connectmyschool-blog1

[connectmyschool-blog1]

Learning online, for the first time

What was your first internet experience like? Did it happen sometime in the mid-to-late 90s or in the early 2000s? How did the internet enhance your personal and professional life? What did you learn by using the internet? 

For children from the Far North region of Cameroon who have been through a conflict that no child should ever experience, the internet is just a dream. This region is still considered to be one of the least ‘connected’ areas in the world, and this is particularly true in schools. Children learn about the internet in theory, but they do not have access to computers, Wi-Fi or any other devices to help them learn, play, interact and feel a part of our interconnected, digital world. 

More and more, the internet is becoming one of the most powerful learning tools, and it is used in many schools across the globe. With just a few clicks, children have access to universal knowledge. Today, we want to make this knowledge accessible to children from the Far North Region of Cameroon. 

That’s where the European Union/UNICEF ‘Connect My School’ project comes in. The objective of the project is as straightforward as its name. We are strongly committed to supporting education in emergencies for IDP, and for refugee children who have been deeply affected by the Boko Haram Crisis. We want to provide these children with the possibility of internet access to supplement their educational programmes, just like millions of other children in the world.

For the pilot phase, two schools have been selected. One school is in a host community close to the Nigerian border, where more than half of the students have been displaced by the conflict. The other school is in the Minawao Refugee Camp, a sanctuary for refugees from Nigeria. 

The concept is simple. A solar-powered VSAT (satellite internet unit) panel will be deployed in each of the schools, and child-friendly tablets will be distributed to the children. Through these tablets, children will be able to access Wikipedia and play educational games to help them learn math, history, geography, and so on. They will also be able to take pictures and videos and send this content to UNICEF to raise their voices, report about their experiences and tell stories about their daily lives. They will become the first young ‘citizen journalists’ in their community.

That’s why we created this blog. The content that is received by UNICEF will be carefully selected by our ‘Connect My School’ team here in Yaounde, and the best pieces will be posted on this blog. Throughout 2017 and the following years, UNICEF will conduct regular training programmes to improve the journalistic and technological skills of these children. Please don’t hesitate to follow this blog, listen to what our first ‘wave’ of citizen journalists have to say, and share their content. The more their posts are shared, the more their voice is heard.

Welcome to ‘Connect My School’

UNICEF Cameroon’s Communication Team

[connectmyschool-blog1]

This is my friend playing jump rope in front of the school. Normally, only girls play but boys are also very good at it!

Photo by Aychatou, a young refugee from Nigeria

[connectmyschool-blog1]

Time to play! Behind us, a child-friendly space built by UNICEF. We call it “school”, but it’s much more than a school. There, we learn, we play, and we meet other children. I love it!

Photo by Ousmanou, a young refugee from Nigeria

[connectmyschool-blog1]

Meet Waibai, the “Connect My School” focal point for the Baigai Public School (Far North Region of Cameroon)

My name is Waibai, I am 12 years old. My family and I were living in a village near the border with Nigeria. One day, Boko Haram attacked the village. They started burning houses, and killing people. We had to run, and hide in the bush for more than a month. We had almost nothing to eat, nor to drink. We would walk during the night, and hide during the day. We finally reached the village of Baigai. It was not easy for me to make new friends. I was always thinking about what happened over there.

Then, one day, UNICEF came and gave us the tablets. I immediately started using them to search new words, play new games. I became so good at it that I now teach other children how to use this technology. I was recently allowed to bring one of the tablets home with me. My mother never had a mobile phone, she didn’t know what the Internet was. I explained her and I showed her what I was doing at school with my tablet. She was so proud of me. I think that we are lucky to have this technology. My dream is to become a teacher, and, with what I am learning every day on my tablet, I am sure it can become a reality.

[connectmyschool-blog1]

That’s my classmates, just after our team scored a goal!

Photo by Waibai, 12 years old

[connectmyschool-blog1]

for every child, a digital bridge

Today, more than 29 per cent of the world’s youth – 346 million people between the ages of 15 and 24 – are not connected to the internet. To be disconnected in a digital world is to be deprived of opportunities to learn, communicate and develop skills for the 21st century. Unless access and skills are available more equally, connectivity only deepens inequity, reinforcing deprivation from one generation to the next.

In Cameroon, access to quality education – including internet access – is challenging. Violence in neighbouring Central African Republic and Nigeria has sent over 300,000 refugees into the country. More than 180,000 Cameroonians have also been displaced – and two thirds are children.The majority of these displaced children live in remote areas and don’t benefit from the same quality of learning as those living in urban centres – especially digital learning. If they do have access to education, these children may learn about the internet, but not use it. As a result, the digital divide widens, and at-risk children have even fewer chances to succeed. 

But there is reason for optimism. 

By connecting remote schools and students to technology, one new initiative has begun to bridge the divide, starting with those who need it most in northern Cameroon. In recent months, the tablets have become a tool for helping new students integrate into the host community. Although the school has seen a marked decrease in the number of newly displaced students, those who do arrive invariably have little experience with the internet.

Waibai Buka sits in the shade of a tree in the dirt courtyard of her school in Baigai, Cameroon, in the Far North Region, close to the Nigerian border.

The school is like any other in the area – large concrete classrooms, rows of wooden desks and benches facing chalkboards, groups of children dressed in neat uniforms adorned with the red, green and yellow of Cameroon’s flag.But a closer look reveals unusual details: a solar panel and satellite dish bolted to the tin roof of one classroom, and sky blue tablets stacked on a headmaster’s desk.In a region with extremely low internet penetration, Baigai Public School is exceptional – it has internet access. And after just a few months of learning, 12-year-old Waibai is now the resident digital whiz.

