A Little About OMO

Growing up in Kenya it was common to see in many households OMO as the first washing powder, so much so that OMO was used to mean “detergent.” It was not surprising to hear children at kiosks asking the shopkeeper for “OMO ya Sunlight” or “OMO ya Toss.” Such was OMO’s influence. OMO is an acronym for Old Mother Owl. This name brings to mind wisdom and nurturing care, connotations which are not accidental.

Certain factors made it possible for OMO to have such a significant impact. It is not that there was no competition. There was Persil, Orbit, and Sunlight. OMO had first-mover advantage. According to the Unilever website, it was introduced in Kenya in 1953. By the time similar products had hit the market, it was a bit too late.

OMO had also garnered mass appeal from a favorite quiz show called OMO Pick-A-Box. It was a Sunday-night staple of every household. By the end of the month, and thus shopping day, OMO was the only thing on almost everyone’s mind as far as a detergent was concerned.

You may wonder what a short history of a traditional soap and its marketing might have to do with educational solutions built for the periphery. During the 2015 BRCK Expedition, while we were at Kiltamany Primary School, an interesting thought occurred us: this was the first time a lot of the people there were seeing and using tablets. Not just any tablets, but bright yellow ones with the word “Kio” at the back. Like OMO, it is a simple, easy-to-remember two-syllable word that captures the imagination.

It would be a welcome thing to have our product synonymous with tablet computing, and thus digital education. We could work on this aspect of our brand to ensure that in every country the Kio Kit is shipped to, any similar devices will be referred to as Kios, much like quite a few of us call non-Apple tablets iPads. That kind of brand recognition would put us miles ahead.

But, we would be putting on a show, instead of striving to build something that makes a positive difference to pupils and teachers in remote areas. The attention that we garner has to come from a sincere and honest place. We want to hear teachers telling us how the Kio Kit has made their work easier. We want to see children’s eyes going wide at the prospect of using a Kio during class, and we want to see their grades getting better because of the Kio Kit. We would like parents to let us know what an improvement The Kio Kit has made in their children’s lives.

Awareness about us has to come from being genuine and building relevant products.

We have tested The Kio Kit extensively.

We go for expeditions, not merely for the fun, but to put our products out there and ensure they live up to our brand’s promise, that it will work in the places we claim it will work and in the way we guarantee. We have also tested the Kit in schools in and around Nairobi and not just in exotic locations. The value that the Kio Kit can deliver goes for both private and public schools. Partnering with content publishers such as eLimu and Pearson ensures that we provide the most up-to-date and relevant learning materials.

OMO is still in great ways interchangeable with laundry washing. The word “Kio” is a play on the Swahili word “kioo” meaning mirror. The Kio tablet (and Kit) is intended to make you see your potential, what you could become. We do not just imply this. We firmly believe that making learning devices and materials easily and affordably accessible to children in the remotest regions of the country (and the world) will put them on a better footing with their age mates in more affluent and well-developed areas. The Kio Kit is the best solution for this.

A year ago, I coined a phrase that grounded my passion for human centered design and is the reason I wake up every morning. “Africa cannot afford un-contextualized design, the stakes are simply too high” never is this so true than in education.

One of the reasons I joined and love BRCK is because BRCK dares to go where others won’t. This week we’re in northern Kenya, a remote place with many challenges. Many don’t go to these extreme environments because of the geographical, social and economic constraints. However, we at BRCK hold a different point of view, that they matter and it makes both social and economic sense to design for the real Africa.

Mark Kamau taking quick notes as the teachers learn the Kio Kit

Tirrim Primary School is a good example. It is school in the desert, a long way up from Isiolo town, and has been the top primary school in testing in Marsabit County since 2008 sending their graduates to the most prestigious schools in the country. It is a charity school paid for by missionaries and has 620 pupils. Their dream, according to one of the teachers, is to become the “RVA (Erik’s former school) of the desert.” It is a lofty and worthy goal, especially considering people of Korr think on themselves as ‘Kenya B’ because of the sense of isolation and neglect of this desert folk feel from the rest of the country. Despite their limited access, these kids are expected to sit the same national exam and pitted against the same yardstick tablet wielding, smartphone trending students in Nairobi.

