Taking Flight: Learning from KA Lite and Starting New with Kolibri

Lauren Lichtman
Learning Equality
Published in
4 min readJul 10, 2018

Attention new users: Start with Kolibri!

Kolibri has officially been in flight since December 2017 and we’re about to release v0.10 (check out 4 changes we’ve made to exercises for this version). While we are continuing to improve Kolibri, we are confident that Kolibri is better positioned for any organization new to Learning Equality’s tools and software. We also don’t want to leave our longstanding KA Lite users stranded on the ground. We know that you understand the need for the availability of quality educational content available in an offline setting, and that you have reconfigured and forked versions of KA Lite to meet your needs. We’ve been listening. And that’s why we’re here to support and guide you towards using Kolibri.

The best of KA Lite, packaged on Kolibri

Kolibri expands on everything Learning Equality could offer with KA Lite but the central tenants of KA Lite will remain the same: Kolibri is lightweight, can be run on a local server, and all (or a subset) of content can be loaded onto the server. Kolibri has feature parity with KA Lite, and includes Khan Academy content in a variety of languages (including in French, Portuguese, Spanish, Kiswahili, and Hindu), with more language support on the way!

We will continue to update Kolibri, next with v0.10! We encourage you to sign-up for our newsletter, follow us on Twitter or check back in periodically to be notified of the latest releases. Upgrading with Kolibri ensures the best compatibility with content and that you have the latest and greatest features!

New and improved education platform

Still wondering what exactly Kolibri is? Let us break it down for you:

Still stumped? Here’s an overview of important KA Lite features and their status in Kolibri:

  • Use offline on low-cost and legacy devices — Yes, with efforts for additional hardware testing with the Kolibri Hardware Grants program!
  • View videos from Khan Academy — Yes, but improved with updated video player!
  • View exercises from Khan Academy — Yes, but improved!
  • Admin command line interface — Yes, but improved!
  • Track learner progress — Updated experience with roadmap to improve functionality!
  • Learner-facing progress report — Stay tuned!
  • Up to 20 clients on a small device (RPI) — Yes, with active work on optimization!

Out with the old . . .

When moving from KA Lite to Kolibri, it is important to note two things at present: (1) user data will not be transferred to Kolibri; and (2) Khan Academy content will need to be re-imported. We know that you may have spent hours downloading Khan Academy content on limited bandwidth, but with Kolibri you’ll now have access to new and different content beyond the updated Khan Academy content!

We encourage you to think about the timeline of your implementation (e.g., alignment with the school year, points in curriculum) to determine the best time to start fresh with Kolibri. Depending on hardware capacity, you may choose to initially use Kolibri to explore other content sources and continue to use KA Lite until an appropriate transition point is determined. While our team is no longer actively developing KA Lite, we are still interested in hearing about your KA Lite deployments globally, and will be maintaining KA Lite for the foreseeable future. While new features will not be released, we will continue to work to fix any critical bugs that you have identified and posted on Github.

We also would love to hear more from you! If you have 5 mins to complete this quick survey, this will help us understand where you’re at with KA Lite and how we can best support you.

. . . and in with the new!

We’re excited to fly together with Kolibri! Please download Kolibri here: learningquality.org/download. We’re still optimizing for various types of low-cost hardware servers, including RasPis, but we’re confident overall that Kolibri is best for new users overall on the majority of hardware.

Still concerned about the transition? As always, you can view our community forum to review responses to any similarly reported challenges and issues. If you feel like KA Lite is still the best fit for your organization, let us know your needs for a migration pathway, and we’ll see how to best factor that into our roadmap. Happy learning!

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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.

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