
Ask HN: Providing cheaper EdTech tools for rural zones - houssem_fat
We are building a company (<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.keedo.tn" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.keedo.tn</a>) to reduce the gap in education accessibility between urban and rural zones and private&#x2F;public systems. We provide web apps and learning tools (we already started developing some tools like a virtual piano, body anatomy viewer, maps for geographic subjects, stories reader and so on) and we are fully cloud based, so everything is accessible and shared over the network.<p>Our big challenge is to provide a cheap computer with internet connection, (wifi&#x2F;3G) support and acceptable performance. For information, the family income for our first clients in such regions, is on average $130 per month. 
We love the OLPC_XO <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;laptop.org&#x2F;en&#x2F;laptop&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;laptop.org&#x2F;en&#x2F;laptop&#x2F;</a> project idea (worldreader.org also) but their price is still high for our target clients and we try to avoid  donations as much as possible.<p>First we thought about low cost white label tablets (most are china ODM&#x2F;OEM providers), but from experience and reviews, they seems to be less performing with intensive usage.  
Now we have two solutions, either we use an already proven SOCs like PINE A64, Raspberry pi or we develop our custom pc. 
 Any pointers, suggestions or collaborations will be highly appreciated!
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jlgaddis
I would encourage you to forget about hardware and concentrate on the software
and applications.

Based on my experiences (I work for an ISP but we have a "sister" company
that's an MSP that provides IT services to, among others, several K-12 schools
in such rural areas), most of these schools either 1) already have available
hardware (iPads, Chromebooks) due to existing 1:1 programs or 2) have decided
to not (yet) pursue that (usually because of financial reasons).

In the former case, they already _have_ hardware and don't want to buy even
more. In the latter, they simply _don 't have the money for it_ (it'll be an
even harder sell if it's not "general purpose" and can only be used with your
stuff). Even if you manage to get it under $50 per student, that's still a lot
of money that they could likely spend elsewhere.

Develop your applications and concentrate on targeting the most popular
platforms (iOS and Android) and forget about trying to sell them hardware they
can't (easily) reuse. Definitely forget about cellular connectivity and stick
to Wi-Fi instead.

~~~
houssem_fat
Thank you jlgaddis ! Really, we don't try to be a hardware company, we just
try to find a reasonable way to a child fo owning a device with internet
access and 'reasonable' performance. Our freemium business model really didn't
focus on such areas neither in hardware, if we found a hardware provider
partner that offers affordable plans ( such as paying 5$ per month during a
year instead of all), this will be great for us so we can focus only on
software apps. In The zone that we target, they never used computers before,
most use cellular phones or cheap smartphones but this is for parents not
children.

~~~
mindhash
Have you considered pre owned laptops from urban areas. You could try running
a campaign if you haven't already.

I thought important thing in this setup is transparency. So if a particular
user or teacher can not afford, you add them to a page. A donation can be old
or pre owned laptop.

~~~
lsc
the problem with old equipment twofold; first, there's a lot more maintenance.
Next? when you are dealing in cast-offs, you by necessity have a heterogeneous
fleet of hardware.

(The market for obsolete server hardware is interesting because often you pay
_more_ if you want a whole bunch of the same thing)

If you have to pay someone to maintain the obsolete hardware, it's probably
cheaper to just buy everyone new chromebooks or something.

On the other hand, If you can sell that as part of the program, teaching the
kids to fix the hardware, that could work out really well. But the point is
that there is a lot of labor involved in using a heterogeneous fleet of cast-
off hardware; a lot more labor than in using a homogenous fleet of newer
hardware.

It is, however, labor that I think you can teach kids how to do. Fixing a
computer isn't any harder than fixing a car, and is probably a lot safer.

------
DoreenMichele
So, from the .tn URL and family income listed, I am inferring this is based in
Tunisia.

Can you optimize this for a cheap smartphone? I think that would probably be a
better solution.

I am American. I was homeless for 5.7 years and I began learning to make money
online while homeless. This is part of how I got back into housing. I have
some experience with various tablets, laptops and phones. Phones have proven
to be a surprisingly robust internet solution for me.

I currently have a $30 smartphone (brand ZTE). I have Tracfone service with it
and I can use it on Wi-Fi. Although the screen is tiny and storage is limited,
it has overall better performance than the $70 tablet I have. I rarely get on
the tablet. My sons use it, but I spend almost all my time on my phone at
home, plus I go to the local library to access a proper computer.

From what I have read, phones are a much bigger thing in Africa than tablets
or laptops. I have read that everyone in Malawi has their own sim card even
though an entire village might have a single phone.

I can do a surprising amount on my phone. I can blog, take photos, play games
and do online banking. I have to be mindful of storage limits and I have to
periodically clear my cache and do storage management and I have to be a
little pickier about limiting my apps to the essentials. But it does a
surprisingly good job of letting me do most of the things I want to do online.

When I was homeless, battery life was a big deal. Large screens on tablets
really burned up the battery life. A phone or small tablet was generally
better in that regard. Devices with good battery life were vastly more useful.
I had access to electricity during the day most days, but I was on battery
power at night. How much I could do was very dependent on battery life.

Large parts of Africa will have limited access to electricity. I have read
that in some areas, one person will collect up all the phones in the village
once a week and hike to the nearest paid recharging station and get them all
charged.

So I will suggest that a cheap smartphone with a long battery life is probably
the best solution for this project. Then design your program with those
constraints in mind.

Edit: I will add that a $200 laptop was generally worse than a $50 tablet. We
had to spend $300 on a laptop to get one we didn't hate.