As a human centered designer with a passion for Africa, this is amazing territory. The Kio Kit sets out to answer a fundamental design question. ‘How can we convert any rural classroom into a digital classroom?’

In tackling this difficult challenge we made some assumption and learnt some lessons these are specific to this expedition.

1. CONTEXTUALIZED GUIDES

We set out to create guides for using the Kio Kit is English as it is the national language upon which all examinations are taken, but the role of local language in education, even when explaining technology is simply too effective to ignore. Today I observed a nuanced but interesting example. One teacher was trying to explain to a class of lower primary kids what the back button was on the tablet using conventional English and it took him a while to get them on board. Another said please click the “Khonjor” and all the students understood it immediately.

Some Rendille children on the Kio tablets

In the Rendille language Khonjor is a sickle, one the kids grow seeing their parents use for cutting plants. This shape allowed them to understand the reference as the blade points “back”. I also observed that even a few miles apart, the nuanced pronunciation of the same word meant the difference in understanding of things. While it is means more work, we have to contextualize the Kio Kit guides in localized videos.

2. COLLABORATIVE EXPERIENCES

With tablets, the idea is that students each get a tablet and are able to access content individually. In this construct, it is easy to diminish the importance of collaborative learning. The younger students are, the more they learn from observing and collaborating with each other. The content and games on the Kio Kit that we tested emphasized the need to have even more experiences in the Kio Kit that take advantage of this collaboration.

A teacher with the Kio tablet

2. AUTHORITY CHALLENGE

The typical construct of a normal Kenyan school is that the teacher has the authority, they dictate what happens in the classroom and assume leadership, responsibility and authority. The tablet presents a different paradigm because with the tablet in their hands, the students have more responsibility than listening and writing. They play a more active role in their own learning. Handling this shift is challenging to teachers and their usual classroom control skills don’t directly apply. We therefore need to invest more time on classroom management training with technology.

There are many more lessons we have learnt from technical centered challenges to human centered challenges that energize us as we ride back home to make the Kio Kit work even better. Most of all, interacting with people motivates us to want to do even better.

BRCK is at it again. Over the past 48 hours, much has been said about “BRCK Education’s” launch of their flagship products the Kio and the Kio Kit.  The Kio is a ruggedized tablet for African schools and the Kio Kit is a revolutionary digital classroom in a box. It consisting of 40 tablets plus a BRCK+PI acting as a Micro server and then there is the genius behind the packaging that brings it all together. Journalists from every corner of the earth, on Forbes, Quartz, ZDNet, techweez , the blogosphere and techies in general got their fix on juicy tech stats and congratulatory messages galore ensued.

This blog is for the non-techies, the behind the scenes of an Apple-esque product launch, what the product is and why it is a big deal.

The journey starts 3.5 years ago with the birth of BRCK a Nairobi consumer electronic company that decided to design and engineer connectivity devices for Africa. Africa has it’s fair share of infrastructure, power and environmental curve balls that make electronics made for other places as severely handicapped as my golf game. So several years later, the BRCK, a ruggedized, dust/drop proof, connectivity-source-agnostic, modem + router has been sold in 54 countries worldwide in 5 continents. It has an 8 hour battery life with 20 devices connected to it making it the ideal way to connect in the Masai Mara, some places in the Scottish highlands and right now as I sit at a Java house at Adams Arcade Nairobi, generally one of the most reliable Wi-Fi locations in Nairobi but today I am greeted by a “Limited access” message on the Wi-Fi screen.

