Internet SMS

The specific problem we are solving is access to the internet and online learning resources. Within the Challenge we are working to increase the engagement of learners in remote, hybrid, and physical environments, including strategies and tools for parental support, peer interaction, and guided independent work. The scale of the problem in the communities that we are working in is all the primary and secondary schools do not have a designated technology based solution designed to increase engagement of learners. In our district alone over 20,000+ students are affected by this problem, globally internet penetration is at 59.5 percent. The factors contributing to the problem are  lack of financial means to be able to pay for smartphone devices, as the majority are living below the poverty line. This relates to our solution because we have developed a system which allows all mobile devices to access online learning resources and facilitate an avenue for tools for parental support, peer interaction, and guided independent work. According to the Tanzanian Communication and Regulatory Authority(TCRA) in as of March 2021 there are a total of over 50+ million mobile subscribers with 26+ million not having devices with internet capabilities, namely android and IOS based smartphones.

Our solution is an SMS based internet access communication protocol. How it works is by taking the request message and activating functions based on keywords in the text message. Each keyword has a function associated with it. All users send messages to a central processing unit that is running python 3 logic and is connected to the internet. The system uses the python and C++ programming language. It also includes  microcontrollers and an SMS application programming interface for incoming and outgoing messages.

The system uses google drive, Firebase real time database, and SQL database to  backup data for all queries  for analysis purposes. 

How it works is that each keyword has a function associated with it. For example, when a student sends "wiki, Alexander the Great", this will activate the Wikipedia python API and search for Alexander the Great and save the information onto a variable. 

if an individual needs to send an assignment all they need to do is scan the assignment and get a "google docs link" for that assignment. The user then text "L, group or organization name, the link to the document"

ex "L udom https:googledocslink"

message urls are saved with student ID being the number they sent it from. All edits are able to be done completely online by the teacher and all they have to do and send a notification or sms to the user to say that their assignment has been graded. They simply open up the link where the document is stored and all corrections are grades can be there. 

We include translation services to ease and make learning english something that can continue even past school hours.

 Translation services from English to swahili and swahili to english 

Translate from English to swahili

"TES, phrase to translate" 

Translate from Swahili to English 

"TSE, phrase to translate"

At the beginning of this solutions conception, I had been volunteering as a computer teacher at the  compassion international youth centre at our church. I was concerned about the kids safety  and wanted to teach how to be safe. The age group of the kids that I was teaching was from age 9 - 18.My goal with teaching computer was to show that technology can be a great asset is navigating the digital frontier.

I was curious to learn more about their experiences from school.I wanted specifically to know how we could use computers to make their educational experience more engaging and interactive.

Methods included downloading content to reinforce lessons learned from school.  During a session, a young lady stated that reference books such as dictionaries and translation books were not available to them.

So I began to create small applications that the kids could use while being in the computer lab at the youth center.

I asked the children if they could get access to cheap mobile devices without android or iOS that could text and call. Most mentioned that they already had those devices.

From that statement, it became clear that I needed to extend the capabilities of SMS messaging, so students could use these devices as powerful reference tools to aid in their educational careers. This was the plan. The kids contributed greatly to this design because they helped me keep it simple and make functionalities easy to use and memorize.

So we started with a dictionary for definitions and  translation services from Swahili to English and from English to Swahili.

Making dictionary and translation services  available through SMS saved time spent looking for definitions to understand a concept.

Once, children began to get a picture of what technology allows us to be able to do. From this, the students then began to suggest different features that I could add to the system. One child suggested that we have an SMS group and in that group they would send all information relevant to our district.

“In Tanzania each region is divided into districts, each district has a leader that informs local governments of any changes or information specific to that district. For example: all citizens need to register for a voter's ID card by stated dates” This is how communities spread information.

After all the insight from the students at compassion, I  walked to the education administration in our hometown with the intentions of looking for a specific problem from the teachers' perspective that I could solve in the education sector with this technology. I explained what I had created to make education more accessible for students from lower income families.

The teachers' contribution lead to the Google Docs link system. It was stated that a solution was needed that could help teachers grade students assignments and return them to the students quickly. With education system being free, teachers are burdened with the inconvenience of grading over 200+ students papers per class and there are  often 5 or more classes per teacher.

I found that the meaningful connection that I made with teachers and parents is the common goal to see our children succeed in their academic careers. The meaningful connection with my students came surprisingly from simply caring about their academic careers and how they were doing. Most children stated that all anyone cared about was whether we passed or failed, never how each day was going.

That was our driving force. Thanks to access to online content, we were able to understand that each child may have different learning styles. 

