Offline Education

During his seven years in East Africa with HFC, Johnny witnessed first-hand how free-to-access educational training resources could change the lives of children and young adults and effectively break the cycle of poverty. However, these resources required access to expensive, slow or unavailable Internet connectivity. In the early years, HFC built several computer classrooms in Uganda (with Edubuntu training resources), but this model reached few students. We opened (and still maintain) a free-to-access Computer Training Center in Jinja to provide free job skills training. We deployed store-and-forward satellite systems to send content to small centers in remote villages. We developed and deployed offline education kits on USB drives, standard laptops, Raspberry Pi access points, more rugged “Pelican Pi” access points, BRCK routers and ultimately the current implementation of the Content Access Point and the “Loaded” Chromebook which provides offline educational resources to those who do not have access to (or must avoid) Internet access. We have worked with WorldPossible as we’ve grown (see below) and are thankful for their tireless effort in this area.

We have worked with our friends at World Possible for nearly a decade, as a partner in hardware and resource development and by deploying their offline education resources all over the world including significant installations in East Africa. Who, exactly is World Possible? They have worked for many years to provide offline education resources “freely available to anyone without an internet connection”.

They have modularized popular resources including Wikipedia, Khan Academy, Goodwill Community Foundation courses, Project Gutenberg e-books (and much much more) into a free, stand-alone completely offline package known as RACHEL. More recently, their OER2Go product has advanced their initial research by leaps and bounds.

Click the links or image to visit the World Possible website to learn more, or learn more about our implementations of RACHEL and how you can put them to work for you.

The “Loaded Chromebook” is an offline education tool that builds RACHEL and other tools into a Chromebook. It is lightweight, resilient, hard to “mess up” from a user perspective and inexpensive. We have deployed it all over the world with great success, but are looking for volunteers to update our work on the project. Read more.