For the backstage pass to the launch, let’s start a year and a half ago, we the BRCK team at this point are working in schools in Tanzania, Uganda and Kenya solving connectivity issues using the BRCK in schools at the edge of the network. The lessons learned from this super cool pilots is that by using the BRCK to cache content, the students got to experience better digital learning. The education space is a dynamic space. We needed a platform that kids could surf infinite amounts of information from the web but cache it on the BRCK. We also needed a platform that could be remotely updated; as we all know PLUTO has A.D.D., it could be a planet, demoted to a moon and partially re-promoted to a dwarf planet in a span of a few months. Whatever that means, kids in a school by the Serengeti should be able to enjoy the drama unfold just as much as kids in New York.

So BRCK did what it does best. People first, Design second and then Technology brings it all together. The BRCK team does no less than 5000 Miles of “adventure” trips a year to make sure that they understand the environment in which they design for. So visiting schools in Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania became a staple for the team. The outcome was the two products that I mentioned earlier. The Tablet was named Kio, and then many designs later, after dropping, breaking, igniting and crashing several iterations, the Kio was ready for prime time. How do we then introduce it to the world? How better than to make a “Tough Mudder” type of video to showcase its robustness. Drop it from over 2ft/70cm onto concrete, pour a glass of water on to it, into dust, finish off with sticky chewing gum fingers, the Kio is ready for whatever Africa can throw at it and it fits perfectly into the hands of a 7 year old.

“But building the Kio is climbing half the mountain” – Erik Hersman. BRCK needed to make sure that these Kios are housed, charged and have a “brainiac” of a mother onboard to take care of the children. So a Kio Kit was designed, hardy, waterproof, portable, intelligent, in a couple of words, beautifully rugged. A class in a box that has one power button each to bring both the BRCK+PI and the Kios to life. When turned on, the wireless, induction charging is what techies would call sexy.

After many sleepless nights, globetrotting to find the best partners in tech and content, the likes of Intel, Mozilla, JP, Pearson, e-limu, eKitabu the Kio Kit was ready to be launched. So now the hard work to find the venue, Event Company, set up design and execution.

For product launches, there are generally two schools of thought, the first and mostly applied, is to throw a big party, get everyone totally partied-up and boozed up. The problem is that you get to be the most talked about company in town but for the party and not the product. The second approach, which is what Apple and Tesla do and BRCK is following closely which is to unveil your product in a well-choreographed event and let the product speak for itself.

Enter Nivi, President of BRCK Education and Angie, the Program Manager, the two most efficient machines in multi tasking, planning and coordination. Several white boarding sessions later and a 22 page excel spreadsheet of plans nothing is left to fate. Invitations, guest lists, venue, program, transport, catering, lights, camera and action all accounted for. Then the larger BRCK family went to work gnawing at the huge launch piece by piece. Design, print, packing, moving, building, decorating, early mornings, late nights, a diet of coffee and pizzas, pretty soon the day was upon us.

The event went on with the precision of a world class event, Forbes, Quartz, Twitter and the gambit in attendance, you can go there for the glitz and glam. As a behind the scenes blog, I will dwell on the things that were not going as planned. The first thing to cause us a sleepless night was the foam plastic K from the big BRCK logo tumbled off stage breaking into a million pieces at 4pm the day before the launch, our fabricators had to perform magic to replace the K. This is just one of several more hurdles to jump, dry runs, team meetings, more pizza, several ubers and we went to sleep really late.

Early Tuesday Morning, Erik Hersman the CEO sent a wake-up call to everyone at 6:27am. An hour later the team was applying final touches to the space, fresh coffee from Pete’s a much welcome kick-starter but that big locomotive of an espresso machine tripped the whole electricity system crashing it minutes before the event started. Saved by the bell, the awesome event company (HomeBoyz) came through again by providing fusing and stop gaps. Another disaster averted.

The guests came in ready for the BRCK Yellow carpet. Many smiling faces, friends, family, the press in large numbers, guests from all walks of life including the class one school children from our piloting schools. Soon the show and tell was in full force, partners being recognized, product unveiling, a few loud EDM songs, captivating presentations and wowing videos.

