Ask HN: Providing cheaper EdTech tools for rural zones

#1

Post by houssem_fat » Sun, Jan 21, 2018, 8:17 PM UTC

We are building a company (http://www.keedo.tn) to reduce the gap in education accessibility between urban and rural zones and private/public systems. We provide web apps and learning tools (we already started developing some tools like a virtual piano, body anatomy viewer, maps for geographic subjects, stories reader and so on) and we are fully cloud based, so everything is accessible and shared over the network.

Our big challenge is to provide a cheap computer with internet connection, (wifi/3G) support and acceptable performance. For information, the family income for our first clients in such regions, is on average $130 per month. We love the OLPC_XO http://laptop.org/en/laptop/ project idea (worldreader.org also) but their price is still high for our target clients and we try to avoid donations as much as possible.

First we thought about low cost white label tablets (most are china ODM/OEM providers), but from experience and reviews, they seems to be less performing with intensive usage. Now we have two solutions, either we use an already proven SOCs like PINE A64, Raspberry pi or we develop our custom pc. Any pointers, suggestions or collaborations will be highly appreciated!

Re: Ask HN: Providing cheaper EdTech tools for rural zones

#2

Post by kapauldo » Sun, Jan 21, 2018, 9:15 PM UTC

Check out bak usa. Oem in Buffalo.

Re: Ask HN: Providing cheaper EdTech tools for rural zones

#3

Post by tyingq » Sun, Jan 21, 2018, 9:21 PM UTC

Refurbished Chromebooks would be hard to beat. Lots of sub $200 choices, and has the keyboard and monitor built in. You can also download a new Seabios ROM for most of them and run regular Linux.

Affordable rural internet access might be a bigger hurdle.

Re: Ask HN: Providing cheaper EdTech tools for rural zones

#4

Post by tomcam » Sun, Jan 21, 2018, 9:29 PM UTC

Do you have any reason to believe computers are a better learning medium then the no-power-needed, high resolution device known as a “book“?

Re: Ask HN: Providing cheaper EdTech tools for rural zones

#5

Post by kazishariar » Sun, Jan 21, 2018, 9:42 PM UTC

I think this is amazing, and credit should be given where credit is due. Are you basing your concept on learning management systems like moodle. Is that what you are? I know, you're probably so much more. But I need to ask, how do you organize content that's already available into bite-sized lessons easily digestible by children? And it's easy to get muddled into providing content, along with a medium for that content. And then you go into grade levels, standardizing, not to mention having proper internet access, along with power. I mean how do you do it?

Re: Ask HN: Providing cheaper EdTech tools for rural zones

#6

Post by houssem_fat » Sun, Jan 21, 2018, 9:43 PM UTC

tyingq wrote: post #3

Refurbished Chromebooks would be hard to beat. Lots of sub $200 choices, and has the keyboard and monitor built in. You can also download a new Seabios ROM for most of them and run regular Linux. Affordable rural internet access might be a bigger hurdle.

Thank you @tyngq! Chrome OS will be beneficial to us, as it already supports all of our web based solutions. But even with the prices of refurbished solutions, it still expensive, as we target a maximum 50$ solution for each child. Also, our business model is not the hardware part.

Re: Ask HN: Providing cheaper EdTech tools for rural zones

#7

Post by kazishariar » Sun, Jan 21, 2018, 9:43 PM UTC

tomcam wrote: post #4

Do you have any reason to believe computers are a better learning medium then the no-power-needed, high resolution device known as a “book“?

The question might or might not be relevant to this post. But you might or might not want to think of this as a supplant to books, or books as a suppliant to this. Maybe?

Re: Ask HN: Providing cheaper EdTech tools for rural zones

#8

Post by tyingq » Sun, Jan 21, 2018, 9:57 PM UTC

houssem_fat wrote: post #6

tyingq wrote: post #3

Refurbished Chromebooks would be hard to beat. Lots of sub $200 choices, and has the keyboard and monitor built in. You can also download a new Seabios ROM for most of them and run regular Linux. Affordable rural internet access might be a bigger hurdle.

Thank you @tyngq! Chrome OS will be beneficial to us, as it already supports all of our web based solutions. But even with the prices of refurbished solutions, it still expensive, as we target a maximum 50$ solution for each child. Also, our business model is not the hardware part.

Hmm. As you mentioned, you can get developer boards for less than $50. But, does your demographic have HDMI televisions to connect them to? Keyboards? Storage?

Re: Ask HN: Providing cheaper EdTech tools for rural zones

#9

Post by ronsor » Sun, Jan 21, 2018, 10:02 PM UTC

I'm sorry; but the cheapest laptop I've seen is $90; don't think you'll get to $50 unless you want a cheap tablet.

Re: Ask HN: Providing cheaper EdTech tools for rural zones

#10

Post by DoreenMichele » Sun, Jan 21, 2018, 10:04 PM UTC

So, from the .tn URL and family income listed, I am inferring this is based in Tunisia.

Can you optimize this for a cheap smartphone? I think that would probably be a better solution.

I am American. I was homeless for 5.7 years and I began learning to make money online while homeless. This is part of how I got back into housing. I have some experience with various tablets, laptops and phones. Phones have proven to be a surprisingly robust internet solution for me.

I currently have a $30 smartphone (brand ZTE). I have Tracfone service with it and I can use it on Wi-Fi. Although the screen is tiny and storage is limited, it has overall better performance than the $70 tablet I have. I rarely get on the tablet. My sons use it, but I spend almost all my time on my phone at home, plus I go to the local library to access a proper computer.

From what I have read, phones are a much bigger thing in Africa than tablets or laptops. I have read that everyone in Malawi has their own sim card even though an entire village might have a single phone.

I can do a surprising amount on my phone. I can blog, take photos, play games and do online banking. I have to be mindful of storage limits and I have to periodically clear my cache and do storage management and I have to be a little pickier about limiting my apps to the essentials. But it does a surprisingly good job of letting me do most of the things I want to do online.

When I was homeless, battery life was a big deal. Large screens on tablets really burned up the battery life. A phone or small tablet was generally better in that regard. Devices with good battery life were vastly more useful. I had access to electricity during the day most days, but I was on battery power at night. How much I could do was very dependent on battery life.

Large parts of Africa will have limited access to electricity. I have read that in some areas, one person will collect up all the phones in the village once a week and hike to the nearest paid recharging station and get them all charged.

So I will suggest that a cheap smartphone with a long battery life is probably the best solution for this project. Then design your program with those constraints in mind.

Edit: I will add that a $200 laptop was generally worse than a $50 tablet. We had to spend $300 on a laptop to get one we didn't hate.