~~~
houssem_fat
Hi DoreenMichele, Thank you !! And I greet you for your self learning.

Yes you are right, we are based in Tunisia. Really, we don't have a critical
issues to access electricity compared to other african countries.

With 50$ (120 Dt) in average, you can buy smartphone and tablets, most are
chineese brands either with their names or under white labeled 'Tunisian'
brands, and some known brands (huwaiey, sumsing, ZTE) that provide some low-
cost of their products dedicated to developing countries.

We first thought about tablets because it's provide large screen and they gave
us the possibilities to develop the system. The smartphone is a great choice
also but we need to adapt our apps in a responsive way so can be rendered in
multiple screen sizes.

------
lsc
My thought? E-waste.

This is how I got my first computers; obsolete and broken computers cast off
by people wealthier than I was. [1] It's great, because you get to learn how
to fix the computer as well as whatever it is you learn on the computer. I
imagine my life experience is super different from those you are helping, but
I can tell you that early experience fixing obsolete computers has vastly
helped my career.

It _is_ a lot more labor intensive, because you have to have someone to teach
the kids how to fix the damn things, (for me, my dad and a copy of minasi's
"upgrading and repairing PCs") but once you have that skillset locally? it's
probably sustainable, because the rich will always be throwing out last years
gadgets.

In some ways it will be way easier for you than for me; when I grew up in the
'80s and '90s, there wasn't a lot of standardization, so with my 'catch as
catch can' hardware acquisition strategy, I'd have to completely change my
software stack every time I got new hardware. These days? Most educational
software runs in a browser (I use and heartily endorse Khan Academy for the
parts of learning that can't be done from a book alone) and so you can have a
diverse fleet of hardware and even operating systems, and as long as you have
enough local skill to bring the things up to the point where they can run a
browser, you should be good to go.

The big problem with this plan is power; Nicer gear from the aughts ought to
run a browser just fine, but it will chew up a lot more power. If you have to
pay for unsubsidized electricity, more modern gear might make more sense.

[1]There was also this really juicy (for me) sense of acquiring "means of
production" \- I _owned_ these computers that others had cast off as worthless
or broken, and I turned them into a useful resource for myself. I think that
if you could work something out so that the kid in question gets to keep the
computer they fix... that might be extra gratifying. I know it was for me.

~~~
sudshekhar
Any good references for folks interested in recycling (as a hobby)?
Phones/laptops etc.

~~~
sundarurfriend
In case you're not aware of it, freecycling is a movement in many cities over
the world, where people advertise their old stuff that they don't need any
more, for anyone who's willing to go and take it off their hands. A lot of
people are hesitant about throwing away workable but old or mildly damaged
things, but also don't want the hassle of putting it on ebay or craigslist and
responding to a thousand questions.

In recent years, a significant portion of the items listings I've seen are
about old electronic stuff that people have moved on from and want to give
away.

