Thought you would enjoy reading the following article from the Nation Newspaper. With the right tools education is possible for everyone!
Friday,
October 17, 2014
Slum schoolgirls living digital
dream
A Form One class
at Kibera Girls Soccer Secondary School in Nairobi on Thursday. PHOTO |
CORRESPONDENT NATION MEDIA GROUP
In Summary
·
Since the introduction of the
e-reader at this small school of 130 students last year, both students and
teachers say learning has become simplified and interesting.
·
“Besides the over 3,000 books that a
student can download at a cost of Sh1 each (Sh90) from worldreader.com, the
devices are connected to a 3G network, meaning a student can even search for
something in Google, thus enhancing their learning experience,” she adds.
·
Ms Hassan says the lessons have
become more interactive and cheaper for the students, who, cannot afford
textbooks.
On a hot afternoon
in the Kibera slums in Nairobi, a Form One maths lesson is under way at Kibera
Girls Soccer Secondary School. Their teacher, Ms Dhalifa Hassan, writes a
formula on the white board and asks one of the students to read it aloud.
Using practical
examples, she explains how the formula can be applied, before asking the class
to open the Secondary Mathematics Book One and go to the chapter on volume and
capacity.
A few seconds
later, all the students have found the chapter and the lesson continues. No
shuffling of paper is heard or students seen craning their necks to share a
textbook.
Although the government has yet to fullfil its promise of delivering laptops to
Standard One pupils, this school has already gone digital.
The school has a
cheaper and more efficient option — the e-reader. Everyone in the class of 40
has one, so do the rest of the students and teachers.
The hand-held
device, which looks like a tablet, is specially designed for reading electronic
books.
Since the
introduction of the e-reader at this small school of 130 students last year,
both students and teachers say learning has become simplified and interesting.
Ms Hassan says the
lessons have become more interactive and cheaper for the students, who, cannot
afford textbooks.
“In a classroom,
finding information on an e-reader is very fast because you don’t flip pages.
You just type what you want to find out and the device searches it for you in a
matter of seconds,” she says.
3G NETWORK
“Besides the over
3,000 books that a student can download at a cost of Sh1 each (Sh90) from
worldreader.com, the devices are connected to a 3G network, meaning a student
can even search for something in Google, thus enhancing their learning
experience,” she adds.
The e-reader’s
memory can hold up to 3,000 books downloaded from the Internet. This means
students advancing from one class to another do not need to delete the books
they have.
Traditionally, a
student moving from one class to the next is required to buy a new set of
books, and it is impossible to carry all the textbooks and exercise books in
one bag every day. But this device can enable a student to download more than
the required books for their entire period in high school.
Even when the
books are revised, there is no need to buy new editions as they are
automatically updated like smartphone applications.
Mr Richard Teka,
the manager of the e-reader programme, says the introduction of the devices has
created a reading culture in the school.
“Many Kenyans are
not interested in reading. If we were to give these students hard copies of
textbooks, most of them would not read them. However, out of the curiosity
arising from the use of the electronic devices, the students end up reading,”
he says.
Each student is
assigned a device and is even allowed to go home with it to do some
assignments.
This has improved their promptness in submitting assignments, Mr Teka says.
He also attributes
the improvement of the school’s performance in last year’s Kenya Certificate of
Secondary Education (KCPE) examinations from a mean grade of 5.9 to 6.3 to the
e-readers.
He adds that the programme has removed the burden of buying expensive textbooks
from the parents.
“A complete list
of books for a student starting Form One, for example, will cost not less than
Sh10,000, and these students come from a slum where that amount of money is the
rent for a whole year,” he says.
“By comparison,
one e-reader costs Sh7,000. When fully charged, it can work for up to a week,”
he adds.
In comparison, the
estimated price of a laptop in the aborted government tender was at least
Sh28,000.
One of the students who have benefited from the e-readers is 14-year-old
Cynthia Amundi, who is in Form Two.
She and her four
siblings depend on her mother, a single parent, who washes clothes in nearby
Lang’ata residential area for a living and cannot afford to buy textbooks for
her.
“When I joined
Form One, I only had two textbooks handed down to me by my relatives. There
were times before the e-readers were introduced when I was completely unable to
do my homework,” she says.
DOWNLOADED
STORYBOOKS
Today, she says
she hardly puts her device down, as she has downloaded a number of storybooks
that she reads during her free time.
Another student,
15-year-old Hadija Barakati, says her grades have improved as a result of using
the device.
“The e-reader has
given me a chance to compare several sources for any information that I may
require, which will be impossible if I was using a traditional textbook,” she
says.
The school is run by a community-based football organisation — Kibera Girls
Soccer. The students, who are all talented footballers from the slum, do not
pay school fees.
It started as a
girls’ soccer club in 2002, before being turned into a community-run school in
2008, to prevent the members from dropping out of the team due to pregnancies.
The e-readers were
introduced to the school by chance, after one of the teachers at Pacific Road
School in California, United States, read an article posted by members of the
Kenyan institution’s journalism club in a blog last year.
The American
institution got interested in learning about the Kenyan school and linked it to
the Worldreader, a non-profit organisation that provides digital books to
selected schools from impoverished neighbourhoods in the world.
Kibera Girls
Soccer Secondary School was the first educational institution in Kenya to
receive e-books from the organisation.
