Being my first time to travel to Samburu, I found it quite exciting getting ready for the trip. We left for Kiltamani Primary School with a fellowship of five: Robert, Eduardo, Sheila, Duncan and I. The Kalama Conservancy is about 400 kilometers away from Nairobi therefore the long journey was expected.

Our windows are rolled all the way down. The breeze loosens my hijab and kisses my hair. We are listening to Tracy Chapman with the volume turned up. Every line is a message written just for us and we hum to the tune of the beat. The car sighs,it’s engine tickling with relief. We’ll have sunburn then fevers. We can’t wait to get to Kiltamany.

At Nanyuki, on our way to Kiltamany

We arrive at  the school quite late, but not late enough to set up camp. Edoardo helps Loussa and I with setting up our tents, cool house music plays in the background. As Duncan is telling stories I kick my shoes off and unfold my legs in the bare sand. I see a scorpion and put my shoes back on.

Where the scorpions are

The next day half the team set off to Korr for a day’s refresher training while we trained the new teachers at Kiltamany on how to use the Kio Kit. It was and still is a learning experience.

Lousa teaching the head teacher how to use the Broadcast feature.

After a day’s hard work we gather and tell stories and laugh. Our laughter did not build softly but exploded, filling the smoky air and spilling it out into the dark.

The next morning as we prepare to go home, I can’t help but feel honored to be part of this great experience: to enhance our education system for the better.

The car fills with wind, so pushy and loud my hair whips against my neck and I can’t hear the music anymore. I turn and look at Lousa and she is fast asleep. Edoardo is singing, Robert’s eyes glued to the road and Duncan trying to read a book.

The first Kio Kit customers

Last year when we launched our ruggedised Kio Kit, what followed was a ton of interested buyers. It gave us both huge hope and nerves that our product was going to schools. Prior to launch, we had piloted the Kio Kit in some schools and that gave us a lot of user experience feedback. Now however, it was time to find buyers and ship them off to new users.  

Our first customers unexpectedly turned out to be students. International school of Kenya’s students huddled together and made the first purchase as a donation to a primary school in Nanyuki – Irura Primary School through their inter-cultural program. Irura Primary School is about 20Km from Nanyuki town and about 6Km from Ol Pejeta’s Rongai Gate. The students come from the nearby community, beyond being surrounded by an expansive wildlife conservancy, they are nested away in rural like settings.

Since our first Kio Kit deployment, we have learnt and improved many times over. From teacher training to content preparation, over time this experience gave us many learning lessons that we have certainly benefited from. Our first customers and school feel special to us, in a way we have only learnt what that means almost 1 year later.

Improvements to the Kio Kit.

Irura Primary being the first to deploy the Kio Kit has been a long process of learnt improvements. We began to learn key things such as how to better manage the content, to supporting hardware issues. There were hurdles that since then over 9 months has been significant to making improvements that are now applied on the Kio Kit.

Supporting Teachers

When we launched the Kio Kit we had some ideas of what impact it would have on both the students and the teachers, however our calculation was theoretical. We imagined it. It has been revolutionary to see how teachers benefit from using the Kio Kit. They have taught us how to make improvements, not just by making it easier for them to find content for their classes but also aiding them with lesson plans and giving them additional teaching tools to support them. Teachers love using the Kio Kit in class because it’s a helpful teaching tool. The students are able to focus better in class, they pay attention to what they are learning with ease and they don’t get distracted easily during their lesson.

Students

Schools like Irura that are away from cities and in rural towns are usually lacking in facilities and learning materials. Most students don’t have textbooks or enough of them and even finding writing materials is difficult. Without some form of technology, learning for these children would be difficult. The Kio Kit provides a great alternative to learning and beyond that gives the child a grasp of what technology looks like in this century. ISK also provides content which they share with Irura students. This content, created by ISK students helps their peers not just watch, but also understand what their peers have made in this cultural exchange.

Kids by Kids

Learning through peers is a great way to gain greater understanding of educational material. ISK students took this in an interesting approach. Their cultural exchange program got them interested in learning about the folk tales and traditional stores the students in Irura had learnt through generations. These stories were then translated, drawings and narration added to make small animations.  Today the content is available on the Kio Kit.