Finally how better to showcase the product than walking out of the auditorium to find a full classroom set up with the kids learning, growing and playing on the Kios with the Kio Kit in full display. Everyone had a chance to look, touch, feel and get up-close with the products. The BRCK team at the ready to answer all the questions.

In conclusion, Education in Africa will never be the same again. It is time for a kid in sub-Saharan Africa to be able to enjoy videos of Africa’s child Elon Musk’s rockets going to the space station just like the kids in the Palo Alto area. A few people were concerned about the way to finance these Kits but I am not afraid of that. Already there is exciting interest from some schools, the awesome CHASE BANK KE has a no interest loan to schools and several pioneers like African Wildlife Fund are deploying Kio Kits to schools in Uganda, Ethiopia, Congo and beyond. I was quick to remind people that the Kenyan citizen is called Mwanainchi which means “child of the country/soil/earth” so together, we will see this dream of digitizing our children through to fruition. END

BRCK Education Kio and Kio Kit Launch from BRCK on Vimeo.

When we set out to build the BRCK, we wanted to take care of the rampant connectivity and power issues that prevent many people in the developing world from being as efficient or as effective in their jobs. We did this, and we ended up becoming one of Kenya’s first consumer electronics’ companies. We were very excited about this, and the recognition we were getting, but the BRCK was built to be much more. When it was designed, we included a USB port and a micro web server, that at the time, just seemed like cool features. Over time, we came to appreciate that they were so much more. You could access content from the BRCK but we felt this was not enough, so we combined the BRCK with a Raspberry Pi computing module to give it a bit of a boost. This enabled access to rich and interactive websites and content, from the same rugged form factor as the original BRCK.

There are numerous challenges facing education in developing countries. Since the BRCK together with the Pi, enables access of locally-cached and web-hosted content, we thought it could prove a useful tool to both teachers and students if they could access up-to-date educational materials, and give them an edge and enable them to compete with schools with more resources. This was in line with our ethos of promoting equality in education and levelling the playing field by using the same technologies as the rest of the world but tweaked to our particular context. At BRCK Education, we do not think the only sources of knowledge and information in a classroom should be teachers and textbooks. The four walls of a classroom should not limit a child’s access to learning, playing and growing. This technology, however, cannot replace the role of a teacher. It makes access to information much easier.

The easiest way to deliver educational content to students is through tablet computers. Initially, tablets, even the ones made for schools, were not durable and did not have the kind of features we needed: a long battery life, an easy-to-use interface and some sort of durability. Until now. Due to the demands of our environments, and the fact that children are bound to drop and spill fluids on the tablets, we designed and engineered the Kio Tablet, to be rugged, adaptable and unbelievably functional. We built the Kio specifically to the needs we exhaustively identified during our field tests in schools. Even with the progress we made, we felt like we had only climbed half the mountain.

Having the tablets was well and good, but tablets need to be charged. One of the barriers to using tablets effectively is the inconvenience of remembering to charge them and the fact that charging cables break frequently. Also, tablets present a security fear: they are small and can be easily stolen. So, how about a rugged kit, that provides both the charging and security needed for the tablets in one go? The Kio Kit. It comes with wireless charging and is lockable, and in case a tablet is taken away from it, we built the firmware to prevent flashing of its operating system. The Kio Kit can hold and charge 40 tablets, each of which can run for 8 hours on a single charge.

What we are doing is not just selling technology. We passionately believe in our ability to positively impact the quality of learning of students in Kenya. But, we cannot do this alone. We are proud that both local and international organizations, both big and small, have joined us to make this dream a reality. The Kio Kit will be available for pre-order today, limited availability begin on November 1st and we expect general availability from January 1st 2016. The Kio Kit will go for USD 5,000 and a Kio Tablet will go for USD 100.

For more information, you can visit our website at education.brck.com. Also, feel free to email us at [email protected] or tweet us at @brcknet. You can also find us on Facebook at brcknet.