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Vodafone brings tablet-based teaching to refugees in Kenya

Vodafone brings tablet-based teaching to refugees in Kenya

The Vodafone Foundation and UNHCR announced that the first two Instant Classroom digital 'school in a box' units will be delivered to the Kakuma refugee settlement in Kenya. The Instant Classroom boxes, a single case containing what is required for tablet-based teaching, will help give children and young adults in the refugee camps the opportunity to continue their education. The Instant Classroom has been specifically designed for areas where electricity and internet connectivity are unreliable or non-existent and will be deployed in partnership with UNHCR's Innovation and Education units. 

The Instant Classroom is shipped in a 52kg case including a laptop, 25 tablets pre-loaded with educational software, a projector, a speaker and a hotspot modem with 3G connectivity. The tablets can connect to the laptop locally, enabling teachers to deliver content and applications to students without the need to access the internet. All the components of the Instant Classroom can be charged simultaneously from a single power source while the case is locked. After six to eight hours of charging time, the Instant Classroom can be used for a full day in a classroom without access to electricity. 

The first two Instant Classroom boxes will be deployed by four volunteers from Vodafone, including IT specialists from Vodafone Netherlands, Vodafone Romania, Vodafone Greece and Vodafone Albania. Instant Classroom will be installed at a secondary school in Kakuma, benefiting 1,200 students, and at a library for teachers, adults and out-of-school children. In addition, the Vodafone Foundation will deliver a Worldreader's Blue Box to the library, containing 35 e-readers with 200 books uploaded. 

Over the next year, the Vodafone Foundation Instant Classroom will be deployed to 12 schools in refugee settlements in Kakuma in Kenya, in the Nyarungusu refugee settlement in Tanzania and in the Equatorial Region in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Instant Classroom will this year provide up to 15,000 children and young adults aged from 7 to 20.

 www.vodafone.com

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