hundred years in Kenya on our roads in
the way we communicate in our hospital
operating theaters but schools codes are
still the same we have a teacher we have
a blackboard we have writing pads we
have textbooks we have pencils and pens
but the most worrying thing is the
statistics in 2013 where thou had a
study in all the schools in East Africa
and these were the results the teacher
to student ratio is one is 245 10
percent of class 8 students cannot solve
a class 2 math problem and the other
thing is 40% drop out after primary
school in 2003 President Kibaki made
education free for all primary school
kids and which has been a really great
things for people who could not afford
education but every day we hear stories
about schools do not have enough
textbooks we have a teacher is not able
to interact with all the 40 students
during the class and you know we have
people who dropped out of school they
don’t really feel comfortable going back
to a class of 40 students because you
know they feel that they’ll be laughed
at or the other kids will feel that they
are stupid and a lot needs to be done in
terms of the whole education ecosystem
whether it’s in form of infrastructure
whether it’s in form of you know policy
or research or content and we all have
to agree that we live in the 21st
century
and we need to give our learner’s
education that will is helpful to them
today as well as skills that will enable
them to be competitive all over the
world so I work for an
education technology company called le
mu and le mu offers digital local
content for primary school kids so I’m
going to give you stories of what I’ve
seen on the ground over the last two
years so we have this is an animation of
mathematics and you know there’s
different students in class and what it
has done is that the slow kids can watch
the video as many times as they want
the brighter kids can watch it once or
twice but more importantly a child or
Alana in Turkana can learn the same
lesson the same way as a child in
Nairobi or a child in Meru or a child in
Samburu the other thing is we went to
some guru and it’s a small village
called khatallah money next to some guru
national park and when we went there we
went there to the primary school
khatallah money school and one of my
colleagues called Francesca was like you
know we should also have some ups for
women so that they would be able to know
how to recycle glasses or plastics in
their home and when we went to their
workplace where they make the beads and
the necklaces and the bangles and talk
to them they told us do you know what
we’d also like to learn math in English
and Swahili and it was an interesting
thing because at times we assumed people
because they dropped out of school it’s
because they don’t want to learn but at
times it’s because they don’t have the
opportunity or you know most of them are
married they have kids and they would
really not fit into our school system
which is eight to four but if you have a
tablet that you can learn on your own
time then that is great so we’ve seen
that technology can bring opportunity
to areas where we never thought you know
people would not really have that chance
that’s a teacher from in Bacchus
garrison primary school and when we went
to trained teachers you know we have
this in mind we told them this is how
you teach in class this is how you
should integrate technology like you
should use the tablets in class as part
of your lesson and over the last years
we’ve seen teachers innovate and build
up their own ways of teaching and some
teachers actually give children tell
them you know go watch this video as
homework and when they come back the
following day then the teacher is able
to engage with them ask them questions
discuss with them which means that you
know it has revolutionized the way that
they teach in class I went to his sumo
and as you all know that people from
Kisumu are very confident and you know
that’s why it’s kisumu City so when we
went there I met this girl and she’s
very good in English and she always has
her compositions being done being put on
the notice board in school and she
wanted to put her compositions out there
for all the other learners in Kenya to
be able to read it so she asked me to
help her put her compositions online and
this is what I saw is an opportunity
that otherwise she wouldn’t have bought
because what was most of the time when
you go to look for a job as a journalist
you asked how many years of experience
do you have or how much work have you
done and if she started a blog with her
compositions when she’s in plus seven by
the time she’s at from four she has six
years of
experience writing which is really
really you know awesome I mean not most
of us has that much experience in
workplace we do not create technology
for the sake of technology if you wanna
bring technology to people it has to be
relevant to them and it has to offer
solutions to them and what we do is we
help all Ilana’s get the concepts of
what they are learning so that they will
be able to pass their case epe as we all
know that kcp is really really important
to the Kenyan learner’s and the parents
and the teachers and if you are able to
give them concepts that help them
improve their grades in class eight then
that’s really good but all these has not
been without its challenges we went and
talked to so many teachers and so many
parents and what we got is everybody was
really reserved about taking technology
and letting their kids use technology
mostly because their kid most of the
kids used their parents phone to play
games and their parents mostly use their
phones to either SMS or call or m-pesa
at times so every time we went and
talked to teachers or parents the
question we got is how do we make sure
that these kids don’t play games how do
we make sure they don’t access explicit
materials how do we make sure that they
do learn how do we make sure that the
data is properly used for learning
instead of watching endless videos on
YouTube and what we did is we came up
with a program called digital literacy
and what digital literacy is every time
we go to a school or every time we
approach parents we make sure we teach
them what digital literacy is how do you
teach your children to communicate
properly how do you make sure you manage
you data properly how do you make sure
that your settings are set properly so
that kids cannot go outside of what they
are required to do after doing this for
a long time we’ve got parents to accept
it and that’s why we’ve had all the
stories that we’ve had before and the
you know you have these amazing app but
most of the people we serve do not have
enough resources to buy a low-cost
tablet which costs around a hundred to
150 USD which is around ten thousand
shillings to fifteen thousand shillings
so what we did is we turned all the way
up into a website so that anybody with
you know five MB of data
ten of me of these are 20 MB of data it
doesn’t matter I mean it’s what you can
afford right so at the end of the day
they’ll be able to access the content
and be able to learn at their own pace
I’ve learned how to listen and you have
to listen you know to their teachers you
have to listen to their parents you have
to listen to their kids because at the
end of the day these are the people who
are involved in education I believe
education lack of education at times
makes people like prisoners on their own
because they can’t apply to this other
job because they don’t have the
qualification or they are not able to
ask proper questions because they don’t
have proper knowledge and I think we’ve
done a great job and with a free primary
education will continue to see many kids
enrolling in school will continue to see
schools taking in more kids into their
schools we continue to see teachers
taking in more kids into their classroom
and
this is something that we cannot control
but what we can do is we can create
quality education today for them and I
think you’re on the right track by
making education a basic human right for
every child in Kenya and for everyone in
Kenya but what we should also do is we
should make quality also a right and I
think one of the ways we can achieve
this is through harnessing the power of
technology in the classroom so through
my journey I’ve discovered that
technology can create a quality it can
create many many opportunities for Elana
but also it can Rivoli journalized the
way we teach and learn thank you [Applause]