Many Thanks

Our trips to Irura Primary were coordinated with the help of Rift Valley Adventures. They played a big role in setting up a computer lab at Irura as well as hosting us many times when we would take the trip to Nanyuki. Endless thanks to Dipesh Pabari who didn’t tire in getting our team together with both ISK and Irura Primary.

A year on and full of hard work, looking back we learn a lot from our first deployment. These lessons and many more fuel incessant changes to move our product in the right direction.

A question we get asked often at BRCK Education is about data supporting the effectiveness of our work. Potential customers, donors and investors want to know what metrics we use and have to verify that the Kio Kit improves learning outcomes.

The truth is that the Kio Kit doesn’t have any impact on learning. The Kio Kit without education content is just really cool hardware. The metrics buck really stops with our digital content partners and teachers. Whether a school/teacher decides to use the Kio Kit to teach literacy using the Tusome, eLimu or Jolly Phonics content is what might determine the learning outcomes at that school.

The Kio Kit is not at all prescriptive in how we expect all teachers to use it in class. We believe that the Kio Kit is a toolbox with several tools inside it. Which tool is used, when it is used and how it is used should remain the decision of the person who knows the students best: their teacher. In some cases, we have curated a collection of standard content, but when we deploy Kio Kits to the Solomon Islands or Mexico, we have no say in what content the kids there will consume and interact with.

But metrics are important. It is important Kenyan primary schools talk about the KCPE results. It is important that we know literacy levels of students. They say numbers don’t lie, but we all know people who lie have used numbers. If there’s a measurable school reform intervention that worked in inner-city DC, it does not mean it will work in Samburu. This is where metis plays an important role.

It is not just children who go to the school

In Greek mythology, Metis was the personification of deep thinking, knowledge and wisdom. The Kiltamany expedition was 7 days without running water or electricity; a school in the middle of nowhere, forgotten by the government, politicians and most.

Some of the challenges we observed while we were there:

• 4 teachers and 1 headteacher were allocated by the Teacher Service Commission to this school with 8 classes.
• Teachers were from Meru, Archer’s Post, Nairobi. Most were not happy about being posted to such a remote school, far from friends, family, amenities and a social life.
• Teachers were not tied to the local people in any way.
• Teachers were often absent and sometimes drunk during class.
• Most classes we observed during our time there did not have a teacher present
• Students were also often absent. Parents viewed school (especially with such teacher absenteeism) as a waste of time – taking care of the goats was a better alternative.
• Teachers were demoralized by the absenteeism of students, especially the smart girls who were married early.
• Teachers were demoralized by their low pay and were often seen taking calls during class to “side hustle.”
• By 11am, it becomes unbearably hot, effective learning and concentration become near impossible.
• If the borehole of the village dries up, children are sent to get water for lunch from elsewhere. One day, the children waited till 4pm for lunch – for many it was the only meal they would eat.

Some of the challenges were surprising, others are pervasive everywhere in Kenya. What learning from metrics can we apply in a school like this? What we saw working in the school were some excellent instances of local knowledge and community leadership: metis.

Meet Sylvester Lengamunyak, an amazing example of metis. If anyone knows what is needed to transform Kiltamany Primary School, Sylvester does. If anyone is able to connect the dots and make those things happen, he is. If anyone is able to bring all the right stakeholders together, he is.

Sylvester (L) is also a teacher!

While were there, we saw Sylvester:

• Call a meeting of village elders, the school Board of Management and the teachers to agree on the way forward. Each group stood up and owned responsibility of what they needed to do. These agreements were written and signed by all.
• Organize for water to be fetched from Intrepids Tented Camp when the borehole was dry. He had a good relationship with the kind manager there, they also sold us some diesel and checked our tires.
• Organize for boda rides for teachers, volunteers, patients and visitors.
• Organize for 40 women to have literacy and numeracy classes 3 times a week. This involved approval of the elders, their husbands and the school for the facilities.

