Students and teachers from three African countries – Kenya, South Africa and Nigeria – are set to benefit from Intel’s Explore and Learn online platform, one-stop-shop for digital education content.
Through the platform – already launched in Kenya – learners can find and acquire free and paid for, textbooks, instructional videos, exam preparation materials to help them in their studies, with content ranging from officially approved text books and multimedia content to supplementary multimedia and interactive content from local and international providers all designed to enhance the learning experience for students.
Mr Cigdem Ertem, Intel’s Middle East and Africa business development director said during the launch in Nairobi that the aim of the Intel Explore and Learn solution is to provide a resource hub where learners can find relevant content to enrich their studies while at the same time provide publishers with access to a platform that will enable them to easily share their learning content.
“We would like to call upon all publishers and other content providers to partner with Intel in delivering exciting quality education content to Kenya’s children to transform how they study and enable children to create their tomorrow,” said Ertem.
The content available on the portal comes from each of the three countries’ approved curriculum, and includes textbooks to instructional videos and interactive documents.
The platform is designed for learners of all ages and provides access to wide variety of content including text books, set books, revision books, interactive past exam papers, multimedia (audio, video and animations) for Kenya’s students from primary to secondary school level.
Explore and Learn is a between Intel and Rancard, an African-based mobile technology company that provides a cloud-based software platform for mobile content discovery, delivery and monetization.
The other benefit is that it offers local education publishers access to a platform to easily share or sell their learning content while Kenya’s teachers can use the platform to digitize their existing content through a new authoring tool designed which creates digital content that can later be uploaded onto the portal.
Local partners in the initiative – which ultimately aims to enhance the use of IT in the country’s education – are Msingi Pack, eKitabu, Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development (KICD, formerly Kenya Institute of Education, KIE) as well as Nation Media Group’s Swahili newspaper TaifaLeo.
Ertem said Intel Explore and Learn was designed to benefit all stakeholders of the education community, including teachers and parents, dispelling the notion that introduction of IT in education or e-Learning in the education would make teachers redundant.
“We hope educators will find this app of as much use as the students, and use it to reinforce their teaching. Technology itself will never be the solution; it is just a tool to help teachers empower our students,” said Ertem.
The Intel Explore and Learn application – which is available for Intel powered PCs and Tablets running Android, Windows 7 or Windows 8 devices – also has an offline access option to download, meaning that once content has been downloaded to a device, internet connection is not required to access it.
Intel’s new initiative comes after the Kenya government cancelled the laptop project tender for schools over a budget deficit after the lowest bidder quoted Kshs 32 billion while the government had planned to spend Kshs 2 billion.
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