Our Strategy
Leverage existing learning technologies – EdTech
RACHEL by World Possible
RACHEL, developed and distributed by a non-profit called World Possible, stands for Remote Area Community Hotspot for Education and Learning. It delivers a variety of free educational content to offline communities. RACHEL is a cost effective, self-contained, low power, information server & wireless router with a large content storage disk and a rechargable battery. It can be accessed by 20-30 learners at a time from individual smartphones, tablets, and computers. It does not need an internet connection to serve content to students.
Khan Academy
Khan Academy is an online personalized learning resource for all ages. Khan Academy offers instructional videos, practice exercises with a hint system, and a personalized learning dashboard that empowers learners to study at their own pace in and outside of the classroom. In a self-driven fashion, learners tackle math, science, language arts, computing, history, art history, economics, and more. Khan Academy focuses on grades K-12, and on skill mastery to help learners establish strong foundations.
We are especially excited about the Khan Academy Lite (KA Lite), an offline version of Khan Academy. All five of us on founding team of World Possible Sierra Leone have had experience with Khan Academy and/or RACHEL either as a coach, teacher, or student learner. Three of us on the founding team grew up in small villages in Sierra Leone. Samuel was exposed to the first version of RACHEL as a teenager, and he used it throughout high school and into university. Kai used Khan Academy to catch up in math when he immigrated to the US. Kai credits Khan Academy Math with helping get him through high school and into engineering school. Zainab, who recently came to the US is intensively using Khan Academy daily to fill her educational gaps and get up to speed academically. Dennis, Natalie and Luseni have served as mentors, teachers and parents of students using Khan Academy. See more about us and our history with Khan Academy here.
The way we have personally experienced the effectiveness of Khan Academy shapes the way in which we are utilizing Khan Academy in Sierra Leone today. We are helping students build a strong foundation so that they can reach the next level in their education that they otherwise would have difficulties achieving. Most importantly, students learn that they can learn almost anything by themselves without a constant teacher.
Kolibri
Also embedded in RACHEL is Kolibri, an offline app for universal education developed by Learning Equity. Kolibri is an adaptable set of open software solutions specially developed to support learning for the half of the world without internet access It contains over 100 sources of content that you can explore here.
And more…
RACHEL is pre-loaded with an extensive digital library (300 GB) of Open Educational Resources (OER), with content like:
Khan Academy
Wikipedia, Wiki How, WikiBooks, Wikticionary
MedLinePlus Medical encyclopedia
African Storybook Library
All About the Coronavirus
And other content you can explore here