Inception

WHAT IF!! That is the phrase that gets us going. What if every kid in India had access to equitable learning material; What if we were able to bring the kid in the farthest village in India at par with the kids in cities; What if we had a content delivery mechanism irrespective of internet availability or penetration. 

For years an endless search for tech that can act as an alternative to conventional carrier based internet was taking all the brain cache. Every time a Loon, WhiteFI, Outernet burst into the scene the hopes grew and hearts started beating faster. Unfortunately only to realize that the kids cannot wait for the materialization of technology. They had to be interfaced with the amazing world of unbound knowledge right now. This was a daunting task that seemed ever so impossible with a number of tech giants laying down their arms in front of it. “Oh Lord of Tech! We beg you to show us the way”; this was the cry of every frustrated finger typing endless lines of code and soldering innumerable circuits together.

A breakthrough finally came and not in the form of a tech innovation albeit a realisation that it is possible to reach even the farthest of areas once in a month. The game changed when Prahtam came into the equation. The massive community outreach and penetration that Pratham has replaced internet as the data transfer medium. The devoted members of Pratham were now a medium to sync and update the content in remote areas. So we set out to beat the Goliath of a problem with our little Davids a.k.a Raspberry PI. This affordable piece of tech was the best content delivery platform to put into the villages with minimum resources required to support it. By leveraging the increased number of television sets present now in villages we were able to give a group of 10 females their own computer. A PI loaded with content aimed at age groups of 8-35 and above was connected to the television sets. On connecting a keyboard and mouse this became a portal to a new world for the village. Learning tracks like English, Maths, Science, Computer Literacy and Vocational Information were curated as a set of videos and games. All of this hosted on the old and faithful apache server logging every action of the kids. This log was very easily collected once a month when the community representatives of Pratham went over to update the content. This helped in understanding the interest of the kids, their learning level and the quality of the content.

Six weeks into the program we are bombarded daily with two types of queries. First is obviously about the incessant technical glitches but the second is interesting questions in confident voices from every girl who now is a 'Skill Sakhi’. The increased confidence in the young girls always gives us the energy to push further. We now hope to leverage the best of pedagogy and tech in education and shape it to the needs of every kid we reach, make the ‘What If’ a reality. We have already began working on a Library/Information Box. The Box would be a source of info and entertainment that the community can access on their smartphones or on a TV set. In the next phase we will try to prioritise what information should go on the Box and also build up a more robust Media server on PI.

Hang On People! The ride has just started!!