------
jnbiche
As you likely know, you will need to be _very_ careful when developing web-
based applications for the resource-constrained devices you mention. A typical
bloated web app as made by most companies will often not run well in resource-
constrained environments like many ARM SOCs. I would encourage you to approach
the app design process with an extremely minimalist approach, striving to
avoid libraries and use vanilla JS as much as possible, use tiny assets, and
keep allocations to a minimum (maybe consider object pools for certain
applications). If you use a minimal framework, Mithril JS might be a good
choice, or domvm, or something similarly minimal. You probably want to stay
away from React and Angular.

------
patrickserrano
If you're looking at any kind of volume, you should be able to get Chromebooks
for under $100 direct from China. When I was at a K12 school about 3 years
ago, our purchase of ~250 Chromebooks allowed us to knock nearly 25% off the
per unit cost to get them down to ~$150/device. And that was going through a
third-party that was white labeling the devices.

The machines we ended up with were 2GB of RAM/16GB storage devices with 11"
screens. Basically they were the reference designs Google released a while
back when they opened up Chromebook manufacturing. And for the 4th-12th
graders we gave them to, they were amazing.

~~~
houssem_fat
Thank you patrickserrano !! This is will be great if we establish an
affordable plan with a 3 or 4 year engagement. We can support this if we found
a partnership or an investment, that's will be a good option for better
quality.

------
itdaniher
Recovering olpc volunteer here. Happy to hear of your labors!

One of the concepts a related project explored was using live / persistent USB
disks to preserve student ownership and facilitate unscheduled explorations.

Multiplexes hardware across students at different times, facilitating students
using a consistent environment at home on old P4 desktops and at school on
whatever's available.

Even large (32+GB) portable storage devices are available under $50.

Check out "sugar on a stick" and "open1to1" for related trains of thought.

~~~
houssem_fat
This is very interesting, Thank you daniher !! Sharing and portability are
nice features and these systems are so important, as they have already a lot
of pre-build tools. Still need a pc or a raspberry pi like system to read usb.
But thanks again !

~~~
sethish
You can mount a USB stick on a phone. But a phone for each child would serve
the same purpose.

------
MrsPeaches
We are working in Zambia to building tools for people who want to create their
own electricity supplies using local resources.

[https://localelectricity.org/](https://localelectricity.org/)

We are also working closely with a local NGO who do coding workshops for rural
communities.

Would love to chat and explore possible collaboration opportunities. Email is
Samson [at] localelectricity [dot] org

------
sammidelali
I don't know where you are thinking about implementing your"solution". There
are a lot of people trying to solve the problem you are solving, even
governments have. I am writing from Ghana and the government has tried two
times and failed. Two questions you need to address: 1. does your solution
really align with the people's need ? 2. Is it sustainable? After you have
found interest, you ask if the people are also interested in managing the
program, after you are gone. Is there the required infrastructure to support.
I am in development work and this is really core to making impactful change, I
was going to say lasting change but I took it back. There are other level of
questions but please answer the two questions above before you even move ahead
with your idea otherwise it's a waste of resources.

~~~
houssem_fat
Hi sammidelali, thank you for your interest. There's no 'our solution' in in
the exact meaning of word, the hardware is a way for access to internet. Our
goal is to provide (via internet or computer technologies) a lot of
inaccessible software tools in a fun/animated way and that's may be achieved
using computer, tablets, Tv with usb disk ..

This project was propsed 4 five years ago and i started by talking to
education responsables who thought that's 'unmanaged and hard to set up'. The
idea is simple, we believe that every child 'should' access to learning
ressources in a virtual way regardless his location. For the sustainablity
part, i think that the average age of a large numbers of electronics is
limited, and may be recycled after that. We are talking about a game like
tool.

------
kazishariar
I think this is amazing, and credit should be given where credit is due. Are
you basing your concept on learning management systems like moodle. Is that
what you are? I know, you're probably so much more. But I need to ask, how do
you organize content that's already available into bite-sized lessons easily
digestible by children? And it's easy to get muddled into providing content,
along with a medium for that content. And then you go into grade levels,
standardizing, not to mention having proper internet access, along with power.
I mean how do you do it?

~~~
houssem_fat
Hello, Thank you kazishariar ! Right now, we are not using a special framework
for managing system, Edx maybe our primary choice if we think about a all-in-
one system. But instead, we decide to build apps by categories instead of
building a generic one. We are focusing on the way we create content by
subject.

We started developing a story editor with basic images, texts, and sounds (so
we can add effects in the story). We also developed a small version of a
simple sheet music editor with a virtual piano and sounds. For geographic,
historic and animals anatomy illustrations, we use a map-like editor, so the
teacher can draw shapes, add voice, timelines ...

For the internet access, there are many places that already covered by 3G
service, What's good for us, is that the area size of the country is small,
so, network providers can extends theirs services without huge investments.

Tell me if i replied your question or missed something !

