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8/8/2016 Helping Powering Potential Inc. understand impact of technology at Tanzanian schools IBM Emerging Technologies Blog
http://blog.ibmjstart.net/2016/08/08/analyzingdatahelppoweringpotentialorganizationunderstandtechnologyusedtanzanianschools/ 1/7
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Helping Powering Potential Inc.understand impact of technologyat Tanzanian schools
August 8, 2016 John Feller and Ryan Soley
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START SMALL, GROW FAST TECHNOLOGIES WHAT WE’RE WORKING NOW GITHUB CONTACT US
8/8/2016 Helping Powering Potential Inc. understand impact of technology at Tanzanian schools IBM Emerging Technologies Blog
http://blog.ibmjstart.net/2016/08/08/analyzingdatahelppoweringpotentialorganizationunderstandtechnologyusedtanzanianschools/ 2/7
organization better understand how students are usingcomputers supplied to schools in the East African nationof Tanzania by analyzing data collected from log files. Powering Potential Inc. (PPI) is a non-profit organizationthat supplies technology to enhance education atsecondary schools in rural Tanzania. They supply theseschools with a solar energy system and a small computernetwork. The computer network consists of several low-wattage Raspberry Pi computers and monitors alongwith an offline digital library of education material. Thismaterial is hosted on a local server because there are noactive network connections directly to the Internet. Inaddition to the Computer Lab program, PPI alsoimplements a Pi-oneer program (portable projector/Picomputer/offline content) which teachers can take intotheir classrooms.
Janice Lathen, an American entrepreneur, startedPowering Potential in 2006 after visiting a ruralTanzanian school and becoming inspired by the studentswho responded so enthusiastically when she introducedherself in Swahili. She says, “It’s been an adventurousand challenging ten years and it is all worthwhile whenyou see the excitement on the faces of the students asthey are using the computers. Program beneficiarieshave secured employment because of their technologyskills and that is especially rewarding.”
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8/8/2016 Helping Powering Potential Inc. understand impact of technology at Tanzanian schools IBM Emerging Technologies Blog
http://blog.ibmjstart.net/2016/08/08/analyzingdatahelppoweringpotentialorganizationunderstandtechnologyusedtanzanianschools/ 3/7
Our jStart team’s collaboration with Powering Potentialstarted from an article hosted on the Open SourceInitiative (OSI) web site that described the PoweringPotential program and how Raspberry Pi computers werebeing used in Tanzanian schools. Janice Lathen, foundingdirector and president of Powering Potential, was askedhow people can help her organization. In addition tomonetary contributions, Janice mentioned that they werelooking for a “professional analyst to review our impactdata and create visual representations of it.” For thepast few years, the IBM jStart team has been workingwith big data technologies often using cloud-basedservices. We thought it would be great if our jStart teamcould help this worthwhile organization by using IBM’sanalytics cloud technologies to help them understandusage of the equipment that they are supplying toschools.
The Powering Potential team supplied us with severalserver log files from one of their schools. Even thoughthe initial dataset supplied for analysis was relativelysmall in size, we were able to provide insights to thePowering Potential management team. Our jStart teamused Spark and Jupyter notebook technologies hosted onIBM’s Bluemix Platform-as-a-Service to analyze thedata. Even though the Spark computing framework isprimarily used to analyze large data sets, we created acloud based solution so that future analytics resultscould be easily calculated. If the Powering Potentialteam experiences huge size growth in their collecteddata sets, our solution running on the Bluemix Sparkservice can handle it.
Since most of the schools have no direct Internetnetwork access, educational material has to be suppliedoffline. Therefore, the educational material is suppliedvia a package called RACHEL. RACHEL allows studentoffline access to selected Wikipedia articles, KhanAcademy math and science educational videos, ebooksof world literature from Project Gutenberg, and medical
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START SMALL, GROW FAST TECHNOLOGIES WHAT WE’RE WORKING NOW GITHUB CONTACT US
8/8/2016 Helping Powering Potential Inc. understand impact of technology at Tanzanian schools IBM Emerging Technologies Blog
http://blog.ibmjstart.net/2016/08/08/analyzingdatahelppoweringpotentialorganizationunderstandtechnologyusedtanzanianschools/ 4/7
reference books.
We first analyzed the data to identify the main sources ofcontent accessed (ex: Wikipedia or Khan Acadamyvideos?), the frequency the content is being accessed,and how often the computers were utilized. By far,Wikipedia content and Khan Academy were the mostpopular content sources accessed by the students.
Top 10 Educational Sources Accessed by Students
wikipedia_for_schoolskhan_academyebooks-enck12infonetpractical_actionunderstanding_algebraolpciicbascratch
From log data analysis, we were able to determine howoften the computers were utilized. We found that thecomputers were accessed during concentrated series ofdays, followed by periods of non-usage, followed byanother concentrated series of days of usage. Thisutilization activity could happen if a teacher had aparticular lesson plan over a series of days that involvedthe use of computers followed by lessons that did notutilize the computers or if the school had a holidaybreak. We also have been creating data charts andgraphs to help the PPI team evaluate CSEE (Certificate ofSecondary Education Examination) exam results forstudents enrolled at the schools that possess PPIcomputers.
START SMALL, GROW FAST TECHNOLOGIES WHAT WE’RE WORKING NOW GITHUB CONTACT US
8/8/2016 Helping Powering Potential Inc. understand impact of technology at Tanzanian schools IBM Emerging Technologies Blog
http://blog.ibmjstart.net/2016/08/08/analyzingdatahelppoweringpotentialorganizationunderstandtechnologyusedtanzanianschools/ 5/7
As we continue to collaborate with the PPI managementteam, we plan to analyze server logs from additionalschools. From these logs, we plan to determine whichschools are utilizing the computers more often andidentify the most popular content. Eventually, we’d like toanalyze the effectiveness of the participating schoolscompared to students who attend schools that don’thave access to Powering Potential computers. However,additional survey data needs to be collected fromstudents from both PPI and non-PPI schools in order tocalculate statistically significant results.
Janice Lathen is looking forward to see how analytics ofthe data from Tanzanian schools can help herorganization better serve students with technology. Janice says, “It is an honor to be working with jStart;they are upping our game.” The IBM jStart team ispleased to help this non-profit organization with itsworthwhile mission to enhance the educationalexperience of Tanzanian students with computer andnetworking technology.
START SMALL, GROW FAST TECHNOLOGIES WHAT WE’RE WORKING NOW GITHUB CONTACT US
8/8/2016 Helping Powering Potential Inc. understand impact of technology at Tanzanian schools IBM Emerging Technologies Blog
http://blog.ibmjstart.net/2016/08/08/analyzingdatahelppoweringpotentialorganizationunderstandtechnologyusedtanzanianschools/ 6/7
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John FellerSenior Software Engineer Manager at IBM
John Feller is the manager of the IBM jStartEmerging Technologies development team.He manages a creative and energetic teamof developers that architect, design, anddevelop innovative solutions focused onemerging internet software technologiesand creating solutions with tangible benefitto jStart's clients. John and his team alsovalidates these technologies in the realworld with customer use cases, technologyevaluations with customers, and workswith IBM product teams for integration ofthose technologies into the IBM portfolio.
Ryan Soley
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START SMALL, GROW FAST TECHNOLOGIES WHAT WE’RE WORKING NOW GITHUB CONTACT US
8/8/2016 Helping Powering Potential Inc. understand impact of technology at Tanzanian schools IBM Emerging Technologies Blog
http://blog.ibmjstart.net/2016/08/08/analyzingdatahelppoweringpotentialorganizationunderstandtechnologyusedtanzanianschools/ 7/7
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