Turned Off Devices Means Turned Off Children

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I am a BSC graduate from Egerton University in Kenya and I have been working for MPrep since the beginning.

I got to know Toni, the founder and CEO of the company, through an introduction by a friend of mine in Network. When we met, we instantly became friends.

She told me about the company that she is starting up and I really liked her idea more so because the project is about bringing some positive change in society.

MPrep is a startup that focuses on an assessment-based system that quizzes students on topics learned in class to a multi-media learning platform accessible to as many students and schools as possible through widely used ICT. With an automated data, MPrep is finding amazing ways to give teachers and schools ongoing information about their students to target specific areas of need.

For 3 months now we have been working hard to enter data in our system and last week we went out to Ayany Primary School to test what we have already built. It was an exciting experience and the kids really liked it.

We started our journey to the school by taking a matatu from iHub. It took 15 minutes to get there, and we were warmly received by the headmistress Mrs. Mosi. After a few minutes, the lunch break was over and the students got back to class. The Class 8 teacher then took us to the classrooms. There are 4 streams, each with 50 students.

My colleague Chris and I decided to do the Demo on two classes for that day since we had limited time. We started by introducing MPrep and the benefits of our service to the students. Almost all of the kids have access to mobile phones at home, and they were so happy that they are finding a reason to request their parents to use their mobile phones.

We had carried 13 mobile phones with us and we divided students into groups and gave each group a phone for the Demo. We then took each group through the demonstration. Our students were so fast to learn and in less than five minutes they were able to do the quiz by themselves. It is amazing how well kids adapt to technology. It’s almost as if the desire to use it is innate.

One student was asking whether he could access Google on the MPrep platform and we had to explain to him that accessing the internet needs a GPRS enabled phone. This serves to show that MPrep creates a yearning in the child to know more. They get a lot of exposure and information through this platform that directly relates to what they learn in class. Hence, they are able to perform well in their studies.

Generally, the exercise was a great success and a big milestone in our quest to help the pupils get affordable and fast access to knowledge. By the end of last week we had over 1000 students registered in our database and 60% of them use our system in a given day and this is a great achievement to MPrep.

I look forward to sharing more experiences in days ahead.

— Isaac Kosgei, Operations Associate and mPrep Ninja

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