Today is another one of those serendipitous days of cross-connections and parallel thinking that Isaac Asimov was talking about way back in 1959.
In a single day the internet has allowed me to connect with the incredible team at CodeClubWorld and World Possible to deploy a “powerful democratization of access to a world-class education“.
I’m about to become a trainer for Code Club Pro, bridging the tech-knowledge divide between the UK’s fabulous hard-working primary and secondary teachers, and Headteachers, and the UK’s enhanced new national curriculum for Computing. Teaching kids to code.
In the meantime, for over 6 years, the San-Francisco based org, World Possible, have put their Cisco-based genius together with the uber-awesome Raspberry Pi crew to produce the innovative and world-changing RACHEL-Pi, an offline server, run on a Raspberry Pi, full of educational content from teaching curriculums, Khan Academy materials, Wikipedia, classic literature, reference material and textbooks; alongside vital community materials like medical and first aid textbooks.
RACHEL (Remote Area Community Hotspots for Education and Learning) has now been deployed in scores of remote locations around the world – delivering a world of educational content to tens of thousands of students previously far removed from the great online learning tools those of us reading this take for granted almost every day. This Raspberry blogpost details their journey so far.
Particularly exciting is the funding they’ve found to hire someone in Kenya to help put together the RACHEL SHamba resource (an offline package of farming resources). Boniface Masaviru has been installing RACHEL in Kenyan schools over the last couple weeks (Google map) and we hope to help with distribution, along with Code Club World.
Empowering robotics in Uganda, ensuring that Mayan heritage and language continues in Guatemala and giving every child in the world the chance to learn to code .. thats what the internet was built for!