A drone view of Baigai Public School

By welcoming them into the school and teaching them how to use the tablets, Waibai and her classmates are helping some of Cameroon’s most vulnerable children bridge the digital divide. And in Africa specifically, getting these children online will be key to meeting the challenges of tomorrow. Digital literacy is expected to be the new default skillset required by Africa’s labour market, and children currently make up almost half of the population. Nowhere in the world are children like Waibai more central to a continent's future.Investing in children’s education, as well as health, protection and access to technology, holds the promise of lifting hundreds of millions of people in Africa out of extreme poverty.

Everything changed when Baigai Public School gained internet access through a pilot programme called ‘Connect My School’. In January of this year, the project installed a solar-powered satellite unit in the school, providing internet connectivity within a 500 metre radius. The school also received child-friendly tablets loaded with educational games and apps like Wikipedia, as well as drawing, text and photo apps.For Waibai, the tablets have opened a world of information. The app she uses most frequently is Wikipedia.“In science we talk about digestion, and the teacher gives us the tablet and we look up digestion,” she says. “I can then explain to the other children that digestion is a transformation of food in the stomach.”��Before, when I was facing a difficult word, I would ask my teacher for the definition. But it was not like with the tablet, because the tablets give you the full explanation,” she says.

Teachers confirm that, for the children, being able to look up words and concepts and then talk them through with each other has been infinitely more successful than rote learning.“It's like a movie stuck in their brain,” says Djemegued Dieudonne, one of the school’s two headmasters.Beyond putting information within the students’ grasp, the tablets have deepened their curiosity and confidence in using digital technology. Waibai has proven herself to be like early adopters everywhere, quickly learning the ins and outs and then becoming herself a teacher to other students.“My brain is different,” she says. “For me it was easy to learn the tablet.”

Although today Waibai deftly masters new concepts with the help of a tablet, her path to star pupil at Baigai Public School was anything but easy. When she was 8 years old and living in nearby Nigeria with her family, their village was attacked by Boko Haram.“They attacked at night, we were sleeping, and they killed people and burned their houses. We escaped without money for food,” she says. Her father wasn’t home during the attack, and no one has seen him since.Waibai’s family and neighbours spent weeks in search of safety – moving cautiously through the bush, avoiding roads for fear of being shot. At night they slept on scraps of cloth on the ground. They went nearly an entire month without food. “We just ate wild fruit,” says Waibai.Their story is a familiar one in Waibai’s school. During 2014 and 2015, the school gained 400 new students, all of whom had been displaced from their homes by violent conflict.

In recent months, the tablets have become a tool for helping new students integrate into the host community. Although the school has seen a marked decrease in the number of newly displaced students, those who do arrive invariably have little experience with the internet.By welcoming them into the school and teaching them how to use the tablets, Waibai and her classmates are helping some of Cameroon’s most vulnerable children bridge the digital divide.And in Africa specifically, getting these children online will be key to meeting the challenges of tomorrow. Digital literacy is expected to be the new default skillset required by Africa’s labour market, and children currently make up almost half of the population. Nowhere in the world are children like Waibai more central to a continent's future.Investing in children’s education, as well as health, protection and access to technology, holds the promise of lifting hundreds of millions of people in Africa out of extreme poverty.

[connectmyschool-blog1]

This is our girl’s soccer team. We’re currently preparing for the inter-school games. We train almost every day!

Photo by Waibai, 12 years old

[connectmyschool-blog1]

I love using the tablet. I use it to learn new words, and take pictures. I’m pretty good at it!

Photos by Aychatou, a young refugee from Nigeria

[connectmyschool-blog1]

Photo of young Maryam, 11 years taken by her sister Aycha with her connected tablet. My sister Maryam is 11 years old. She is two years older than me. We fled Nigeria together, and we now live in the camp (Minawao) with our mum and dad. She was to become a teacher. I’m sure she can do it, because she is so smart, and beautiful. 

[connectmyschool-blog1]

The great video by AJ+ on the ‘Connect My School’ project

[connectmyschool-blog1]

WHEN CHILDREN BECOME STORYTELLERS: Here are some of the pictures and videos produced by the children with their connected tablets... Discover their daily lives in the conflict-affected Far North Region of Cameroon, the support they receive, how they play, how they learn... From their own point of view!

[connectmyschool-blog1]

That’s our soccer field. We go there after class, almost every day. And we play until dusk. I really love it!

Photo by Waibai, a young diplaced girl

[connectmyschool-blog1]

In Baigai, we love soccer. You know that girls also play soccer? I’m not the best at it, but when I play, I make new friends, and I forget about whet happened. 

Photo by Waibai, a young displaced girl

[connectmyschool-blog1]

Back in Nigeria, we didn’t have teeterboard. But here in the camp, in front of our school, we have one. I really love it! our teachers help us play, and sometimes they use it themselves....

Photo by Ousmanou, from the Minawao refugee camp

[connectmyschool-blog1]

My name is Ayssatou. I come from Nigeria and I live in Minawao. On Wikipedia, I've searched the word “star” and I learnt the name of the different planets. When I arrived at home, I told my father the names, he was very proud.

[connectmyschool-blog1]

“My name is Waibai, here are the first pictures I took with my tablet!”

(my teachers receiving their tablets)

(My classmates)

[connectmyschool-blog1]

My name is Ousmane, I came from Nigeria after Boko Haram attacked our village. Today, our teacher taught us a lesson with a tablet connected to internet. I never saw a tablet before, neither I used the internet. Now, I can learn a lot of things, I can draw, I can play. I really love it!