Deep local knowledge, empathy, passion and purpose are the things that bring people like Sylvester, content like eLimu’s and hardware like the Kio Kit together. It takes a village to gather their collective strengths and knowledge, to strategize and work together to build a culture of genuine teaching and learning.

L-R: Sylvester, Nivi, Edoardo. An important lesson from Samburu: the best herders are at the rear of their flock.

Recommended reading: “Metis and the Metrics of Success” by Ernesto J. Cortes Jr.

We started early in the morning on the third day at Kiltamany and we were all late. As soon as we arrived at school, we started the meeting with the teachers and tried to get a picture of their challenges: what you do like, why you decided to be a teacher, what you don’t like, what are the problems you see.

After few hours we had a meeting with both the community council and the teachers: everything was entirely in Swahili and Samburu language, so I had hard time understanding what they were speaking about most of the time (my Swahili is far from good), but thanks to the patience of my colleagues, I managed to understand everything eventually.

Most of the discussion was almost a fight between community and teachers: each of one of them argued about the role and the other’s responsibilities because of the poor performance of their pupils and children. Long story short, we discovered that according to culture your child either goes to school and performs well, or there’s no need for the child to be in school, so he or she starts working very early in their childhood.

If their children don’t go to school, they will obviously perform badly. The teachers are not engaged because pupils perform badly, if they don’t attend class. If teachers perform badly, then the pupils can’t get a good education and, again, they will perform badly at KCPE.  Here is the loop you can’t escape, unless everybody takes responsibility.

After few hours of discussion, we all agreed to write a list of things that have to be changed and what each of the actors (parents, teachers, community, government) has to do. This was the most difficult (but interesting) part of the day, because it is beyond technology.

You listen, you understand, you write a list of things together with all the stakeholders: the community, the parents and the teachers. You compromise and you build an initial framework you can use to make things work. There’s no technology involved, neither is there a product built. From this point you start to think how technology can improve and make things happen efficiently and faster.

What we realized eventually was the lack of framework that particular school has and the possible downsides of a product like the Kio Kit. If you deploy where there’s no framework, you need to build one together with the community before even thinking about starting a real pilot or thinking about making a difference. This was the most difficult part of the expedition: how can you convince the community to keep their children in the school? How can parents be sure that their children are not wasting time on a poor  (and so useless for them) education?

These two questions made us start thinking how we can improve the user experience and the capacity of our Kio Kit to include what some parents want from the education of their children and how we can better track the results of the pupils learning, eventually sharing those with the parents themselves.  We want to build a product that can adapt to every kind of situation, even when there’s no framework supporting the education system.

In technology projects you must not try to change your customer behaviors, not at the beginning at least, but you must try to properly understand your target before you design the product you want to build. Don’t just think about it, understand it, then design it, then test it and re-design if you haven’t included something. We never thought about an environment like this before, where, for example, the Kio Kit can be shared across multiple classes at the same time or it can be used with an autopilot system because of lack of teachers.

Kiltamany is composed of 10 villages surrounding the Samburu National Park. They are far away from the city, in some kind of deserted landscape, with no piped water and no electricity. Kiltamany Primary School is the only school for the whole community, with around 200 students, scarce chalk and studying materials. Sylvester, a Samburu Junaenda (in his 30s) believes the school is the hope to Samburu people live their lives better, change the way the community think about marrying early age girls and their practice of genital mutilation. In all, offer future generation broader possibilities.

In the Expedition BRCK Team came to Samburu, it was a week of a thousand learnings. I was there just for the last 3 days, and it was already special: feet on the ground, thoughts on the rising possibilities, hope for the future, hands-on, lots of work to be done.

For the three days I was in Kiltamany, there were only 3 out of the 7 teachers present. The School has 8 classes, meaning that on a normal day there is always one class without teacher, and during our time there 5 of the classrooms had no teacher. In spite this, children came every day and were seated in their desks, eager to learn something. Some of them reading or writing, or just doing nothing, until the bell for break ring.

This gave our BRCK team an extra job as we were taking turns to be teachers. It was good in one sense, as it put us in the shoes of the teachers (not exactly of course, as I do not have the training nor the content nor speak their languages). I felt the difference of giving one class with the kids holding the Kio Tablets, and another class with no such resources. On the other hand, it was not ideal, as it was important to see how the teachers behave with the tablets, if they find it useful, handy, and simple and if it helps in class.

