TEAMS will be developed as an app based platform the will allow teachers share, problems, opportunities and collectively design solutions to address teaching challenges in schools. Through TEAMS a teacher exchange platform will be designed to aid discussions that would enable timely solutions to problems faced by user teachers. TEAMS  leverages on the fact that many Ugandans now own smart phones and actively use social media. The platform will enable users post questions and solutions to specific subjects. The platform will include a section where a teacher in need of onsite support can request for help from the others. The platform will also include discussion fora where teachers will exchange/share information on emerging issues in the education sector. TEAMS will also include a mobility programme that will promote guest teaching and mobile teaching labs to boost the capacity of those teachers that lack access to modern teaching tools and technologies. 

The support given to teachers through TEAMS will enhance their teaching capacities, quality of teaching and performance of kids especially from rural schools. 

There is an underutilized potential in Uganda to change the education status through teacher to teacher support. Teachers in different parts of the country hold enormous experiences that would be useful for others. At one point in time, a teacher can find him/herself in a new environment, with limited teaching tools and resources and would need help to effectively carry out their duties. The contemporary global changes also require counteractive and collective approaches from the teaching community. TEAMS therefore would be useful in solving the challenges faced by teachers in their teaching course.

The solution proposes to develop a web-based APP where teachers can interact and exchange ideas on contemporary issues and challenges. 

The proposed guest lecture and mobile lab programmes will promote technology transfer and sharing

Therefore ICT is an integral part of this solution.

Over the next 12 months, we would like to finalise the development of the App and launch it. We shall experiment with the app in two urban districts of Uganda, where teachers would be asked to utilize the app to exchange information.  TEAMS will also organise guest lectures and mobile lab exercises in two rural districts of Uganda. We will evaluate the impact of the suggested activities and base on the results to improve our solution before spreading it across the country.

Over the next 3 to 5 years, we envision TEAMS will have covered the whole of Uganda and would have changed the lives of over 1000 teachers directly and 2 million school going kids indirectly. Teachers with problems will be solved by fellow teachers and the knowledge passed on to students. Overtime TEAMS will be a one stop center for all teachers' support in the country.

The App will be launched via social media adverts (e.g. facebook sponsored adverts) and newspapers. The TEAMS team will move around selected schools within selected districts to present the App and the solution to teachers and administrators, train them on its use and request them to install and utilize the App. They will access the app via a shared link. 

Teachers would also be asked to volunteer to join the guest teacher and mobile lab projects. Once teachers gain an understanding and benefits of the solution, it is our belief that they will keep on using TEAMS. 

For now, we are working with one school in Luweero and the ongoing activities is to have teachers from good schools in Kampala visit and undertake guest lecturers to support the teachers in Toto's learning center Luweero. The things shared include changes in curriculum and best practices on how to help little kids learn to read on their own. So far, five teachers have benefited and they have updated their knowledge.

In 12 months, we expect to directly be serving 200 teachers and 5 thousand school children indirectly. Teachers will benefit from exchanges via the platform while school children will gain via training from well equipped teachers. In about three years, we expect to see an improvement in performance of school kids whose teachers and schools are involved in TEAMS, compared to the base year which will be 2019. We expect increased performance because of the increased capacity of teachers to handle challenges via the platform. 

We are a team of teachers and ICT professionals. TEAMS is a solution being developed by teachers for teachers. We understand the problem at hand deeply and we believe the proposed solution will go a long way in bridging the teaching gaps/challenges in Uganda. Being teachers, we also believe that  we shall easily attract fellow teachers to join us and propose ways for improvement of the solution. We hope to attract the necessary resources to make the solution a success.

TEAMS will be a free App for the first 5 years. However once users benefit from it, teachers would be required to contribute a modest annual subscription fee (about a dollar) per year to continue using the platform. Upon its success, we believe that school administrators who wish to benefit their schools from the platform would also be in position to purchase annual subscriptions for their schools. This will enhance the sustainability of the platform.

Solve brings together smart people in the world. We want to tap into their knowledge and experiences in designing solutions that solve problems at a large scale. Solve also supports one's application from the onset and those comments received on solutions from different solvers help in the design of the solution whether it gets successful with solve or not. We believe through solve, our work can get more media exposure and will be a pathway to access to grants.

The most significant barrier is finances to initialize the solution. We believe solve can help by connecting us to different funding sources

The other barrier is the new government tax on what our government believes is social media. We wish this app to be launched on people's phones but our government requires users of apps to pay an OTT tax in addition to paying for internet. Uptake of the app may be limited.