This system provided teachers and parents an avenue to be able to more critically asses a child education trajectory and implement other methods that would be able to help make the learning experience more engaging.

The design continues to grow with the new applications for the system.

Working with the kids at compassion really gave me a sense of responsibility to use my gifts to serve the needs of my home community, at first this may seem like common sense, but it's the motivation and the drive needed to accomplish such a task that comes in different ways for everyone.

Our approach to building a diverse, equitable, and inclusive leadership team was based on understanding the importance of each contributor's perspective. Their perspective is a key aspect of how we develop and deliver an impactful user experience. In our team's context, this concept removes cultural biases in gender roles and focuses completely on the idea that there is no wrong perspective. This created a leadership team that was free to share ideas and brainstorm to ensure that this adds value to the students lives.

The way we use our product to create a diverse, equitable, and inclusive leadership team is to remember and state daily that our product was founded on students and teachers perspective on what was lacking in education. The group SMS product has allowed all genders to be able to contribute equitably in leadership roles because it makes the community meetings public and everyone is authorized to state their opinions on different matters. Through working together, we were able to create this product. As we continue to work together, we will discover better ways to create a unique, engaging educational experience tailored to each student's learning style and needs to ensure success for the future.

The way my team and I are well-position to deliver this solution is since it primarily a programming and technology based solution, we have a certified python programmer, an embedded systems specialist, and we have the full support of the District and Region education staff in the government. The way our team’s life and work experiences helped us to understand the experiences of those we serve is that most of the people working on our team have gone through the Tanzanian education system. They study other country's education systems and have a good understanding of how technology is shaping their education system. The way our team is representative of those we serve is most of them have children in all levels of the education system. They are able to identify very clearly where we are lacking in providing quality education to our students. Their input, ideas and agendas have contributed greatly to the design and implementation of our solution because they were the ones who brought the pressing matter of not having access to sufficient learning resources. A shortage of dictionaries, encyclopedias, and other learning resources has caused them to bring up this concern in our meetings. Through their guidance, we were able to structure a system’s architecture and quickly understand the immediate priorities that need to be addressed immediately.

I am applying to MIT solve because I hold the MIT Objective in high regard in that the  Institute is committed to generating, disseminating, and preserving knowledge, and to working with others to bring this knowledge to bear on the world's great challenges. I believe that some of the best minds in the world come from MIT and I would be honored to be a part of this ecosystem of brilliant minds in our quest to solve some the worlds most pressing challenges. Due to time spent wondering what the purpose of my life is, I have come to understand that the purpose of my life is to use my gifts to serve the needs of others because I believe that that is what will give me a fulfilled and satisfying life. As mentioned in the become a solver page some of the things that I look forward to the most is, joining a class of impressive peers that act as trusted support group, offering inspiration and guidance. Joining a powerful network of impact-minded leaders across industries and sectors, with dedicated spaces to meet year-round and during Solve’s flagship events such as Solve at MIT, and having access to mentorship, coaching, and strategic advice from experts, as well as the Solve and MIT networks. I have come to realized that knowledge is the most valuable thing on earth and should be pursued.

What makes our solution innovative is that it is imploring new uses for an already existing technology. SMS is used mainly for communication purposes from one person to another person, and for a subscription to a service. Never has it been used as an internet connectivity protocol with designated keywords to access different online services. The reason why our solution provides a new and significantly improved approach to the problem of access to online information is that the communication protocol can now allow for devices that are not running android or iOS to be able to access services that normally one would need a smartphone to access. The way our service can be catalytic is that is can provide a communication protocol for an application to run completely offline, saving data packages and reducing internet traffic in low connectivity locations. I expect it to change the market in that it will provide engineers a new method for connecting to different types of services their application needs to function. The solution will also work alongside regular telecommunication internet services to provide users to all round connection to important notification from their Gmail, Hotmail, and other important services.

Our impact goals are for next year to make sure that over 400,000+ students have access to online learning resources. Over the next five years we aim to adopt this system as a foundational element in the education system and collaborate with telecommunication companies to provide lines for students to use this system. We hope to have reached over 10+ million users, giving them the ability to have affected peer to peer interaction, independent work, and create a culture of enjoying and loving education. This is our long term goal in Tanzania is to shift the cultural indoctrination about the importance of education from something that is optional but not important to something that is a fundamental part of our wellbeing and existence. This solution will have transformational impact of not only the education system but in other sectors such as health where doctors and practitioners can suggest to patients where to find information about healthy living, dealing with complicated illnesses, and creating help and support channels for people with a variety of different illnesses. How I plan to achieve the impact goal of making textbook online resources available to lower income families is by focusing on the affordability of the service in relation to how much is earned and building a sense of value for education for the end user. Our approaches to scale will include collaboration with telecommunication service providers on providing a specific service such as dictionary definitions, translation services, and online messaging capabilities delivered from SMS.

