Planning for a trip to rural Kenya with Education in a suitcase

Education in a suitcase is a non-profit which seeks to bring educational opportunities to low-income regions using very cheap technological solutions based on free educational software and free education material.

Right now we're planning the next trip. These have become annual visits to Kenya, each time with one or more pieces of hand-luggage full of tablet computers and/or small servers. Initially, crowdfunding was been used for hardware but research grants (yes, this is also a research project) or special donations were used for other costs -  software and material development, travel etc etc .

We're delivering to places where there is typically no Internet; typically unstable electricity and there may be very poor mobile coverage. So the system needs to handle all these circumstances, in addition to being our system of choice in a western classroom. Basically the plan is to deliver the best to the most difficult regions. Oh, and the hardware is not so important: The software and the material is the important part!!

This describes it pretty well: In 2016 the only way to transfer data from one of the regional servers was to take it via ferry to a nearby town and turn it on to get a mobile web signal. The server then called home and synced with the master. 

The local server (and Intel NUC using a battery as a UPS) will happily provide an WiFi access point, run Linux and be a tutor-web server for the class, all from a USB stick. Last year we used a 128 Gb Kingston USB memory stick which would also fit the entire English Wikipedia (stop right here and process that!) along with the Khan Academy math videos. We had some stability issues with the sticks so this year we're moving on and there will be an internal read-only stick for the Linux plus content. The grade data bases can then reside on a second stick. This year two 128 Gb sticks from Sandisk cost half of what one disk cost last year. With the two USB sticks we'll be able to include the entire Gutenberg Project library.

This time we want to test new antennas to see whether we can improve the mobile signal and move from data-transfer-by-ferry to an Internet connection via mobile phone network.

We had a new round of evaluations of which tablets to buy. Turns out that the Amazon Kindle is a really, really good buy this year, so we've got 90 of those. These little critters run Android so they can do everything we want. Somewhat typically we could only get US chargers but Kenya has UK-style plugs (last year we could only get European plugs). Thankfully one can get really cheap chargers from Aliexpress.

So now we are dotting the i's and crossing the t's: Weighing the hand luggage and checking the bag measurements against airline demands; checking all the cable connections from antenna to modem; modem frequencies; setting up new USB memory sticks; configuring the tablets and the list goes on.

We'll start in a prison: More that half the inmates at Naivasha Maximum Security Prison are also students and some 25-30 start  secondary school each year. For security reasons Internet access is turned off, but everything else needs to work on the local network run off the server.

The next stop will be at Maseno University outside Kisumu. We've had some problems with the server here so Jamie, the programmer of the team, will take a hard look at that. Internet access is commonly slow in Kenya and Maseno is no exception, but with a server like this, students access a blindingly fast WiFi for their tutor-web exercises and for Wikipedia lookups. We're talking pretty cool stuff -- it's not really bragging if it's true :-) 

Finally we get to visit Takawiri Island again. This is where we want to test the antennas. If we can get them to work this year, then we'll get full Internet access and as a bonus we will be able to show students how to use the Smileycoin cryptocurrency, which is used for rewards in the tutor-web system. Of course even if they don't work, then we will leave the students with working tablets which have access to tutor-web, Khan Academy, Wikipedia and the Gutenberg Project library of 50 thousand books. Before you ask: The Internet access needs to be paid for by someone. We can do this when we upload grades and the like (our research project) but if instructors or others want to use it more than that, then they are free to buy airtime (which is pretty cheap in Kenya but we can't really promise an open check).

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