~~~
sethish
What you're doing sounds incredibly expensive in terms of developer hours. Are
you certain you've explored the world of pre existing open content?

------
dlnb
You should reach out to the folks at learningequality.org. They focus on
totally offline use cases but have a huge global partnership network and could
definitely give you hardware advice.

~~~
houssem_fat
Thank you dlnb ! I really liked the idea, nice to know about it !! this will
be very helpful !

------
koolba
Meta question, do all text submissions get to include active links in the text
or is that handled manually by the HN team? I noticed some Launch HN:
submissions over the past year have been doing it but AFAIK this is the first
for a non-YC company.

------
tyingq
Refurbished Chromebooks would be hard to beat. Lots of sub $200 choices, and
has the keyboard and monitor built in. You can also download a new Seabios ROM
for most of them and run regular Linux.

Affordable rural internet access might be a bigger hurdle.

~~~
houssem_fat
Thank you @tyngq! Chrome OS will be beneficial to us, as it already supports
all of our web based solutions. But even with the prices of refurbished
solutions, it still expensive, as we target a maximum 50$ solution for each
child. Also, our business model is not the hardware part.

~~~
tyingq
Hmm. As you mentioned, you can get developer boards for less than $50. But,
does your demographic have HDMI televisions to connect them to? Keyboards?
Storage?

~~~
houssem_fat
For keyboards, we can deal with refurbished or used. For storage, you are
right, SDcard is the primary option, in a standalone product, it's not cheap
(about 20%) comparing the total board price but we can find a more suitable
formula if it will be included within the board. But the display will still a
challenge if we choose to build custom board. HDMI TV are not such used in
rural zones, they still need some time to be accessible in price and
popularity.

------
dgelks
Nice to see something new going on in EdTech space! I'm the CTO of
bibliotech.education, a subscription textbook company and happy to have a chat
regarding collaboration or contacts in either the US or Europe.

------
kanagac
Design the app to work in smart phone. Families might benefit have cheap smart
phone for multi purposes. Cheap smart phones will help students as they grow
up to familiarize the mobile technology.

------
whitefang
I know of a company Learning
Equality([https://learningequality.org/](https://learningequality.org/)) they
also work in this space.

------
ronsor
I'm sorry; but the cheapest laptop I've seen is $90; don't think you'll get to
$50 unless you want a cheap tablet.

~~~
houssem_fat
Thank you ronsor ! We really need a web browser, enough memory and kind of
'performant' CPU / GPU to run html and js applications. So, a customized os
like chrome os will be suitable if we choose to build our custom solution.

------
asd33313131
These guys do a cheap computer [https://pi-top.com/](https://pi-top.com/)

------
ashish2py
Hey, check out zaya.in, they too are solving similar problems.

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dgolds
Would this be helpful? Https://build.games

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hux_
Check out Kiwix.org There are different cheap options.

~~~
houssem_fat
Thank you hux_ !! will check it !

------
tomcam
Do you have any reason to believe computers are a better learning medium then
the no-power-needed, high resolution device known as a “book“?

~~~
houssem_fat
We don't aim to replace the standard ''book' support, our goal is to provide
the inaccessible tools and based on child curiosity we open new opportunities
to learning subject such as astronomy, music... I'm a computer engineer who
born in a such region, and i only touched the keyboard at the university. We
are talking about places where the school is the first and the only source of
learning and the TV is the only source of entertainment. No public libraries,
no clubs, no house cultures .... Our education system is designed to provide a
standard vision for all kids in the country regardless their interests,
cultures, communities background. They are designed based on 'old' vision for
the industrial jobs needs, and as these jobs still decreasing, the
unemployment rate in Tunisia is about 20% for graduated people (this rate
does'nt include the dropouts). So, we all know sure that something wrong with
current system, but this is not our first goal. Our main goal is simple,
provide fun learning tools for kids (virtual telescope, piano, guitar ...)