Gordon, from eLimu, was showing the kids their new Swahili literacy app, Hadithi! Hadithi!. Bobo, the app character, was created to do a lot of success among the kids. He tells them story, ask them questions, say enthusiastically his Well done!!!  The kids, on the other side, were sited on their desks trying very curiously to get near Bobo, as he was in Gordon’s laptop (as the app is still not in the tablets).  They were very excited to participate. Each time one kid went to interact with the screen was the most amazing part. There was a suspense in the air about knowing what response Bobo would give.

I went to teach in Class 4 without the tablets and it was a hard job. First my absence of Swahili and the kids’ English. I used a lot of body language and made them come to the board to draw some animals they could see around. They drew lions, sheep, goats, elephants, cows, camels, and snakes. Then, I moved to the body parts vocabulary: heads, shoulders knees and toes. They showed to me that they were learning, and that they knew all the words. However, when I asked some other types of questions, the only possible answer could be YES! YES! YES! They didn’t want to get me sad.

When in class 5, now with the Tablets, it was was amazingly simpler. In this class, the children were calling me all the time to teach them something, and they were really excited to get a mzungu teacher. Their English was a lot better so I decided to read with them some English Story Books from the app. Each of them read one paragraph, just as I did in school. I made some questions about the story and asked them to draw what they remembered.

What I saw the teachers normally doing, is ask the students to repeat the words in the story. They can do this well. That’s the way the teachers usually gets feedback if the kids are learning or not. It’s definitely a harder job to check their comprehension of what was said or read, or if they can put it in other words, but to develop this skill is the first step to build a critical mind. I suppose once there is this feature on the app, with proposed questions for each exercise, or the possibility of the teacher to develop their own questions, students will learn better and teacher will find their job easier.

During this expedition, I realized something I already knew but wanted some proof. The impact the Kio Kits are bringing to this community is hard to be measured, but is huge. All the content inside one small tablet, the opening of possibilities in the children’s minds, interactivity, learning by playing games, curiosity, all this with no connectivity needed. Each time, we are learn of our capability to improve society.

Day 0 comes before Day 1, and what a Day 0, traveling to the Kiltamany!

The original plan was to leave for Kiltamany at noon, but that was not to happen. Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, passed by BRCK office much later than expected and got the whole building excited. In the process, he took a great photo of himself and our Mark Kamau, with the PayGo/PicoBRCK project, which he posted on Facebook. Of course, BRCK’s Mark suddenly regained numerous Facebook friends, tags, posts and likes – rising to celebrity status. But this meant that by the time Jeremiah, the BRCK Intern, Mark and myself finally rode out of the office, it was 4:45pm! Trying to negotiate the fastest route outside Nairobi, BRCK’s newly, freshly minted ‘celeb’ aka Mark got a thousand times humbled by a no-nonsense traffic cop.

Our surprise guest 😉

Google maps said it would take 7 hours to reach Kiltamany, Samburu County. However, there is a 20km section between Archer’s Post and Kiltamany that weaves through a conservancy full of acacia, lost trails and dry river-beds – an impossible feat in the dark. So we set our goal lower for that day: to reach Bryan’s place in Nanyuki, and proceed to Kiltamany the following morning.

Brian’s Place in Nanyuki

Mark’s hard-driving and google-map-defying navigation, consistently interrupted by homage from Facebook fans, got us to Nanyuki by 9pm. After a night at Bryan’s excellent house in the middle of another conservancy among zebras, warthogs, bushbucks and other wild game, we set off for Kiltamany in the morning just after 7am. The ride to Kiltamany would have been smoother if we had not argued about google maps correctness. Ultimately, there was nothing to argue about once we went beyond existing, data-rich, cell towers!

Inside Kalama Conservancy

We reached Kiltamany Primary school a few minutes after 10pm, and went directly to join Nivi, Edoardo,Elimu’s Francesca. Initially, we distributed ourselves among the 5 teachers classes. Afterwards, Nivi and Jeremiah volunteered to teach some classes, with and without the Kio Kit.

