eKitabu @six!

This month marks six years since we founded eKitabu, formally spinning out from Digital Divide Data in Nairobi in March 2012. It also marks six months since UNICEF Innovation Fund invested in eKitabu.

We founded eKitabu to fill a gap: across Africa, schools and students were rapidly acquiring laptops, tablets, and smartphones, but quality educational content for these devices was in short supply. Working together with an ecosystem of public and private sector partners, we’ve started to close the gap, delivering content to over 1,000 schools in over 13 countries, sourced from more than 60 African publishers and content developers. Six months ago, UNICEF Innovation Fund invested in eKitabu to innovate for impact and data collection in equal access to education, leaving no one behind in UN Sustainable Development Goal #4: inclusive and equitable quality education for all.

What we’ve learned…

In our 2017 pilot, Technology for Inclusive Education, the #1 challenge cited by head teachers, teachers, and students in user-centered design sessions we conducted in schools for disabled learners was the lack of accessible teaching and learning materials. With support from UNICEF Innovation, we’ve shipped a series of iterations to our open source e-reader app, incorporating successive rounds of observation with and feedback from students and teachers at Thika School Primary School for the Visually Impaired and Thika Secondary School for the Blind in Kenya. User feedback and observation helped us identify stumbling blocks not only in software and content, but also in the environment where teachers and learners spend their time. For example, one key insight from piloting in 2017 was that none of the subject teachers ever entered the ICT lab, only the ICT teachers.

 

Student at Thika Primary School for the Visually Impaired using accessible ebooks on a laptop.

Student at Thika Primary School for the Visually Impaired in Kenya reading accessible storybooks using eKitabu’s e-reader app

Recognizing barriers to impact in technical, cultural, and policy factors helps us meet the learners, teachers and system where it is. Through the app, we delivered the first accessible storybooks for early readers the schools had ever used. The primary students’ favorite book, measured by utilization data we collect through the app, was The Lost Hat and Other Stories.

Screen shot of eKitabu e-reader app with The Lost Hat story book open on the screen.

What’s next…

We are now taking this work forward in collaboration with UNICEF’s Kenya country office and the Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development (KICD) in a project to localize UNICEF’s Digital Accessible Textbook standards to make learning materials accessible to learners with visual impairments, deafness, and intellectual disabilities. As part of this project we are also developing a toolkit to help local publishers create born-accessible books through open standards and open source tools.

Collaboration with UNICEF has enabled us add three new team members:

Photo of Mr. Amon Kibet

Amon Kibet – Digital Marketing Associate

Photo of Mr. Brian Agina

Brian Agina – IT Support

Photo of Mr. Kevin Irungu

Kevin Irungu – Software Developer

The eKitabu Community is proud to join with UNICEF in our journey!

Source: eKitabu