‘Digital classroom’ will help refugees

Staff at a Glasgow-based digital marketing agency have developed a “classroom in a box” aimed at helping children in a French refugee camp.

Equator will provide a wireless projector, 20 students’ tablets and a teaching pad, plus a range of educational apps.

A team from the agency will travel to the children’s centre at the La Linière camp in Grande-synthe, on the outskirts of Dunkirk, in January set up the school, which will be run by teaching volunteers based at the camp long term.

The camp is home to around 1,500 refugees. Many of the children have never received structured education as a result of the disruption to their lives.

The digital school is the brainchild of senior designer Lindsey Carr, who volunteers with refugee support groups in her spare time.

“We set ourselves the challenge of finding a way to deliver educational support in a way which recognises the unstructured and often disruptive lives the children are living,” she said.

“The next challenge is to find appropriate apps to cater for children aged three to 13 that are nonlinguistic as the majority of children in the camp speak Kurdish which is not catered for in educational applications.”

Electricity at the camp is currently delivered from a generator, the classroom has been designed to charge overnight so it will not require power during the day.