EdukoMondo

Digital technology is increasingly having a huge impact on our daily lives. Always-on social media, expanding cloud services and pervasive artificial intelligence have become the new norm. In education, we have seen the impact of digitalization: massive open online courses (MOOCS) have been developed to take higher education around the globe. Teacher robots are booming in China, and without a doubt soon in other parts of the world. Because of these overwhelming possibilities, it is easy to overlook that millions of students do not have access simply because internet access is too expensive, not stable or not available.

A deep concern

There is a deeper concern. Although technology is pervasive, the ability to adopt it to the benefit of every day life is unevenly spread around the globe. We are heading towards a digital divide where there is a gap between the ones who can develop their digital skills and the ones who cannot. Inevitably, this will have a huge impact on the future global workforce. Covid-19 and the forced lock downs have made this gap very apparent.

EdukoMondo was founded in 2019 to solve this issue and bring digital education to remote and underserved areas. From pre-school onwards, children will be able to learn to read and write using tablets, create their own videos of field trips or access a local copy of wikipedia to do research. All the way to use the same platform to conduct adult education and vocational training. By embedding digital in their daily school routine, students will not only have access to a much wider source of information, but will also learn how to be smart with social media, how to identify fake news, how to stop cyber bullying, what a strong password is and so on.

In remote areas, linked to lower standards of living and poverty, education is often provided by not for profit organisations and volunteers. These organisations mostly don't have the skills to implement digital education, as they are not necessarily technically versed to build a suited solution themselves.

How we work

EdukoMondo funds, designs and consults on education digitization projects for those in remote and underserved areas.

• Funding
  • a technology project can be daunting, especially for smaller organisations that work with limited resources. To support these organisations, EdukoMondo will fund each year a number of projects.
• Consulting
  • based on our experience from existing projects, we analyze a school's specific organisation and requirements. Based on that analysis, we propose and develop a technical solution that is easy to manage and easy to expand.
• Design
  • keep on reading as we go back to the basics...
    

Back to the basics

The number of edtech solutions and providers is staggering. There is however one "but". Most, if not all, require an internet connection to their cloud based services. And many of them are very complex, requiring an IT degree to keep up with patches, updates, support and user requests. It becomes harder and harder to find a simple solution that can be installed and managed locally by volunteers.

That is why EdukoMondo goes back to the basics and has designed a blue print for an easy to deploy and easy to maintain, yet powerful digital education platform. We started from a couple of must-haves to build this platform:

• Affordable
  • quality digital equipment comes with a price tag. We have chosen to build our solution on Synology Network Attached Storage (NAS) Servers because they are industry standard, globally available, modular, easy to deploy and manage. The Synology offers an app store with open source education solutions such as Moodle, so each installation is future proof.
    
  • iOS or Android tablets can be refurbished models, such as the iPad mini 4 or a Samsung tablet, which are made child-proof with special protective covers.
• Set and Forget
  • although no equipment is truly set and forget, the EdukoMondo platform comes close. We make use of the standard applications on the Synology drives. Once up and running in a school, the NAS requires very limited maintenance. The NAS does not have to be hooked up to the internet all the time. Required updates such as security patches are applied via an ad hoc internet connection.
  • EdukoMondo developed a comprehensive training, with non-technical users in mind, which can be conducted over the phone.
    
  • all parts and elements of the solution can be sourced locally. We take pride to include the local suppliers, rather than sending hardware from Europe or the US.
• Scalable
  • before a platform is installed at the school, the whole environment will have been constructed on the very same platform that runs at the EdukoMondo labs in Belgium. Together with you school management, we can adapt the platform to reflect your needs, each time using off the shelf solutions to keep control over costs and complexity.
  • several installations from individual schools can be clustered and linked to each other to facilitate updates and data transfer. This would only require an ad hoc internet connection, for instance using a 4G dongle or mobile phone as hotspot.
    
• Future Ready
  • the NAS is cloud ready and when the time is there, all information on the individual installations can be moved to the cloud. As Synology offers Moodle as a standard package, the installation is ready for (even very) complex learning management and content systems based on open source software.

Blueprint

Did we capture your interest?

If the above triggers your curiosity to learn more, don't hesitate to contact us at hello@edukomondo.org.

We are always looking for projects, volunteers and donors!