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E-Girls TZ enables girls from low income families to own e-learning Computers starting in primary level
E-Girls TZ provide e-learning computers pre-installed with Open Educational Resources (OER). Young girls from low income families spend hours teaching themselves with world class resources at home. The pilot récipients got 1st and second places in their high primary leaving results which results in automatic placement in the better government secondary schools.
EGirls who have had a year training with the program qualify to in turn be selected as trainers in their own primary and secondary schools setting up computers, teaching and tracking new girls' progress.
Simple and effective intervention. World class offline packages of Open Education Resources that include: OER2go which includes the Khan Academy videos, beautifully illustrated CK12 Textbooks in science, maths and engineering, Hesparian Health Guides, thousands of Ted Talks, Wikipedia for schools and locally produced relevant elearning content. This content is installed on the hard drives of computers and can be used daily without the need of an Internet connection.
This OER content is under Creative Common licensing, enabling the projects participants to freely copy the programs for fellow students, friends and neighbors that already have computers at home. The program selects girls to sign up to have the computers at home where brothers, sisters and other members of the family benefit.
In the pilot started in 2017 we found that all the children in the home where the computer is placed get better results in school. The selected E-girl is assigned ownership of a computer and is trained in how to maintain it. Giving such unlimited use of the best resources in OER at primary level is motivating the girls and their families to set higher goals for health and life.
Homes once empty of educational resouces become learning centers creating a natural learning enviroment and a love of learning as a result.
The first Computer Health & Life Skills Club meeting held in trainer Nadia's home
Uconnect has started providing e-learning in homes in Tanzania. UConnect trains women who sign up with the program to become agents of learning for their families and neighbours. Agents then generate income for themselves from giving lessons. For the first project we partnered with CARE Tanzania, and brought computers to Dar es Salaam to provide e-learning to low income inner city women and their families.
Msekwa Manzese Computer Health & Life Skills Club Launched
The second Club meeting in training agent Pili's big living room.
After only two months of training each week, we began the Msekwa Manzese Computer Health & Life Skills Club on Sundays with training for young girls ages 8-16. We have also allowed some boys of the same age to mix with our girls for the second hour and learn from them. Skills that are being taught include English, computer basics, health and life skills. The instructional library includes health care training videos on Infant Care, Nutrition, HIV prevention, Family Planning and Hesperian Health guide material in Swahili. The lessons are held in the home of our trained agents. Agents bring their computers together on the day of the Club meet. The first agents were already earning money from the project at month two, teaching the basic skills they had only just learned from their own homes. One of the best ways of retaining newly learned lessons is by showing others what you have learned..
Chance meeting in a Cafe helps to launch the first outreach
Lisa Stern and Hawa Jahazi first met in Café Fairy Delights in the Shoppers Plaza Michocheni, Dar Es Salaam...Continue reading here:
RACHEL E-Learning Repository Updates
The RACHEL Educational Repository has been updated with exciting new content from Allversity and Practical Action and also features programming with SCRATCH.
The RACHEL offline E-Learning Repository is a vast portable library of educational courses and support material for both teachers and students/learners. "Since RACHEL is hosted locally I can ask a whole class of students to access heavy multimedia content relevant for my subjects at speeds better than the fastest Internet in developed countries" See some of the content provided with RACHEL here:
If you are a school or teacher don't forget to come by UConnect at the Ministry of Education for your updated copy of the RACHEL and instruction in how to use the content.
This month UConnect have provided RACHEL to PEACE CORPS and to the Skilling Uganda program that is expanding the vocational institutes across the country.
Teachers find out from Lisa about the RACHEL Repository at UConnect's Ministry of Education workshops.
Once you have discovered the joys of using the RACHEL content in your classroom you are welcome to and encouraged to share RACHEL with other teachers and learners.
RACHEL is short for: Remote Area Community Hotspot for Education and Learning.
In this photo Emilly Lamwaka from PEACE CORPS Uganda learns how to use the RACHEL Repository from Jed Stern for use up-country by PEACE CORPS' volunteers.
