AFRICA ICT COMPUTERIZATION INITIATIVE

Computers for rural area schools

Every child deserves to learn how to use a computer and have access to information.

Through collaboration with local and international partners we hope to create a sustainable program template to deliver the needed resources to schools in rural communities of West Africa.

Our goal is to create a program template for establishing mini computer labs in the rural area so that we can give these students the same opportunities as the students in the major cities. Every child should have access to a computer to acquire the needed Information Communication Technology (ICT) skills to attain their academic goals and dreams.

Short term objective of this program is to solve the immediate need to get computers into rural school in West Africa. This will impact a lot in the lives of youths in West Africa. Furthermore, these Computer labs in the villages will serve the local community members as well.

Other short-term objectives are:

a) To support ICT teachers with teaching materials & skills to improve the quality of their ICT teaching skills.

b) Create an offline internet capability at the Computer labs for children to access educational data.

Our long-term objective is to create a sustainable and reusable model to solve the challenge of lack of computer labs in rural areas which can be taken into other regions in West Africa and other developing countries.

This project intends to start in Ghana (West Africa)

Furthermore, the usage of solar-powered Computer labs can be taken into consideration in creating rural community Computer labs.

Turning a computer lab into an e-Library
Providing a computer lab without a proper access to good quality educational information is solving only 50% of the problem. Currently there are four billion people in the world lacking the access to the internet and cannot use the same resources as in the more developed countries. As a result, the knowledge gap is widening.

Internet connections are limited across West African rural areas:

· Limits to the usage of Google and Internet for searching information

· Mobile internet connections are limited and costly

Technical limitations on the Computer lab computers

· Disk space, processor, etc.

· For example, an offline Wikipedia in English requires over 72 GB of memory

· Challenge of finding and installing good quality materials and programs for education

· Poorly maintained and serviceable computer labs

Open Educational Resources (OERs) have revolutionized the way we learn by making a wealth of learning opportunities freely available to anyone with an internet connection.

With a RACHEL+ server we can bring these resources to the rural area schools with no internet.

RACHEL is a portable plug-and-play server which stores educational websites and makes that content available over any local (offline) wireless connection. RACHEL makes deploying a library of digital content as easy as pushing a button.