IET Schoolybox

Access to Education and Learning content offline has been a major challenge in rural communities with the absence of a formal school setting. This has hindered the young minds in rural communities from being able to compete with their peers globally.

According to ‘’UNICEF Statistics on Education in Nigeria 2018’’, about 10.5 Million Children are currently out of school. This is the highest population of out-of-school children in the world.

The IET Schoolybox aims to solve the problem of access to learning content and bridge the digital learning gap by providing an all-in-one learning box that aids learning offline as well as serves as a tool for community learning.

IET Schoolybox

The schoolybox is an all-in-one movable box that aids and facilitates learning anywhere. Like a large toolbox, it is a very efficient technology in the hands of teachers and learners.

This is because it is ideal for rural areas and communities with access to no internet connectivity or electricity.

It comes with the following;

• A Projector 300W
• IET Cloud Server
• 5 Hours Power Bank
• Foldable 90W Solar Panel
• Laptop

Our Solution serves the students in Elementary, Secondary, and Tertiary Institutions especially students in rural communities with little or no access to personalized learning. It also serves out-of-school children in remote areas.

By providing access to learning content offline and being a toolbox to aid community learning, the students can have access to learning content offline and this will, in turn, impact their lives through the following means.

• Improve the quality of Education.
• Create better access to learning.
• Bridge the digital learning gap
• Minimize learning discrepancies.

As an organization that has been driving digital learning, skills acquisition, and training for over a decade, we have a core mission to up-skill and empower 250,000 students by the end of 2023 by bridging the gap in learning accessibility especially by reaching out to children in rural communities who are at a learning disadvantage.

In order to understand the needs of those we are serving, we have put in place an NGO arm known as BATDI (Bridging Access to Technology and Digital Infrastructure). This initiative aims at upskilling out-of-school children in under-served communities, training youths, teachers in rural communities, and building a trained workforce.

To understand our target audience, we have pulled up a team of representatives to communities to carry out surveys and research  on the standard of learning in communities. According to the research conducted by our team, we have maximum proximity to over thirty under-served communities that are faced with the problem of learning accessibility.

More so, we have been able to do a proof of concept in ''Epe Grammar School Lagos, Nigeria'' in order to be able to directly engage the learners and this was our first pilot.

Due to the amazing feedback from Students and Teachers, we have been able to deploy our solution to other communities.

We believe Solve can help with appropriate business models and strategies for brand growth and development. Being a marketplace for social impact and innovation, we hope to be able to drive digital learning Inclusion and bridge the learning divide in Nigeria through Solve.

Our solution provides a new approach to solving the educational problem in rural communities, especially where internet and classroom structures cannot be made available

It will provide formal education to over 200 under-privileged children in rural communities.

Our impact goal for the next year is to ensure every out-of-school child in rural communities has access to education and learning content irrespective of their background.

The long term impact goal for 5 years and beyond is tied to our mission which is to upskill and empower 250,000 students by the end of 2023, by providing affordable technology for socially marginalized groups, including low-income earners, rural communities, persons with disabilities, young people, and children who are often excluded from digital development opportunities, as well as bridging a gap in learning accessibility.

We intend to achieve these by leveraging and building partnerships with organizations and stakeholders that are driven by social impact. This includes USADF, Solve, Bank of Industry, and others.

One of the measurable indicators we use to track our progress is providing affordable technology for socially marginalized groups, including low-income earners, rural communities, persons with disabilities, young people, and children who are often excluded from digital development opportunities, thereby bridging a gap in learning accessibility. This is our core Sustainable Development Goal which we have been able to achieve through organized data and information gathering which will measure the impact, and outcomes of every beneficiary to drive growth and sustainability at scale.

THEORY OF CHANGE

Situation Analysis:

Education in rural Nigeria is characterized by very poor infrastructure, insufficient academic staff, insecurity, and non-payment of academic staff among others. The under-development in Nigeria as a country has been linked to a lack of development in the rural areas. Lack of development has a positive correlation with the neglect of rural areas. Rural Neglect brings negative consequences such as the exodus of rural dwellers to urban areas, with resulting problems of unemployment, crimes, prostitution, child labor, insecurity, money laundering, bribery, poverty, the proliferation of shanty living areas, the spread of diseases, and overstretching of the facilities and infrastructures in the urban areas.

With the above situation analysis, IET came up with an initiative to bridge the gap that exist in the rural regions by providing the following solution:

Schoolybox – Containing content cloud server, solar panel for power supply, projector, and laptop for students to use

Action Plan for immediate output:

The action plan is to implement Schoolybox in selected communities. Once installed, in collaboration with already existing schools. Prospective teachers will be trained to understand and use the facilities in the schoolybox.  Our curriculum for this training is highly competitive with the intention to have facilitators grounded with end-to-end knowledge of facility use and also a basic understanding of the handling of students professionally.

Longer-term outcomes:

Students will be thoroughly trained and equipped with the necessary knowledge that will spur them into further academic excellence. Both local and international curriculum covering STEM Education and general knowledge will be made available in the content server for our target population. Teachers/Facilitators will continue to improve as they will be challenged by fellow teachers based on learning content that are available in the cloud server.

The core technology that powers the schooly box are Ubuntu Operating System and Cloud-based Technology. Ubuntu uses Linux-based technology that helps install third-party-based applications on the cloud server.

Cloud-based technology pushes and pulls content remotely to the local servers.

At Imperial Educational Technology,  one of our core missions is to up skill and empower 250,000 students by the end of 2023, by providing affordable technology for socially marginalized groups, including low-income earners, rural communities , and persons with disabilities, young people,  and children who are often excluded from digital development opportunities, bridging a gap in learning accessibility.

We are committed to building a trained workforce of intellects by delivering positive impacts to clients, and connecting people with meaningful innovation. Ours is a team that collaborates, shares and inspire creative thinking that fuels Africa’s innovations.

Our team comprises of individuals from different ethnic background and tribes because we believe in diversity and inclusion. Our leadership team create an enabling environment that encourages and preach diversity. We believe in the ideology of valuing employees, respecting, supporting them and providing a workplace that is conducive and allows for ethnic and cultural diversity, believing everyone is important and has equal access to opportunities and advancement.

Our core values are Impact, Innovation, Integrity and Excellence.

Impact- We believe in incremental progress toward a goal, and small wins that lead to big outcomes by nurturing a positive progression of an employee career lifecycle.

Integrity -We uphold ethical attributes, good character traits including honesty, sound judgment, leadership and dependability.

Innovation- As a technology driven organization, we believe in creating new ideas, applying new processes and researching on new ideas to solve problems particularly by leveraging world standard technologies produced in Africa to bridge the Education divide.

Excellence- We believe in building an effective workforce that begins with understanding the company’s purpose along with its vision and values, whilst building employee engagement, competency, and resilience as well as systematic efforts to establish set goals and standards.

• STEM training in drone development and robotics in partnership with the United States Embassy. In partnership with Global air drone academy. This was in 2018& 2019. The project amounted to 8,000 USD.
• Training of 500 Sales Professionals for Employment under the Lagos State Employment Trust Fund LSETF IN 2019. The project amounted to 25,000 USD 
• Co-development of the Federal government social investment program (N-Power) targeted at training and empowering 500,000 youth across Nigeria This was between  2016-2018.
• Deployment of Content Cloud Servers to Public Secondary Schools in Lagos State Nigeria. Year: 2022.