This project develops digital classrooms-in-a-box for distribution to Amazon River schools, and trains teachers to use them. River schools are small single-classroom rural schools that serve impoverished students along the Amazon River. We are building and deploying kits with smartphones and Raspberry Pis (plus our learning system Agavi) and helping local educators develop appropriate learning activities and resources.

Challenge

Amazon River schools serve an important demographic in Brazil. But they are remote. They can be hard for students to reach if the Amazon is flooding. They are small and under-resourced. More importantly, teacher turnover is high. Urban-trained teachers often aren't prepared to teach in such challenging settings. As a result, students have a disjointed educational experience. This leaves them unprepared for engaging with Brazilian society and the modern economy.

Long-Term Impact

This proof-of-concept will allow us to harden and improve Agavi so that it can work as a companion system to many existing offline learning solutions, which currently deploy static content with few opportunities to modify for local conditions. Success will allow us to expand the solution to many underserved communities globally. Additionally, by teaming up with University of Campinas students, we are training students in project development and management and building local capacity.

References

1. https://www.sciencevoices.org

Project Gallery