Innovation and creativity connect remote learners to the world
Unbelievably, access to the internet remains largely unavailable, unreliable, or unaffordable in many parts of the world.
One year ago, teachers in the BOSAWAS Biosphere Reserve in Nicaragua — the largest tract of tropical rainforest north of the Amazon — were holding Chromebooks in their hands for the first time and learning how to turn them on. Solar panels were brought in by motorized canoe to power these foreign devices new to the communities located eight hours downriver from the nearest road.
Today, these teachers access a 1TB offline digital library that enables them to make interactive lesson plans, take courses to enhance their skills, and bolster the content they teach in their classrooms with a new emphasis on creativity, collaboration, critical thinking, and information literacy.
With World Creativity and Innovation Day taking place in April, the transformative power of both creativity and innovation to provide solutions to equitable education and poverty eradication should not be underestimated.
The innovation in Bosawas, a project by Edmonton-based charity, Change for Children, uses technology and training to improve education in remote Miskito indigenous communities — currently the most impoverished populations in Central America.
Largely outside of government reach and with few curriculum resources and books, teachers and students in seven communities finally have reliable access to learning materials on massive digital libraries stored on tiny servers called RACHELS (Remote Area Community Hotspot for Education and Learning).
A RACHEL delivers free pre-loaded software and content modules—customized to meet local cultural and language needs—to communities without internet access. With the click of a button, the RACHEL can connect a teacher (via a wifi signal) to innovative instructional tools to inspire creative learning. It can connect a student to a wealth of research materials, to a video to provide visual support, or to a game to reinforce a mathematical concept. It can connect a student like Marjorie to the World.
A year ago, Marjorie’s daily routine included hauling water, doing laundry in the river, cooking, taking care of her little brother, and shucking rice. Today, she is also in school. With a Chromebook in hand, she navigates the content on a RACHEL. With access to resources on gender equality and sexual and reproductive health and rights, she has also built awareness of her own decision-making power, is equipped to make educated decisions about her health, and is armed with knowledge as she plans her future.
Change for Children has built seven secondary schools in this remote region of Nicaragua since 2004, allowing boys and girls to continue studies beyond grade six. But creative projects like this one that extend beyond infrastructure are needed to create sustainable impact. “Our work has achieved significant results after only one year. We have bridged the ‘digital divide’, helped indigenous peoples realize their rights to communication technology, and improved the quality of education,” explains Lorraine Swift, Executive Director of Change for Children. “We have customized and curated excellent RACHEL content, and are now ready to scale this project to reach more Miskito communities in 2021.”
Unbelievably, access to the internet remains largely unavailable, unreliable, or unaffordable in many parts of the world. For those living in some of the world’s most remote regions or those living in poverty, offline digital technologies provide critical access to learning through popular educational sites like Khan Academy, Wikipedia, and TED Talks.
The use of technology in these remote communities means a generation of students excited to obtain skills to serve them in a digital age, daring to look ahead toward attending university.
It means educated young people providing new momentum for the future of their communities.
Today, through laptop speakers, teachers share songs in the Miskito mothertongue with their kindergarten students who proudly recite the lyrics back, secondary teachers prepare dynamic lessons that promote group work and collaboration, and students dive into research projects, exploring the world through information at their fingertips.
In partnership with the local Indigenous Government, with the support of Nicaragua’s Ministry of Education, and funding from the Fund for Innovation and Transformation (FIT), 60 million girls, and loyal Change for Children donors, this innovative project is currently being implemented in seven counties serving over 200 teachers and 4,000 students.
It is going to take a collective, innovative, and creative global effort to ensure that all girls and boys have access to equitable and quality primary and secondary education. World Creativity and Innovation day celebrates projects like this one. Change for Children is currently collecting donations to scale the project to provide educational opportunity, to bridge the digital divide, to open doors for thousands more students.
To learn more, and to invest in education by donating, visit www.changeforchildren.org