Kiwix4schools project/impact

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Home Project Impact

Mentorship Program

Communications and Resources

Ghana

This project has so far been deployed in 17 schools across Ghana. Prior to the planned 2019 pilots, we tested out the project in 3 deprived areas in Ghana. As part of the project, we trained about 1,265 students and learned about the possibility of providing alternative educational resources via Kiwix. In 2019, we organized pilot events in select schools in Kumasi in the Ashanti region. The needs assessment conducted during the pilot showed that over 95% of the students and over 70% of teachers had neither heard nor used Wikipedia and the other resources installed on the KIWIX reader. Almost 98% of both teachers and students had not used or heard of Kiwix prior to visits from the respective teams. This discovery led to the further deployment of Kiwix in 11 more schools in 2021.


2019 Pilot

This pilot project was conducted in 3 schools in the Ashanti region. The need assessment from 3 schools revealed the following:

  • Over 95% of the students and over 70% of teachers had neither heard of nor used Wikipedia and the other educational resources installed on the KIWIX reader.
  • Almost 98% of both teachers and students had not used or heard of Kiwix prior to visits from our team.

2021 & 2022 Kiwix4schools Projects

Since the inception of this program, we have implemented the project in 7 regions in Ghana, and that includes the Volta, Eastern, Ashanti, Northern, Savannah, North East, and Upper West regions. We have trained a total of 777 students across 22 schools, of whom 49.8% were female. Volunteers were able to install Kiwix on 395 devices at the schools they visited. When volunteers asked students about their access to the internet, 75.5 percent of the students reported having ever used the internet before, and 52% also reported having heard of Wikipedia before; however, for Kiwix, barely 2% had ever heard about it. Another interesting finding that emerged from the project was the unmatched student-to-computer ratio. For all the schools visited, the combined student-to-computer ratio stood at 145:105:395, which was alarming.

Read full detailed report here -


Tanzania Pilot 2023

The pilot project was conducted at Kisutu Girls High School in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Internet connectivity has been a challenge to most of the communities and as a result, we realized that teachers and students need offline software to access their educational resources. 99% of students knew nothing about Kiwix but volunteers realized that 95% of teachers never heard about it and needed to access Wikipedia content through it. We therefore came to introduce Kiwix software as a way to help this community get school materials offline and at a relatively low cost. Volunteers installed Kiwix in 20 computers found in the ICT lab and conducted training on how to use Kiwix to access content offline. The training was successful and our plan is to implement this in many more schools in Tanzania.

Pilot

40 students were trained 99% of students never heard about Kiwix 95% of teachers heard about Kiwix 80% of teachers and students were aware of Wikipedia

Challenges

  • Lack of reliable ICT Infrastructure
  • Lack of educational content in Kiwix that is relevant to their curricula
  • Absence of copyrights making it impossible to convert the materials into being readable by Kiwix
  • Insufficient students’ prior knowledge of the use of computers

Improvement Required

  • Adding more educational content
  • Copyrighting issue should be checked

Feedback from School

Teachers and Students realized that they needed Kiwix to access content offline and to have more trainings.


Photo Gallery

Nigeria Pilot 2023

This project is under the Kiwix4schools Mentorship Program organised by Open Foundation West Africa. The pilot project was implemented at Federal Government Boys College Garki, Wuye Campus in Abuja Nigeria on the 8th of November 2023. Before the launch of the project students and teachers had no idea of Kiwix is neither have they heard of it. Therefore the Implementation team was charged with introducing Kiwix to the community. The team installed the Kiwix software in the Laptops and on the day of training.

Pilot

49 Students were trained on;

  • Who a digital citizen is
  • Elements of a digital citizen.
  • Internet.
  • Uses of Internet.
  • Understanding Kiwix and many more.

The training was successful and we hope to get more schools in Nigeria on board.

Challenges

  • Due to copyright law and policies in Nigeria it was impossible to collect and convert some educational contents to Kiwix content.
  • Limited computers in the ICT Unit.
  • Limited space for storage, ZIM files can be quite large and may require significant storage space on the device or external storage media.
  • Lack of educational content in Kiwix that is relevant to Nigeria curriculum.

Improvement Required

  • Creating more relevant curriculum based content on Kiwix.
  • Creating awareness and getting more schools involved.

Impact

49 Students were trained during the Lunch, some educational content were downloaded in the school system and this will serve as a control measure and hinder the interferences from internet, This gave them some excitements and made them eager to learn more. For students, individuals and organizations in Nigeria with unreliable or expensive internet access, Kiwix provides a practical solution for accessing vital information without the need for a constant internet connection. Kiwix has made a significant impact in expanding access to information, education, and resources for students and communities around the world. Its ability to provide offline access to web content has been particularly valuable in areas with limited or unreliable internet connectivity.

Training Materials and News

https://nannews.ng/2023/11/09/internet-access-foundation-inaugurates-kiwix4school-app-in-fct-school/


Photo Gallery



Dr Congo

Before the visit, we had to identify potential schools, select the one that has the lab equipped with a computer and overhead projector, and discuss with the head of the selected school about the implementation of the project (selection of students, date, time, type of operating system), download kiwix and zims.

Pilot

We presented the project, kiwix, its importance, how to install and use it, how to get zim and how to create your own zim. We trained 15 students and 10 teachers.

Challenges

  • Discussions with the head of the schools were a bit long, as they thought we were going to ask them for money, downloading zim wasn't easy either, as it weighs a lot and require very good internet quality.
  • Some computers were running Windows 7, and we had trouble installing kiwix on these computers.
Feedback From The School

The participants appreciated the training. They wanted it to last several days and suggested that we organize other workshops so that they can get to grips with the software.

Training Materials and News

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Kiwix4SchoolsDRC