About Ubuntu Learning
In March 2020 due to the worldwide coronavirus epidemic Namibia’s borders shut down, quarantine movement and preventative practices were put in place. Like most countries around the world all schools was closed. This caused major disruption for many Namibian children, who go to school in small rural schools. Ubuntu is an African word that spells humanity and equality, however the system aims to convert the textbook into a text message, regardless of what phone type a learner has this have no limit to accessing educational materials such as quizzes and notes. The project bypass internet and smartphone and still offer an inclusive learning particularly to disadvantage learners from different corners of the country. Through the use of SMS- short text message and USSD (unstructured supplementary service data).
Due to COVID-19 education sector is affected more especially learners from rural areas and informal settlement. The project is targeting the disadvantage learners who cannot afford smartphone, tablets and other devices to learn via internet on e-learning platform. Despite their poor background these learners can access educational material such as quiz, audio notes and short summarized notes via an offline mode platform which is SMS (short message service).
Project Objectives:
- To bridge the gap between those that can access e-learning and those that cannot.
- Strengthen the network between parents and teacher on performance indicator and monitoring and evaluation in each subject.
- To offer an offline mode dictionary to be accessed via SMS, by targeting 60% of learners countrywide and improve literacy
- To enhance learners subject knowledge and English vocabulary. This will increase passing rate up to 70% for Grade 11 and 12 final exam.