RE: Primary ICT Lessons - Everything We’ve Learned

Minimum Commitment: Full-Time

  • Tech support is hard; full-time teacher helps

Practice over Theory

  • Kids need practice & activities, not theory

One Student per Keyboard

  • Learning requires tactile practice; one student per keyboard is critical

Activities as Formative Assessment

  • Assessment is hard; full-time teacher helps, activities = constant formative assessment, short cycle times + classroom controls = many revisions per lesson

Minimum Lessons & Spacing

  • Schema / skill retention requires reinforcement & spacing; min 2 per w, ideally spaced evenly

Maximum Group Size

  • Streams too big; 30 students or less no exceptions, add classrooms+teachers in bigger situations, use break/game/morning/evening times, min 25m/max 45m

Secure Logistics

  • Security is hard, especially for schools (cost, capacity, logistics); full-time teacher helps, nobody helps pack/unpack, we track sending/receiving/snapshots

First Barrier: Confidence

  • First barrier: confidence; games win, especially social games, later mastery from activities & typing, classteacher joining rather than commenting helps

Second Barrier: Touch-Typing

  • Second barrier: typing; we have an offline app (type.techlitafrica.org)

Intranet is King

  • Internet is expensive, dangerous, complicated, distracting; strictly offline LAN helps

Classroom Controls

  • Distractions and boredom; classroom controls help

Expose Fundamental Networking

  • Understanding networking is hard; LAN games & per-machine HTTP, SSH hosting helps

Cloning & Updates

  • Updates are hard; clonezilla is free and good for you, LAN helps, we have a custom toolchain (help.techlitafrica.org)

Getting Computers

  • Getting computers is hard; SavoStore + ecommerce is best (ebay cheapest, backmarket most reliable), we collect donations from companies (I can explain our method, but it takes 100x the time you’re expecting)

Connect Teachers

  • Teacher development is hard; we have a WhatsApp group, retreats, and library

Train Teachers In-Person

  • Training is hard; full-time with regular in-person training works for us

Pay Well & Manage Respectfully

  • Good employment is hard; full-time and managed for us

Maximize Inspiration

  • Inspiring kids is underrated; maximizing open session time and encouraging teachers to prioritize excellence is working

Qualified > Professional > Certified

  • Hiring good teachers is hard; full-time helps, we do this, bootcamps are good channel, we prioritize nurturing & growth-mindset

Evolving Curriculum

  • Hands-on curriculum is lacking; we do this, ad-hoc deployment for iterations, managed teachers give feedback, we do software/curriculum development & tech support, integrated with the system

Track Activities

  • Activity tracking is hard; we have a whole ERP & incentives system for that (erp.techlitafrica.org)

Teach Real Code

  • Code is hard; we do shell, then websites, then backend, numeracy / reasoning is lacking (we will solve it this year)

Ship, Don’t Drive

  • Local logistics is hard; Fargo is great, tracking equipment by ID & with photos helps

Prioritize Age Groups

  • Lesson prioritization was a problem / availability != efficacy; teacher incentes to focus (typically g4-6)

Don’t Raise Pirates

  • Licenses are expensive / easy to accidentally raise pirates; we teach linux & free tools

Linux to Windows is Easy, Windows to Linux is Hard

  • Technical jobs need more than Windows, but Windows is easy from technical skills, so Linux is best

”Too Old” is a Software Problem

  • New software makes old computers less useful; Linux can help, but stock benefits are overstated, we have a custom system for this (+5y = 10-15y)

Don’t Require Authentication

  • Authentication & authorization is complicated; students use “guest-mode” 100% of the time, save work in public storage

Public Storage

  • Syncing settings & files is complicated; students learn & use public storage + HTTP / SSH (easy with full-time teachers)

Centralize Maintenance

  • Maintenance; we have a hardware team & warehouse

Budget For Recycling

  • Recycling; we raise for this when computers are donated, recycle via Close the Gap

Share on WhatsApp

  • Donor alignment & engagement; teacher in WhatsApp group (weekly activity reports, monthly input/activity/output reports)

List of Software

  • Software; games = …, office = onlyoffice (libre is worse, google isn’t offline), creative = …, technical = …