Ethiopia: Equipping teachers with 21st century skills

Ethiopia: Equipping teachers with 21st century skills

The Amhara e-Classes project has established eClasses (with 21 PCs each), across 25 schools in the Amhara region of Ethiopia. In total, the program has supplied 551 PCs and impacted more than 6,000 students from underprivileged communities in the region within the project’s first year. The project’s Stage 1 activities have been successfully delivered and in-depth feedback from teachers and students has helped to inform Stage 2 of the project, focusing on enriching the existing 25 e-Classes through the provision of ongoing training, valuable e-learning content through our Raspberry Pi based Connect Device and a tailored package of assistive technologies (e.g. projectors, printers and speakers).

Through reviewing the interviews and feedback received from teachers and students, we have identified a need for reference materials and up-to-date educational content. In the last year, we have been developing a solution, the Connect device to target this problem. This represents a way to combine valuable and diverse educational content in an offline platform that can be easily installed in the computer labs, to help teachers use the computers more in different subjects.

The project’s purpose and aims are to enhance educational achievement and life-chances of underserved communities in Amhara, Ethiopia, by increasing teachers’ and students’ access to 21st century resources and the opportunities that they enable. As such, we strive to provide equipment that benefit schools in a variety of ways, including the improvement of motivation and retention for both students and teachers.
The project will have long-term sustainability; not only benefiting teachers and students during their time at the schools, but also in their futures, by providing them will highly-desirable skills that will benefit them in higher educations and employment.