Edtech in Crisis and Emergency: Observations From Making Kolibri Fly in Jordan, Uganda, Kenya, and Tanzania

Learning Equality
Learning Equality
Published in
5 min readSep 9, 2021

On this International Day to Protect Education from Attack, the Learning Equality team considers how equity-oriented collaborations and Kolibri have enabled teachers and learners — particularly those in secondary education — across varied learning environments in four countries to actively participate in the digital education movement.

In 2020, the United Nations (UN) called for the first-ever International Day to Protect Education from Attack. One year later, especially with the compounding impact of disruptions in learning and inequities fueled by the pandemic, the importance of mobilizing in support of our learners and educators in emergency and crisis contexts is all the more apparent.

The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) has reported that 82.4 million people worldwide were forcibly displaced at the end of 2020 as a result of persecution, conflict, violence, human rights violations, or other events disturbing public order. This upheaval can drastically disrupt the education of these formative young people, and some — especially girls — never return to the classroom.

Such disruption to, and outright departure from, education leaves multiple voids particularly felt secondary level learners.

Continuity of learning is critical to prevent pressured exploitative forms of labor and to ensure that these young people have access to further education, more promising financial prospects, greater independence, and improved health outcomes.

Grade 8 girls in Kenya raise their hand in class discussion while holding their tablets to learn.
Girls in Kakuma, Kenya engage in class discussion while learning with their tablets. Photo courtesy of UNHCR Media.

But still, the gross enrollment rate for refugees at the secondary level is only 34%, and this lags behind host community learners in almost every country. This need to remove obstacles to the classroom is clear, particularly during the pandemic, as the UNHCR shares in the 2021 Education Report, “Staying the Course: The Challenges Facing Refugee Education.”

We recognize the great potential for equity-focused digital learning initiatives to give access to the life-changing benefits of secondary education. Since 2018, Learning Equality has been collaborating with the UNHCR and Vodafone Foundation, with support from Google.org, to expand opportunities to digital learning for secondary level learners in an initiative called Kolibri FLY. By joining forces, and with support from extraordinary implementing organizations ICT educators, teacher trainers and other edtech advocates, Kolibri is now flying in Jordan, Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania to support learning in STEM, life skills and literacy for refugee and host community learners .

While these efforts continue, we recognize several notable accomplishments across four thematic areas in the Kolibri FLY initiative:

  • Kolibri is meeting learners and educators where they’re at. Our little bird flies in a variety of learning contexts, from schools to learning hubs to refugee camps to homes.
  • Refugee and host community learners and educators can engage with relevant learning resources, including those aligned to national curricula.
  • The Kolibri community has grown! We’ve worked with Kolibri Experts and Coaches to deepen local capacity on leveraging education technology and expanding expertise on Kolibri.
  • We’ve remained laser focused on equity, as Kolibri can soar on varied hardware and within different infrastructure setups to minimize barriers to quality teaching and learning.

Learn more. The text on this infographic is available at the end of this blog post.

Recognizing that secondary education is underfunded and under-resourced, learning from these accomplishments will inform future adoption of education technology in low-resource learning environments. Secondary education is also protective, and these types of initiatives will also safeguard the right to teach and learn, particularly when education is under attack. We look forward to seeing Kolibri expand its wings to foster more inclusive and equitable learning opportunities for all!

Read more about Kolibri in refugee and host community contexts, specifically in Jordan, in the just-released UNHCR Education Report 2021, “Staying the Course: The Challenges Facing Refugee Education.”

If you’re a refugee or host community learner or educator who has made #KolibriFly, we’d love to hear more at stories@learningequality.org or on our Community Forum.

You can also watch #KolibriFly among refugee and host community learners and educators on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn, and stay in the loop with us by subscribing to our newsletter.

Infographic Alternative Text

How does #KolibriFly in refugee and host communities?

Since 2018, Kolibri FLY has aimed to enable refugee and host community learners to actively participate in the digital education movement. By focusing on secondary students across 4 countries, we represented diverse learning environments in terms of where learning takes place and the protracted nature of the crisis. Here, we summarize some accomplishments of Kolibri FLY across 4 tenants of the project that were piloted to develop a holistic understanding of the use of Kolibri for refugee and host community learner.

Kolibri has been used in both formal and nonformal learning environments.

  • In school via the Instant Network Schools programme in Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya, in secondary schools in Uganda, and Nyangusu Refugee Camp in Tanzania
  • In communities in Connected Learning Hubs in 10 locations across Jordan (urban environments, and Zaatari and Azraq Refugee Camps); Community Technology Access centers in Uganda, and community centers via the INS in Kenya
  • At home during COVID-19, to support learning continuity despite lockdowns.

We focused on providing relevant learning resources, and ensuring that alignment to national curricula to enhance their use, by:

  • Conducting co-design sessions to inform the selection of materials for use in Kenya and Jordan
  • Building an open Arabic library of 18,000+ learning resources from 20+ sources
  • Curating and aligning STEM and life skills materials for lower-secondary to the national curricula in Kenya, Jordan, and Uganda, with review by relevant government bodies

Through our training the trainer model, we adapted our Kolibri Edtech Toolkit based on local knowledge to expand capacity through:

  • Delivering initial trainings on blended learning with Kolibri across the 4 countries
  • Fostering cross-national collaboration with refugee coaches from Kenya leading teacher trainings in Uganda, and government STEM teacher trainers in Uganda training educators in Tanzania
  • Expanding adaptable set of resources to include case studies and learning environment-specific guidance on use of Kolibri

We tested a variety of hardware and infrastructural solutions by:

  • Leveraging existing Instant Network Schools’ Classroom Kits with a server and tablets in Kenya, and new portable backpack kits with the same in Tanzania
  • Piloting the HP School Cloud server with HP and Education Cannot Wait, and supporting at-home learning via 2,770 pre-provisioned Android tablets in Uganda
  • Providing Internet bundles to access online servers with Kolibri from the Hubs in Jordan

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Published in Learning Equality

Learning Equality is committed to enabling every person in the world to realize their right to a quality education by enabling teaching and learning with technology, without the Internet.

Written by Learning Equality

We're a non-profit that creates offline education technology for the 2.6 billion people in the world who don't have access to the Internet. learningequality.org

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