Obia-Zeu School in Nebbi District Gets Solar Computer Lab
Negrini Memorial SS Gets Electricity, Computer Network, RACHEL Server Internet All in One Day
I started work with a team of enthusiastic local volunteers early on Thursday morning, led by Joel, who had experience putting up antenna masts and such. We began building our ladder from eucalyptus to mount the high roof on the school building selected for the computer lab, and had our solar frames up ready to install the solar panels by the end of the first day. By Sunday we were ready for an open house, inviting the congregation at the local church to come and see the ten-workstation working computer lab after the service.
Many people crowded around each of the ten workstations, some running animations of how things work, others, apparently with little computer experience, were clicking on desktop icons and opening programs, and several, who obviously had had more experience were checking their Yahoo accounts. I was asked to demonstrate some of the server's more interesting features and had started to play Beethoven's 7th Symphony from an MP3 file. But our American colleague, Mark, an advocate who had been mobilizing community leaders to find means to assist their orphans, vulnerable and disabled, called out to ask if we couldn't have something more lively. When I put an Elmore James blues track the visitors began to girate to the sound of slide guitar; man that place was jumpin!
During the morning radio programme listeners heard from Emmanuel and Lisa about the UConnect Schools Project, including Emmanuel's role as Chief Mechanic, converting the Saurer 2DM into an ICT demonstrations truck (photo below) that is still used in Uganda for showing latest technologies at various conferences and exhibitions. Manu had trained Ugandan orphans at the Besaniya Children's Home over ten years ago, and continues with his work training apprentices at Garage Pitstop in Geneva. During the broadcast they announced the Project's urgent need for donated TFT monitors and laptops, that are especially useful for schools in rural areas due to their low energy requirements.
Your Space: IT for developing countries
Michele Mischler talks to Lisa and Emmanuel Stern from UConnect, an organisation which aims to develop public education in Uganda through the use of donated computer systems.
Come celebrate Together in Diversity!“See, Taste and Cheer our Diversity”
In recognition of culture as a key factor in sustainable development and the fight against poverty, European Union (EU) Member States represented in Uganda together with the Delegation of the European Commission to Uganda in collaboration with Ugandan partners organised a Europe-Uganda village that took place at the Kyadondo Rugby Club in Kampala. “Unity in Diversity” was the theme accompanying the initiative, underlining the values, common to both Uganda and the European Union, of tolerance and respect in a multicultural society.
More than 500 visitors came by the UConnect Internet Demo Truck, and many boarded to sit behind one of the ten workstations to get some hands-on, with a first demo of GPRS EDGE technology.
Enhancing Training for District Offices in Uganda
Kampala (UGANDA), "Provide Internet, and They Will Learn How to Use It" summarizes Daniel Stern from UConnect in regard to his experience with a project that trained 175 officials in ICTs. For CHECK.point eLearning, he gives detailed insight into this project, whose task was to teach remote rural district officers in Uganda how to use computers and the Internet as tools to help them do their work.
UConnect Provides Internet Training To Hundred District Officials
Officials at 22 mostly rural districts are being trained on site in information and communications technologies (ICTs) and Internet by UConnect trainer teams travelling up country in Uganda. The 22 district offices have been connected to the Internet by MTN Uganda using WiMAX as part of the UCC's Rural Communication Development Fund (RCDF).
Bringing the Internet to primary and secondary schools
Kampala, April 2006 – The object of UConnect is the advancement of public education in the country by using Information and Computer Technology (ICT) for education to improve the quality and efficiency of communications. Daniel Stern of UConnect sums up this work in an interview with CHECKpoint eLearning.
UCONNECT, a project that supplies cheap information communication technology to schools, has embarked on regional network training workshops in a bid to help more schools acquire computer skills.
The first workshop was held in Tororo recently for the Eastern region.
The project coordinator, Sam Rico, said 32 students and 11 teachers were trained during the workshop.
Rico said the trainees were drawn from Rock High, Kisoko High, Lumino High, Nabumali High, Dabani Girls’ Secondary, Dabani Girls primary and Masaba College schools.
