The wide scope of Kolibri in classrooms: young children learning the humanities in Mexico
How we spent our spring break with UNETE in Mexico City
Carine Diaz, my fellow Learning Equality team member who leads our projects in Latin America, and I had an action-packed spring break this year. We spent several days traveling with the incomparable UNETE team to visit schools implementing Kolibri as part of their program to integrate technology into the classroom. Through this work, they aim to improve the quality and equity of education in Mexico, supporting 81 schools, 648 teachers, and approximately 24,000 students across 16 states as part of a Google.org-funded pilot. Traveling with the team the week before Semana Santa meant we had to pack many important discussions and classroom observations in a short amount of time before everyone left for their vacaciones.
Wait. Why are you in CDMX?
The Learning Equality team had spent time in Mexico City last August training UNETE’s network of coordinators, mentors, and support staff in preparation for the school year. Fast forward seven months and we found ourselves eager to observe Kolibri in action in order to better understand the context, challenges, and successes of a UNETE classroom. During our school visits, we documented class observations and conducted interviews with directors, teachers, and students to add to our body of research, which will in turn inform and improve the Kolibri ecosystem of products.
While we were in Mexico City, we also convened a panel of practitioners who drive education technology initiatives in their home countries of Mexico and Guatemala at the 2018 Comparative and International Education Society (CIES) conference. We were inspired by this year’s theme at CIES — Re-Mapping Global Education: South-North Dialogue — and shared an overview of our work with UNETE, @prende, and Funsepa.
Okay. What did you observe?
There were three main takeaways that Carine and I collected from our time in Mexico City.
Takeaway 1: UNETE’s classroom hardware set-up is scalable and well-serviced
Under the keen stewardship of UNETE’s CTO Ruben Martinez Sotomayor, the classrooms we visited contained a comprehensive and robust hardware configuration. We saw the same robust Content Access Point in every computer lab alongside a variety of client devices including desktops, tablets, and Chromebooks.
The strength of the UNETE model comes from their provisioning of the supportive accessories that cover all needs: power protectors, local area network connections, mouses, charging carts, projectors, etc. Their turnkey technology package has been proven to be a scalable one, most amazingly demonstrated by their implementation in thousands of classrooms since their inception, by a team of around 50 people. Furthermore, their hardware is well-serviced and supported by the network of coordinators and mentors who conduct on-site visits on a periodic basis, and by the ever omnipresent HelpDesk operating out of UNETE’s central offices in Mexico City.
Takeaway 2: Kolibri’s platform and content curation tooling supports a variety of subjects including the humanities
Many of Learning Equality’s early KA Lite users sang praises about the platform’s usefulness in teaching science and math topics with Khan Academy’s large repository of interactive exercises. We heard less often of its use for non-STEM subjects such as reading comprehension, social science, and the humanities. We went on to build Kolibri to offer a wider variety of content and were pleased to find UNETE students using Kolibri to read passages, answer comprehension questions, watch videos on social science, and take exams. It was especially affirming to see teachers create their own practice exercises and exams in Kolibri and further add to the library of content in Spanish. Especially with the recent inclusion of stories from the Global Digital Library we hope to see more learning spaces around the world benefit from humanities content available on Kolibri.
Takeaway 3: With sufficient guidance, very young learners can use Kolibri, too!
Many of the stories coming from our users around the world focused on Grades 4–12, adult education, and professional development. Although Kolibri hadn’t been designed exclusively for younger age levels, its use case for early learners is one we can continue to learn and improve upon. Our time at Escuela Heroínas Mexicanas helped me form a clearer picture; we observed 1st and 2nd graders learn subtraction using a combination of tools: Kolibri, pencils, paper, and the trusty abacus.
We observed an excellent demonstration of a teacher engaging students in learning and practicing a concept while at the same time interweaving digital literacy skills throughout the lesson, which was useful because many of the students were tentatively re-familiarizing themselves with a keyboard and mouse. We came away from this school with many observations for Learning Equality team members who think about inclusive design and what that looks like in Kolibri.
What’s next?
Carine and I have shared all the learnings from our informative trip to Mexico City with the larger Learning Equality product and content teams, and we will continue to:
- Complement UNETE’s strong hardware model by fortifying the ongoing support for the Kolibri software component
- Improve and add to the body of content for use in UNETE’s classrooms, in other Mexican classrooms, and potentially across Spanish-speaking Latin America
- Take the learnings from our first full school year with UNETE to plan for next year’s training and school year
We would like to thank UNETE for their kindness and hospitality. Estamos agradecidos por la hospitalidad. Gracias por su amistad y por su apoyo.