(From Left) Amit, Edoardo, Mark, Nivi and Francesca

My Standard 8 math class was taught by the head-teacher, Mr Elijah. It was a normal well-taught class, to an attentive 12-some boys. The class was quite interactive. It reminded me so much of my primary school days. However, they appeared way behind in the syllabus, for a class sitting the KCPE in a month. My other class was a group of Std. 3, girls, more in the group than boys. It was passionately taught by a Ms Elizabeth.

Teacher Elizabeth’s English Class

With only 5 teachers, it means that the other 3 classes go un-taught at any given time. Kiltamany is about 20kms from Archer’s Post deep, inside Kalama Conservancy, very far from Nairobi. As you can imagine, not many teachers posted there take up their appointments. I can foresee the Kios playing a major role in complementing the work that the teachers do.

Nevertheless, Edoardo and I were delighted by the Kio Kit’s WiFi performance. The almost zero WiFi interference meant that the Kios could be used upto 50m away from the Kio Kit! Streaming on the Kios worked so well from the neighbouring classrooms, giving flame to Edoardo’s ideas of broadcasting to groups, registration of students and the sessions. There is also decent 3G signal at some points of the school, which will ease the task of remote updates. It’s day one, but I think it has been worth it, at a technical level.

We spent the evening sprucing up the camp, taking showers (for some), and helping prepare dinner. Amit wowed us with burgers, fries potatoes and most delicious fried onions – that everyone agrees – belongs to the best Nairobi restaurants, not a camp in Kiltamany. At some time, the Samburu elder guarding our camp left to attend a meeting to discuss a hyena attack, that had claimed the lives of 90 goats just the previous night. They are now back, but there was also a hyena scare near the camp last night, so here’s to hoping that this hyena business has been laid to rest.

Sprucing Up The Tent: Shower Setup

Preparing a most delicious dinner

To keep up to date with this trip, check out our Facebook, Twitter and Instagram pages.

The Kio Kit is built specifically for regions with limited or no internet connectivity, places that are far from modern civilization, like large swathes of our country and the African continent. However, it is highly adaptable and can be used in all parts of the world.

It eliminates the need to be constantly online to access a broad range of learning materials, is hardy and rugged and is easy to charge.

The Kio Kit

With these advantages, one would think that teachers will eventually become obsolete. In discussions concerning digital literacy, this question invariably comes up, “Will The Kio Kit replace teachers?” No. Digital literacy solutions work best to enrich, not replace, human-to-human experiences. They enable us to reduce teacher and student effort and help us help educators and students even faster.

This task is a great responsibility, and the people behind these processes (ourselves and others) determine their success or failure. And let us not forget, whenever technology lets us down, we will always want a friendly human to pick us back up. In other words, the quality of a digital learning experience will never exceed the quality of the people building the solutions and working with them.

A teacher with the Kio tablet

The BRCK team has grown up, lived and works here in Kenya, a place in the developing world, and the kind of place for which we build technologies. We are in a superb position to develop relevant solutions that affordably address education and connectivity challenges. Our diverse set of skills and context-specific knowledge have enabled us to build the best device for turning an ordinary classroom into a digital classroom, The Kio Kit.

On a rainy Friday last week we went to Joyland Primary School in Gatundu to carry out teacher training for the Kio Kit. We went with Jeff Crystal of Voltaic Systems, Jamie Drummond (co-founder of ONE.org), Mwambu Wanendeya (ONE.org Africa Executive Director) and Keith Stewart (CTO of Thomson Reuters).

The Kio Kit empowers pupils and enables teachers to have an easier time with their jobs. Our approach is to introduce them to the Kit and then let them explore it on their own. The reception was encouraging. The teachers took to the Kit fast.

Peer learning and collaborative learning are integral parts of our training. After we introduce the Kio Kit, we find teachers are more receptive to it when we give them the freedom to learn with other faculty and by learning from other teachers.

We also installed solar-powered lights for eight of the classrooms with Jeff. It seems like a small thing, but a well-lit classroom makes teaching and learning much more efficient.

