What happens when you give some ambitious kids in Sudan a tablet computer each and then teach them how to teach themselves with self developed learning apps?
The classrooms are busy in Khartoum. Class sizes frequently exceed 60 students and they are getting bigger. Many students are entering class after fleeing from civil war, poverty and famine in South Sudan or from the from tribal conflicts in Darfur. Learning in a Sudanese classroom is not easy, but it can made more manageable it seems, with clever deployment of technology.
A foreign teacher from Australia teaching at Comboni College had an ambitious idea on how to improve the education situation in the school by tasking students to learn how to teach themselves by developing a smartphone application. The project has encouraged students to think retrospectively. It's an exercise in revision, requiring them to think about everything they have ever learnt about learning English and then putting it into a format that other students can learn from. The application is being built with an online app building platform, there is no coding involved. Their contribution to the app is purely content.
One of the students, Tijwok, said helping develop the application had made him more happy. "At first I did not know what this special project was about, Teacher Tim just said it was a special project, it involved mobile phones and it would make me famous. I am happy it is helping me and my classmates improve English."
Teacher Tim was more emphatic, "I just wanted to use my powers for good and improve the lives of some kids in Sudan."
99 Tablets are currently running a crowd funding campaign to supply tablet computers to the school so that students can start learning from the app that they helped create.
A donation to the project can be made here https://www.chuffed.org/project/99tablets
99tablets.org aim to start a global education revolution in the developing world by putting tablet computers in front of students who need them the most.
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