This morning finds us on the road north of Nairobi, heading to Samburu country in northern Kenya. [Actually, it finds us delayed by 2 hours as we troubleshoot a bit of the new education software, but that’s besides the point!]

Each year we do an expedition, last year we did a trip to Uganda testing around education. The year before that we went up to the shores of Lake Turkana. Here’s a video from our trip last year to South Africa overland:

Kenya to South Africa / Nairobi to Johannesburg from BRCK on Vimeo.

Samburu Schools

This year we’re going up to Samburu county to do two installations of our BRCK Education school system called the Kio Kit. This kit comes with 40 seven-inch tablets that are all wirelessly charged and the BRCK device acts as the brains of the network, loading content supplied by a number of different partners. All the info on the Kio Kit is in this video below.

We Introduce the Kio Kit from BRCK on Vimeo.

The trip north takes us to a school near Archer’s Post, and then a couple days later to one near Korr. Both of them are well off the road, but have been electrified by the Kenya government’s school electrification program. So, while we’re going with some extra solar kits, we’re expecting to be able to use the school’s power system.

On this trip is Mark (UX), Jeff (Design), Nivi (Education), Janet (Ops), Rufus (Customer Service) as well as Philip, myself, Juliana and Peter. It’s a full roster and we’re looking forward to having an adventurous road trip.

We’ll be posting on this trip for the next few days, so you can follow along here on our blog, on our Twitter account @BRCKnet and on our Instagram account @BRCKnet.

BRCK is at it again. Over the past 48 hours, much has been said about “BRCK Education’s” launch of their flagship products the Kio and the Kio Kit.  The Kio is a ruggedized tablet for African schools and the Kio Kit is a revolutionary digital classroom in a box. It consisting of 40 tablets plus a BRCK+PI acting as a Micro server and then there is the genius behind the packaging that brings it all together. Journalists from every corner of the earth, on Forbes, Quartz, ZDNet, techweez , the blogosphere and techies in general got their fix on juicy tech stats and congratulatory messages galore ensued.

This blog is for the non-techies, the behind the scenes of an Apple-esque product launch, what the product is and why it is a big deal.

The journey starts 3.5 years ago with the birth of BRCK a Nairobi consumer electronic company that decided to design and engineer connectivity devices for Africa. Africa has it’s fair share of infrastructure, power and environmental curve balls that make electronics made for other places as severely handicapped as my golf game. So several years later, the BRCK, a ruggedized, dust/drop proof, connectivity-source-agnostic, modem + router has been sold in 54 countries worldwide in 5 continents. It has an 8 hour battery life with 20 devices connected to it making it the ideal way to connect in the Masai Mara, some places in the Scottish highlands and right now as I sit at a Java house at Adams Arcade Nairobi, generally one of the most reliable Wi-Fi locations in Nairobi but today I am greeted by a “Limited access” message on the Wi-Fi screen.

For the backstage pass to the launch, let’s start a year and a half ago, we the BRCK team at this point are working in schools in Tanzania, Uganda and Kenya solving connectivity issues using the BRCK in schools at the edge of the network. The lessons learned from this super cool pilots is that by using the BRCK to cache content, the students got to experience better digital learning. The education space is a dynamic space. We needed a platform that kids could surf infinite amounts of information from the web but cache it on the BRCK. We also needed a platform that could be remotely updated; as we all know PLUTO has A.D.D., it could be a planet, demoted to a moon and partially re-promoted to a dwarf planet in a span of a few months. Whatever that means, kids in a school by the Serengeti should be able to enjoy the drama unfold just as much as kids in New York.

So BRCK did what it does best. People first, Design second and then Technology brings it all together. The BRCK team does no less than 5000 Miles of “adventure” trips a year to make sure that they understand the environment in which they design for. So visiting schools in Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania became a staple for the team. The outcome was the two products that I mentioned earlier. The Tablet was named Kio, and then many designs later, after dropping, breaking, igniting and crashing several iterations, the Kio was ready for prime time. How do we then introduce it to the world? How better than to make a “Tough Mudder” type of video to showcase its robustness. Drop it from over 2ft/70cm onto concrete, pour a glass of water on to it, into dust, finish off with sticky chewing gum fingers, the Kio is ready for whatever Africa can throw at it and it fits perfectly into the hands of a 7 year old.

“But building the Kio is climbing half the mountain” – Erik Hersman. BRCK needed to make sure that these Kios are housed, charged and have a “brainiac” of a mother onboard to take care of the children. So a Kio Kit was designed, hardy, waterproof, portable, intelligent, in a couple of words, beautifully rugged. A class in a box that has one power button each to bring both the BRCK+PI and the Kios to life. When turned on, the wireless, induction charging is what techies would call sexy.

After many sleepless nights, globetrotting to find the best partners in tech and content, the likes of Intel, Mozilla, JP, Pearson, e-limu, eKitabu the Kio Kit was ready to be launched. So now the hard work to find the venue, Event Company, set up design and execution.

For product launches, there are generally two schools of thought, the first and mostly applied, is to throw a big party, get everyone totally partied-up and boozed up. The problem is that you get to be the most talked about company in town but for the party and not the product. The second approach, which is what Apple and Tesla do and BRCK is following closely which is to unveil your product in a well-choreographed event and let the product speak for itself.