We are measuring our progress towards our impact goals by monitoring the types of keywords are used in the system and marking a count of how many individuals are texting to our service. The measurable indicators that we are using to measure our progress is the number of users that are texting to our service every day. We are looking specifically at the kind of messages sent to the Google search API to see the types of information individuals are looking for, the reasons of seeing if information is becoming something that is valuable to them in a culture and setting where information is only for wealthy individuals. With the use of this system we plan to have more students in school, so for a particular subject we will measure impact by how many students from a particular school in our Region are texting to their school's online learning platform.

Problem statement:

Students in Tanzania between the ages of 9-18 attending government public schools don't have easy, affordable access to books and other learning resources.

Internet SMS will provide alternative sources for students to acquire learning material, removing the need for physical books.

 The Google Docs link system enables teachers to grade papers digitally and to make corrections, all from a Google Docs link. Students are able to receive each submitted assignment corrected to prepare for exams.

Students now have a simple way to submit documents for all classes and get feedback on their progression digitally. 

Parents and guardians are able to have an avenue to receive digital copies of school reports automatically compiled by our system at the end of each school term, parents are able to get notifications which enable them to be an active part of their child's learning experience. It provides printout links for the parents to give children to study and color through, which are paired with videos with simple to follow instructional games to help reinforce concepts in school. 

We shall see an increase in student performance in specific subjects and grade levels 

an increase of the number of calls made to internet SMS for reference materials to help improve user experience. 

Students are enabled to share all learning content via a simple google link for both media and documents, which can be printed at any stationary in town.

Our inputs to this problem statement is that we will facilitate a Google Docs link system for grading and education media content distribution. This enables all content to be organized and saved in links which can be sent via SMS  for easy access to learning materials, which can be retrieved at any stationary. 

Internet SMS will make definitions, translation, grammar, spelling, encyclopedia resources available through SMS.

Internet SMS includes a quiz section to test the student's knowledge, students request a test and send SMS to each response and receive a results to better study and prepare.

We have a group SMS service as a notification system for the school to notify parents on related topics or events.

Our activities will include tutorial sessions in school to teach system functionality

SMS links sent with downloadable video and written media links on the usage and benefits of the system

Short workshops to train on specific functionalities on how to send a paper and make corrections to the Google Docs link. 

How teachers are able to grade assignments digitally and save changes to documents and once all assignment graded, send a message in the group SMS service to let students know the assignment for this week has been graded. 

We will provide pens and pencils with our logo and brand to have instructions on how to use the internet SMS system.

Presentations for the teachers to show how this tool can provide analysis methods for student progress

What needs to happen is further collaboration with the local school administration. A letter of authorization from the ministry of education to authorize the system in the education sectors

our lasting impact for re engaging learners is to provide a tool that is designed specifically to meet the educational needs of the students, to provide administrative analysis data for teachers, the government, and to open an avenue for the involvement of parents and guardians in their children's educational career  

The core technology that power our solution is short message service, otherwise known as SMS messaging. Our solution is a new application of an already existing technology. We have exponentially increased the capabilities of SMS messaging with our python logic to be able to facilitate a connectivity protocol to the internet. The solution works by catching keywords that the user would put into the message, the python logic then runs functions specific to the keyword to return results to the user.

Our approach to building a diverse, equitable, and inclusive leadership team is first focusing primarily on the communities we are trying to serve and making sure that we have an equal number of man to female participants in our leadership team. Our leadership team embodies the values of diversity, equity, and inclusion but fostering a very strong conviction to a sense of belonging for all our participants. We believe that everyone despite race, gender, background, education level, has helpful insights, and we have a strict policy of mutual respect despite family socioeconomic background. We seek very strongly to create an environment where everyone feels valued and respected. Since we are located in Africa, we have a tangible goal for our team that relates to these values, and that is mainly mutual respect when others talk and share their opinions. No perspective shared by our members should be disregarded. The way we achieve these goals is by affirmation of speakers when they speak in relation to how they view the world around them and their perspectives. 

What problem I am trying to solve

The problem that I am trying to solve is access to the internet and access to information.

