The
Swallow Centre for Emancipating Education inaugurated its IT school platform
(KUBO) on Tuesday. It functions as a user-friendly, multipurpose platform with
all content available off-line for children to access individual learning
exercises with content aligned to the official curriculum.
Integrated
to the platform, developed by Shane Deconinck, BA student applied informatics –
IT Consultancy from Howest University College, Bruges, Belgium are off-line
Wikipedia, digital children’s reading books and teaching videos from Khan
Academy.
Also
integrated is the chance for teachers to supervise achievements and progress of
pupils, lesson plans, schemes of work and a lot of teaching tools.
The
Kubo platform will also deliver tests and exam results will be calculated along
with health and behavior data for each child.
The
administrator can also access all data, supervise achievements and the progress
of all pupils with automatically generated performance graphs per child and per
class.
Staff
attendance and performance and other management tools can also be integrated.
Exercises
are automatically granted according to the level of a child.
The
platform leverages innovative and quality content based, accessible low-cost,
low-energy, user-friendly, integrated school management, lessons and exercises,
health, special needs, community as well as supplying content based upon
student data.
Speaking
at the inauguration, held at the school ground in Manjai, Shane Deconinck, BA
student applied informatics – IT Consultancy from Howest University College,
Bruges, Belgium, explained that next to no IT-skills are necessary to operate
the system and the device (Raspberry Pi) is available at less cost (D2500) and
functions as a full computer.
He
further explained that without investment the information can be readily accessed
through any smartphone.
Mr
Deconinck said they would like to introduce KUBO to other schools, educational
institutions and to share their ongoing development of an open school platform
with others.
Annette
Jaiteh, school coordinator, said their mission was to be a vector for
educational impact in The Gambia.
She
added that the school provides free, quality education to 230 nursery and
primary children, with a free meal every day, free homework, support for slow
learners, an integrated health project and youth work.
Madam
Jaiteh also expressed delight with the platform, describing it as a revolution.
She
further described the platform as really interesting and something that would
sharpen schools and the country for quality education.
She
observed that the children are having fun and even run after the IT teacher for
classes which makes her hopeful.
