Edutele

Distance education for students without laptops, smartphones and access to broad-based band internet.

According to the United Nations, 37% of the world population has never used internet and only 33% of children and young people have access to the internet. This is due to poverty or expensive internet enabled devices or poor network infrastructure in their countries.

According to a new joint report from UNICEF and the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) of the world age school children, more than two thirds or 1.3 billion children aged 3 to 17 years old – do not have internet connection in their homes, 

The report How Many Children and Youth Have Internet Access at Home? notes a similar lack of access among young people aged 15-24 years old, with 759 million or 63 per cent unconnected at home.

“That so many children and young people have no internet at home is more than a digital gap –it is a digital canyon,” said Henrietta Fore, UNICEF Executive Director. “Lack of connectivity doesn’t just limit children and young people’s ability to connect online. It prevents them from competing in the modern economy. It isolates them from the world. And in the event of school closures, such as those currently experienced by millions due to COVID-19, it causes them to lose out on education. Put bluntly: Lack of internet access is costing the next generation their futures.”

Globally, among school-age children from richest households, 58 per cent have internet connection at home, compared with only 16 per cent from the poorest households. The same disparity exists across country income level as well. Less than 1 in 20 school-age children from low-income countries have internet connection at home, compared with nearly 9 in 10 from high-income countries.

“Connecting rural populations remains a formidable challenge,” said ITU Secretary-General Houlin Zhao. “As shown by ITU’s Measuring digital development: Facts and figures 2020, large parts of rural areas are not covered with a mobile-broadband network, and fewer rural households have access to the internet. The gap in the mobile broadband adoption and internet use between developed and developing countries is especially large, putting the almost 1.3 billion school-age children mostly from low-income countries and rural regions at risk of missing out on their education because they lack access to the internet at home.” 

There are also geographic disparities within countries and across regions. Globally, around 60 per cent of school-age children in urban areas do not have internet access at home, compared with around three-quarters of school-age children in rural households. School-age children in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia are the most affected, with around 9 in 10 children unconnected.

Solution:

Edutele platform.

Edutele means education via telephone. Its a concept of telephone education which has Lesly been exhausted.

Technology used:

With the use of telecommunication infrastructure, a conference room audio platform accessible via mobile call is created within the SIP trunk provided by a telecom company.

This SIPTRUNK has a local conference number which is shared to the students of a school / class

Each class has it's own code for accessing the conference with different subjects.

How it works / process.

During lesson time, every student dials the conference number, enters the class code then subject code.

After the codes, the students automatically joins the conference which is confirmed by a welcome message.

Students can mute by pressing buttons in their phones and they can as well raise hands using the same procedure.

Teacher joins the class as  students except he has controls on the call.

Target Population:

Pupils in primary and secondary schools in Uganda.

Most of the learners in these category do not have access to internet and are unable to acquire laptops / smartphones.

The Edutele platform will help them have a continuous learning experience while engaging with their teachers.

We have already experimented/ piloted the Edutele platform in more than seven schools with 2800 population in Uganda. We have a diverse team across Uganda and already have a way forward on how to make it work better.

Telecom infrastructure to run the service cheaply for our clients.

The ability to locally provide audio conference on a toll free charge and enabling button phones owners learn from distant area without the use of internet and muting their phones by pressing *6 while raising hands with *1 make this solution truly innovative.

In the next five years, we would like to establish a distance learning centre for out of school going age to be part of school from their homes using the cheapest available technology.

We hope to have helped more than 5,000 young people be part of school during and after pandemic

Being able to reach to the unprivileged groups of students have access to learning virtually that makes them to access educational materials with ease and from the comfort of their homes.

Having higher literacy rate in the use of technological devices and many students being able to progress to the next class at secondary

Students being able to register for final exams

Students in hard to reach areas having access to teachers and collaboration space.

Students without access to broad internet are able to access classes using dial in call approach.

Many students engaged and school dropout reduced

Call Centre with a sip trunk and PBX installed

 Edutele Agency SMC Ltd consider participation of its stakeholders at different levels in its activities as a way of promoting diversity and working together with different groups of the society for the success and achieving the mission and vision of the company. 

Key resources.

• Computers
• Airtime
• Mobile phones
• Internet data
• Cloud hosting
• SIP Trunk with PBX enabled
• Call center infrastructure

Key activities.

• Scheduling of classes
• Assigning codes to each school and class
• Sensitization and training to partner schools
• Payment of Internet and cloud hosting fee
• Toll free enabling of sim cards of all students to be used
• Monitoring the calls and recording them
• Backup of recorded live classes and making them accessible for absent students

Type of Intervention.

A service. An audio mobile phone enabled platform for learning and collaboration accessible without the use of an internet facility for rural students.

Segments.

• Students
• Teachers
• Parents
• Educational institutions

Value proposition.

• Learners require a real time learning environment accessible without the use of an internet facility in remote areas for continuous learning.
• This enabled mobile phone audio platform will enable all learners to participate, be able to access other helpful tips as part of the classes which will be as if they are in a real school environment.
• Excitement about eLearning differently where they can express themselves freely, ability to compete and be supported by other learners.

Partners and key stakeholders.

MTN and Airtel Uganda, telecom companies that we hire the SIP trunk, Internet and call center facility from respectively.

Cost structure.

• SIP trunk internet with a public IP
• Cloud Hosting
• USSD Code
• Airtime subscriptions

Revenue.

• Audio edutele service generates 60% income 
• ICT capacity building for individuals, schools and organizations 30
• Secretarial 10

Channel.

Use of social media handles, our company website, radio announcements, email marketing, sms marketing, phone calls and outreach programs to the schools.

Surplus

Increasing channels for the audio conference classes to create more space for many schools and students.

Offering services such as ICT capacity building for organizational staff and teachers, holiday coaching for students and call center facilities for schools and organizations.

In the first year of our operations, we received USD150 from Stanbic bank to start the implementation and within a month we had tripled the investment capital while running the audio mobile phone eLearning program.

Subsequently we have been able to raise a revenue of USD 28,571 in the past two years only through the virtual eLearning program which supported the business to acquire assets, rent office space and pay staff and operate successfully.

We as well acquired computer which boosts the ICT skilling program for school teachers, individuals and the community to boost our revenue source.