How I solve the problem

The way my business solves this problem is we have created a solution that allows users to SMS the internet to acquire information. It is a SMS based internet access system that makes it possible to access google search engine and other online services, all from texting, with no need of the user being connected directly to the internet.

Problem in terms of loss, uncaptured value

The problem is that people are not able to access information for various use cases. The system saves people time and effort in finding reliable information. The system provides a combination of efficiency, and accuracy making the solution a cost-effective way of accessing reliable information with as little effort as possible from the user. The uncaptured value in terms of how many people need this solution can be estimated with the statistics from the telecommunications regulatory authority in Tanzania(TCRA) and the Ministry of Education. As of March 2021, 23+ million users have devices without android and iOS operating systems. These users have mobile devices without internet capabilities, only capable of SMS messaging and voice calls. 

  Business Offering

Pricing

$0.25 - $1.50  or 200 Tanzanian shillings to 3,000 Tanzanian Shillings.  

Profitability-

Expected users to sell to in one year is 6,000 at 500 TZS per user. Revenue = 3,000,000 TZS ($1,304). Cost of operations including rent, internet and SMS service, electricity/backup, and transportation = 2,290,000 TZS ($995). Profit is 710,000 tsh ($308). Profit margins: 23% for the first year of operations.

Marketing & Sales- Your Marketing Plan

How I plan to get my service to the target audience is by visiting learning institutions with fliers identifying the number to use and the capabilities of the system. Tactics involved are portraying the system as an assistance in online google searches, translation services, dictionary definitions. To grow my customer base, we will include text based advice on topics such as relationships, and feeds from celebrities. Build loyalty through offer discounts when participants answer question of the week correctly. Online channels to create visibility will include Instagram, Facebook, tiktok feeds through targeting influencers with +100,000 followers.

We plan to also have pens that we will distribute with our internet SMS system so the user can have the number and have simple instructions on how to use it. We will then distribute these pens to university, college, and high school students, parents and teachers. These pens will be distributed throughout schools in the region. We will raise awareness of this system through those means. We will include a small brochure packet for students and teachers letting them know how to use the system and what is the use case for the system and at the same time let them know where I got the seed funding for the system and have an open invitation to join a free class on writing business proposals and applying for such opportunists. There is a lot of funding available for people in Tanzania for outside organizations.

BUSINESS ANALYSIS

SWOT Analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, & Threats)- 

Our strength is an efficient, cost-effective way to access information on the internet with as little effort as possible. Weakness is the inability to target a necessity that our target demographic has. Our plans to overcome weakness is to gather data to understand what to include in the systems, we have incorporated Google Docs link system which enables the users to share video and other content via Google Docs links.

Building a Team

I (David Mashiku) am the CEO and team leader. I am an electrical and automatons engineer specialized in embedded system. I deal with SMS and connectivity protocols for the acquisition of data. I am experienced with affective research methods and how to get reliable information from the internet. I am also a data analyst certified in SQL and I use this knowledge to effectively assess the system from the operational and technical view points. My team is a group of teachers and educations who have extensive knowledge on the educational curriculum in Tanzania and laws  affiliated with the education system.

YOUR PLANS

Business Forecasting and Planning- 

Stage

We have developed a functioning prototype of the SMS information bridge designed specifically for dictionary definitions, translation services, peer to peer group communications, and google search engine capabilities. We have a pilot version of our system available that we are testing with a group of college and University students to gather data on the most effective way to offer this service to help the students in every specific use case scenario. Our data has been fruitful in that we have identified that translation services, google search engine, and dictionary definitions are the most used by university students. We are testing integration's into social media that allow users to still get information like messages sent, or new views or follows acquired through SMS messaging. We have reason to believe that integration into social media platforms may create a new avenue for the applications of this system.

Milestones

For the first and second quarter of the first year our milestones will be customer focused specifically in acquiring customers for the use of the system. This will help us to better understand and get feedback from users on what specific aspects would be helpful and useful for them to have access to and identify those service aspects that our demographic absolutely can’t live without, and how many of our initial customers have access to smartphones. For the >span class="15"> of the first year our milestone will be focused on the financial aspect of the business. We will look at the necessary features to add to the system and calculate extensively how we should grow our service offerings to increase revenue from the data collected from the first two previous quarters.  The second year will follow the same operational milestones as the first year of operations.

We will be offering our product for sale to the community. We will also continue to apply for grants. We will be seeking government contracts to facilitate some of their data acquisition needs. Particularly real time data capturing capabilities for hospital mortality rates and brith rates.

we won the Tony Elumelu Foundation Entreprenuership program in 2021

we recieved $ 5000 dollars seed capital.