- We work towards a world where high-quality educational content is affordable to all and widely available.
- Where off-grid communities and households can access information and educational apps using smartphones charged by home solar power.
Beta
- We have a beta version available for direct download or .torrent from archive.org
- Format your 32Gb MicroSD card to exfat
- Extract the .zip to MicroSD card
- Put the card on your Android phone
- Open ‘files’ app on your phone & explore the SD
- After testing sell the cards
| Logo | About | Link |
|---|---|---|
 | Apps for education | ~200Mb |
 | 102 story books at level 1 reading | 50Mb |
 | 132 story books at level 2 reading | 50Mb |
 | 192 story books at level 3 reading | 50Mb |
 | 151 story & text books at Level 4+ reading | 30Mb |
 | 50 classics, including religious. | 500Mb |
 | First Aid & Anatomy | 1Mb |
 | Media & Cultural, Geography | ?Mb |
 | Wikipedia 50k articles taken from all subject areas. En, Fr, Uk | 5900Mb |
 | Business & Economics | ?Mb |
| History of the World, History of Art | ?Mb |
 | Art, Design, Performance, Writing | ?Mb |
 | Music texts | ?Mb |
 | Philosophy, Psychology, Sociology | ?Mb |
 | Computers &Code | ?Mb |
 | Engineering, Metal working, Electrical, Mechanical | ?Mb |
 | Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Geology, Ecology, Permaculture | ?Mb |
| Software: Bohdi Linux, USB writer, Kiwix reader | ?Mb |
What we’re doing
We’re developing a ‘product’ which is a 32GB microSD card full of educational apps, Textbooks and searchable copies of Wikipedia. You insert it into an Android phone, install the apps from the SD card and access the learning materials at your own pace.
The primary use case is an African or African diaspora audience, so content is available in
+17% Arabic (Ar), 13% English (En) , 11.5% French (Fr), 10% Swahili (Sw),+5% Hausa (Ha)
Amharic (Am), Berber (Ber), Portuguese (Pt), Oromo (Om), Igbo (ig), Yoruba (Yo) Zulu (Zu) Shona.(Sn)
Version 0.1 of the content is available to download here for testing/ feedback. You can preview here
The Zip is ~29Gb allowing space for an optional.OBF for the destination country added to /Android/Data/net.OsmAnd/ to give offline mapping.
Background
There remain millions of people without access to education or training throughout Africa and worldwide.
Smartphones are rapidly becoming commonplace, even for those living off-grid but internet access remains patchy and expensive.
There exist a broad range of Open Educational Resources, Wikipedia, and a large range of open resources created by educators, schools & universities
There are a number of efforts to share these resources with offline communities, but most of these focus on institutional settings, mainly of course schools. These efforts (Library in a box, Internet in a box etc) are great at what they do, but to date there have been no efforts to target individuals and home users with content, using the Android computing device they already own. The content bundles often tend to include CC-BY-NC content which means local partners are unable to sell content.
We’re keen to hear from professional educators, French and Arabic speakers who can help refine our content selection.
The content reading system is developed by Kiwix
This year we’re planning to
Complete v1 content
Set up Open Collective page
Secure funding for upfront costs for 100 sample SD cards – (Crowdfunding? Grant funding? – Get in touch if you have ideas) The idea is to develop a social enterprise model, so the donation-based work should kickstart ongoing work.
Flash 100 cards with content and distribute them to Ukrainian refugees.
Set up an online shop with an order page for cards.
Package cards in retail packaging and post 2 cards to 50 phone shops in targetted African towns, with an online link for them to re-order.
Post 5 demo cards to 20 potential supporters, partners, and influencers.
Core ~29GB
- Childrens books in (en, ar, fr, pt) ~2Gb
- Android apps in (en, ar, fr, pt) 2.5GB
- EN Wikipedia 5.9GB, Wikimed 1.5GB, Wikipedia for schools 1.1GB, Appropedia 0.49GB
- FR Wikipedia 4.4GB, Wikimed 0.5GB,
- AR Wikipedia 2.2GB, Wikimed 0.5GB,
- PT Wikipedia 2.3GB, Wikimed 0.2GB,
- African languages Wikipedias 0.6GB
- Textbooks in English ~2.8GB
Addons
- OSMand file per country ~1GB per country
- Software 1.2GB
Similar projects
https://www.kajou.io/en/ – Seems promising from Libre San Frontier only other people targeting MicroSD – They haven’t replied to any of my emails over the years.
https://worldpossible.org/ Great hotspot project, works on a Pi or expensive boxes. Aggressively Non Commercial (NC)
https://internet-in-a-box.org/ looks like a great content selection, much NC included. Wonder if Ansible is overcomplicated
Volunteer!
Content Curation
We have a pretty good beta, but it can always be improved. In particular developing content bundles in French and Arabic would be helpful.
Social media help
Someone is needed to help plan a social strategy, identify influencers, manage a Facebook page
Organisational Sponsorship
If your University, Non-Profit, or company can sponsor the project then we’ll list you on the main introductory page of the content library. Sponsorship will enable us to devote more time to the project.
Grant funding
We’re keen to hear from grant funders who are interested in this work.
Individual donors
Any money donated by individuals through the Open Collective page will be used to buy, install & ship hardware to Africa or refugee camps. You can track how resources are used on the Open Collective page.