We took a lot of photographs, and they can best tell the story.

The class where the training took place.

BRCKs + Kio Kit

Mark Kamau, our UX Lead, taking the teachers through the training.

Bottom-right corner – Mr. Nguuuo, the school manager

Teachers playing a memory game to help “flex their fingers” and minds.

eLimu Content

Juliana on the roof installing the solar panels.

Juliana and Reid installing solar panels.

Jeff Crystal of Voltaic Systems installs lights in one of the classrooms.

Jeff testing the lights.

Juliana fastens the solar panels.

A sample of the solar panels and cables used.

Mark and Keith having a chat with Jamie in the back.

Teachers getting more acquainted with Kio tablets.

One of the teachers heading a lesson.

L to R: Juliana Rotich, Jamie Drummond, Keith Stewart, Mark Kamau, and Mwambu Wanendeya

Here is a short interview with Jamie Drummond:

BRCK has been known for developing products for the edge of the network and very remote regions of the world. Lately our products have been pushing even what we as BRCKers consider the edge.

One of our biggest themes is the “if it works in Africa, it can work anywhere.” And that was never more apparent to us than when we recently found ourselves on a very small outboard motor boat hopping from one Solomon Island to another. The size of craft did not warrant being in this ocean infamously called the ironbottom sound. “Ironbottom Sound” is the name given by Allied sailors to Savo Sound, the stretch of water at the southern end of The Slot between Guadalcanal, Savo Island, and Florida Island of the Solomon Islands, because of the dozens of ships and planes that sank there during the Battle of Guadalcanal in 1942-43.

We were on our way there because the Savo Island School in 2016 is also the new home for a Kio Kit. Our most remote school in Kenya has been in the Kalama Conservancy and in an interesting play on words, the school in Savo is named Kalaka school.

Upon safe passage through to the island,  we were greeted by an amazing group of teachers and students alike. Savo island is beautiful, volcanic hot springs and rivers, palm farming and with a population of approximately 2000 people, the Kalaka school offers Primary, Secondary and Vocational training.

With no electricity and connectivity, getting access to research and technology for education through the Kio Kit becomes a major boost to the community and the future.

As we did the teacher training, it was apparent that our visit to the areas our products are used informs us on how to make a world class product but also localized enough to bring value at the regional level. For example; Content is a major aspect of the Kio Kit and education in general. Part of our commitment in the Kio Kit is to help communities grow. That being said, the growing pains of one community can differ widely from another. The Kio Kits in Africa have very good content on issues like cholera and sanitation, while the South Pacific Islanders were asking for more information on tsunami preparedness and diabetes awareness. While in Kalama we build for dusty conditions, in Kalaka we have to consider humidity and sea salt. Galvanization is now a new discussion in our UX and engineering departments. Going local helps us address local issues.

On this trip we also did visit a 2nd grade classroom in Canberra ACT region Australia, the contrast in classroom technology a mere 3 hours away from Savo island is mind boggling. But it is because of this that we are putting our best foot forward, in Africa, Asia, the Pacific, the Americas and beyond. Together we can narrow the gap in digital education, research and libraries around the world.

As we move forward, we also would like to recognize the amazing partnerships that we have on the ground and in the region without which this new frontier for BRCK would not be possible.

The year has started off with a bang here at BRCK! We have shipped Kio Kits to a school project in Tanzania, and just yesterday we spent  the day at the Kenya National Library in Thika Town. A big part of why we built the Kio Kit is to easily and cheaply augment already existing learning materials, books mainly, with up-to-date, relevant and engaging text, audio, and video content.

Our focus was mostly on the text part of the Kio Kit’s content, especially as we were in a quiet library setting with children reading books around us.  We have plans to add audio books to the Kio Kit so that book enthusiasts can listen to books as well as read them.  The Kio Kit can play audio and video using the in-kit earphones for each tablet, thus preventing a class (or library) from becoming chaotic when videos are being watched.  The reception was very encouraging and we are excited and look forward to working with more libraries, and schools, in the coming months!

Here are some photos from our excursion: