Education

Rimjhim Aggarwal of Arizona State University in the U.S. will use a digital learning platform and teaching network to teach young people how to create 360-degree spherical imagery of field sites that function as virtual field trips to share their experiences about specific UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) and better engage and teach others. These virtual field trips can be distributed on the internet, giving a large number of viewers the sense of actually being in the field, and are thus valuable teaching tools. However, they require specialized skills and equipment to create them.

Eric Dawson of Peace First Inc. in the U.S. will develop a digital platform that provides tools, online mentors, resources, and funding to help young people aged between 13 and 25 in the Middle East solve critical issues in their communities. Their Youth Challenge Platform approach has already shown initial success for over a hundred projects proposed and run by international youth in the U.S. They will adapt their platform for the Middle East by including different languages and tools, particularly to foster cross-cultural collaborations.

Madrasa Early Childhood Programme in Kenya supports socio-economically marginalized communities to establish and manage preschools that are: high-quality, gender responsive, culturally relevant, age appropriate (for children aged four to five), and sustainable. Their preschool model has 5 core interdependent components: An integrative and evidence-based early child development curriculum. Teacher professional development training. School environment. School management and leadership. Community engagement.

We plan to develop and evaluate the ‘Irie Homes Toolbox’: a combined violence prevention and early stimulation intervention that will be delivered by preschool teachers in community preschools to parents of young children. The intervention aims to reduce child abuse and neglect and to promote positive parent-child interaction and stimulation in the home. It will include content related to child behaviour management, child-directed play and interactive book reading.

Children in deprived rural communities in Uganda do not receive adequate early childhood care and education ("ECCE"). This is partly because there is no state funded pre-school provision in Uganda. It is also due to very low levels of parental education, information and aspiration which prevents caregivers from providing their children with the opportunities they need to fulfil their full developmental potential. This leads to poor child health, poor learning and intellectual development, lost life opportunities and poverty.

Eamonn Keogh from University of California, Riverside in the U.S. will design and test a human computational game for individuals in developing countries to encourage positive behavior such as taking medication or attending school. The game is played on mobile phones, and begins with an automatic prompt to perform a specific healthy behavior, which then requires the individual to respond by sending photographic evidence of the behavior to a randomly selected individual for evaluation, with rewards offered for compliance.

Field testing (Tanzania) for development of tablet-based application for children in low resource environment to learn basic literacy and mathematical skills.

To solve the disconnection to the information world by making and developing low priced, easy-to-carry, braille assistants for Kenya, Africa and 3rd world areas using the multi active actuator technique along with technical and educational contents.