Networking Schools: UConnect holds first Regional NTW in Tororo
400+ schools have received computers from UConnect. The team has been working on getting more schools networked and connected to the Internet. Our first Regional Network Training Workshop (NTW) given at Rock High School in Tororo was host to 37 trainees, students and teachers from seven schools coming from three districts in the area. The trainees brought floor plans of their schools' computer labs to use for designing their local area networks (LANs). After the NTW they return to install LANs at their schools. Their computer labs can then be connected to the Internet at special discount prices offered to Uganda schools by ISP partners.
Regional NTWs are helping to establish technical support trainers in each region who can then work together to assist each other. Students train other students, one school assists another school, installing and troubleshooting schools networks, that they may enjoy the benefits of Internet.
UConnect Europe
Times Educational Supplement
"People are starving for information - literally dying for want of information"
Power to the people Mobile communications technologies hold great potential, and UConnect is piloting schemes with telecoms providers, including one that offers schools a subsidised deal on unlimited internet access - “a really big breakthrough”.
Daniel says, “Put in the communications infrastructure, and the electricity will come later. The right initiative by G8 or the UN could cause a real revolution. People are starving for information - literally dying for want of information.” TES article
Times Educational Supplement article by Dorothy Walker -
UConnect Schools Project presented a stand at S-DEV Geneva
S-DEV Geneva 05 : A rendezvous in Geneva for innovating cities from all over the world
Sustainable urban development is one of the great challenges of the 21st century. Actors from all over the world - local authorities, business, NGOs, international agencies came together at S-DEV at GENEVA PALEXPO. An annual interactive event for the discovery and exchange of concrete developments. More
MTN announce partnership with UConnect for schools' Internet
At a press conference held at education ministry headquarters attended by Minister of Education Hon. Ms Geraldine Namirembe Bitamazire and other officials MTN Uganda's Marketing Communications Manager, Philip Besiimire, announced a partnership with the ministry-based NGO, UConnect, in which schools would benefit from subsidized Internet connectivity. Filmed portions of the press conference were shown on UTV and WBS television news, and articles about the new partnership were published in newspapers.
MTN, Govt to Connect Nine Schools On Internet from The Monitor
by Dorothy Nakaweesi
MTN Uganda and the ministry of Education have agreed to jointly provide Internet services to nine schools through the schools connectivity programme.
The programme being managed by UConnect, a project at the education ministry, will intended to create equal opportunities for students in Uganda to compete with the rest of the world.
"This is a timely action because of the changes in the education system with more students turning to the Internet for learning resources," Mr. Philip Besimire, the MTN Uganda spokesperson, said.
La fête du développement durable a eu lieu sous trois chapiteaux érigés sur la Plaine de Plainpalais le samedi 11 juin et le dimanche 12 juin, sur le thème de la maison.
CONNECTED: Computer lesson at Kashozi school, Bushenyi
By Elvina Nawaguna
"More than 100 schools that would otherwise not afford it have been able to buy computers at lower prices from an NGO that extends information technology to rural areas.
The NGO, UConnect imports used computers from Europe and USA, revamps them and supplies them to schools and organisations. The organisation also helps schools to network their computer labs and to get Internet connections.
In the first year of the project, the organisation distributed hundreds of computers to 60 mostly rural-based schools. In the last 20 months UConnect has supplied over 100 schools, both primary and secondary with computers.
Schools from as far as Mbale, Lira, and Tororo have benefited from the project."
Multi-choice Uganda Ltd has donated satellite equipment to the UConnect Schools project.
Joan Amaniyo of the Ministry of Education and UConnect project coordinator said the equipment would enable the project to get connected to the Internet via satellite and boost information communication technology (ICT) in rural schools and surrounding areas.
UConnect Schools Project was presented at INET
UConnect Adds Telecentre Management to Network Training Workshops
Junior I-Network Node invites UConnect to demonstrate SchoolAxxess at Namilyango College