Enter Nivi, President of BRCK Education and Angie, the Program Manager, the two most efficient machines in multi tasking, planning and coordination. Several white boarding sessions later and a 22 page excel spreadsheet of plans nothing is left to fate. Invitations, guest lists, venue, program, transport, catering, lights, camera and action all accounted for. Then the larger BRCK family went to work gnawing at the huge launch piece by piece. Design, print, packing, moving, building, decorating, early mornings, late nights, a diet of coffee and pizzas, pretty soon the day was upon us.

The event went on with the precision of a world class event, Forbes, Quartz, Twitter and the gambit in attendance, you can go there for the glitz and glam. As a behind the scenes blog, I will dwell on the things that were not going as planned. The first thing to cause us a sleepless night was the foam plastic K from the big BRCK logo tumbled off stage breaking into a million pieces at 4pm the day before the launch, our fabricators had to perform magic to replace the K. This is just one of several more hurdles to jump, dry runs, team meetings, more pizza, several ubers and we went to sleep really late.

Early Tuesday Morning, Erik Hersman the CEO sent a wake-up call to everyone at 6:27am. An hour later the team was applying final touches to the space, fresh coffee from Pete’s a much welcome kick-starter but that big locomotive of an espresso machine tripped the whole electricity system crashing it minutes before the event started. Saved by the bell, the awesome event company (HomeBoyz) came through again by providing fusing and stop gaps. Another disaster averted.

The guests came in ready for the BRCK Yellow carpet. Many smiling faces, friends, family, the press in large numbers, guests from all walks of life including the class one school children from our piloting schools. Soon the show and tell was in full force, partners being recognized, product unveiling, a few loud EDM songs, captivating presentations and wowing videos.

Finally how better to showcase the product than walking out of the auditorium to find a full classroom set up with the kids learning, growing and playing on the Kios with the Kio Kit in full display. Everyone had a chance to look, touch, feel and get up-close with the products. The BRCK team at the ready to answer all the questions.

In conclusion, Education in Africa will never be the same again. It is time for a kid in sub-Saharan Africa to be able to enjoy videos of Africa’s child Elon Musk’s rockets going to the space station just like the kids in the Palo Alto area. A few people were concerned about the way to finance these Kits but I am not afraid of that. Already there is exciting interest from some schools, the awesome CHASE BANK KE has a no interest loan to schools and several pioneers like African Wildlife Fund are deploying Kio Kits to schools in Uganda, Ethiopia, Congo and beyond. I was quick to remind people that the Kenyan citizen is called Mwanainchi which means “child of the country/soil/earth” so together, we will see this dream of digitizing our children through to fruition. END

BRCK Education Kio and Kio Kit Launch from BRCK on Vimeo.

When we set out to build the BRCK, we wanted to take care of the rampant connectivity and power issues that prevent many people in the developing world from being as efficient or as effective in their jobs. We did this, and we ended up becoming one of Kenya’s first consumer electronics’ companies. We were very excited about this, and the recognition we were getting, but the BRCK was built to be much more. When it was designed, we included a USB port and a micro web server, that at the time, just seemed like cool features. Over time, we came to appreciate that they were so much more. You could access content from the BRCK but we felt this was not enough, so we combined the BRCK with a Raspberry Pi computing module to give it a bit of a boost. This enabled access to rich and interactive websites and content, from the same rugged form factor as the original BRCK.

There are numerous challenges facing education in developing countries. Since the BRCK together with the Pi, enables access of locally-cached and web-hosted content, we thought it could prove a useful tool to both teachers and students if they could access up-to-date educational materials, and give them an edge and enable them to compete with schools with more resources. This was in line with our ethos of promoting equality in education and levelling the playing field by using the same technologies as the rest of the world but tweaked to our particular context. At BRCK Education, we do not think the only sources of knowledge and information in a classroom should be teachers and textbooks. The four walls of a classroom should not limit a child’s access to learning, playing and growing. This technology, however, cannot replace the role of a teacher. It makes access to information much easier.

The easiest way to deliver educational content to students is through tablet computers. Initially, tablets, even the ones made for schools, were not durable and did not have the kind of features we needed: a long battery life, an easy-to-use interface and some sort of durability. Until now. Due to the demands of our environments, and the fact that children are bound to drop and spill fluids on the tablets, we designed and engineered the Kio Tablet, to be rugged, adaptable and unbelievably functional. We built the Kio specifically to the needs we exhaustively identified during our field tests in schools. Even with the progress we made, we felt like we had only climbed half the mountain.

Having the tablets was well and good, but tablets need to be charged. One of the barriers to using tablets effectively is the inconvenience of remembering to charge them and the fact that charging cables break frequently. Also, tablets present a security fear: they are small and can be easily stolen. So, how about a rugged kit, that provides both the charging and security needed for the tablets in one go? The Kio Kit. It comes with wireless charging and is lockable, and in case a tablet is taken away from it, we built the firmware to prevent flashing of its operating system. The Kio Kit can hold and charge 40 tablets, each of which can run for 8 hours on a single charge.

What we are doing is not just selling technology. We passionately believe in our ability to positively impact the quality of learning of students in Kenya. But, we cannot do this alone. We are proud that both local and international organizations, both big and small, have joined us to make this dream a reality. The Kio Kit will be available for pre-order today, limited availability begin on November 1st and we expect general availability from January 1st 2016. The Kio Kit will go for USD 5,000 and a Kio Tablet will go for USD 100.

For more information, you can visit our website at education.brck.com. Also, feel free to email us at [email protected] or tweet us at @brcknet. You can also find us on Facebook at brcknet.