SparkEd For Education

Introduction

This project was inspired from working on a variety of educational programs in sub-Saharan Africa over the past decade where lack of access to educational resources and poor and/or expensive internet remain challenges. After working with a number of different platforms, we could not find one with flexibility to add local content (which in many cases is extensive and well developed) organized around local curriculum, programs and resources.

Design

The SparkEd design offers ability to add textbooks and other locally owned or publicly available content organized by school, grade, class, module, program, etc. and deliverable on any LAN or on mobile devices. Additional supplemental content can be added and delivered via servers (laptops to standard access servers) and LANs as needed. Other functionality can be added as desired. Update options depend on server and systems design.

Initial Development

Initial programming was done in Zambia by programmers at Hackers Guild (@hackersguild) who trained programmers in Ethiopia (@supedplc). End product of the project in Ethiopia now includes all Secondary and Preparatory subjects and content (grades 9-12) with suplemental content delivered on servers that are radiolinked for updating. (see Elearning Tool Development ). Software is meant to be available for use in any setting where content is developed and could be uploaded.