SITUATION

Remote Locations: A rural region that has a population spread over a large area that has limited education services.

Internet 'Deserts': There is little or no broadband Internet connectivity available and what can be made available is too expensive for families.

Education Frustration: Distance learning, even if made available, is out of reach for students. Teachers are scarce and themselves have few or no online distance teaching experience.

PRODUCT

Bridging the digital divide, anywhere.

     To deliver rich content to anyone, everywhere, the use of a satellite is the most price competitive and quickly deployable method. There is a need to make educational content available to the 3 billion+ people living in the most remote parts of the world.

     LearningSpots uses a satellite to deliver any type of content, with access provided by various types of 'last mile' connectivity, ranging from basic Wi-Fi access to more advanced networks such as Wireless ISP and/or Mobile Operators. 

     The ‘Create once, publish everywhere’ digitized content is synchronized, using the content delivery software, with the LMS that is actually residing at edge media gateway servers, that are connected to the satellite or last mile wireless network.

     The innovation of this project is that the individuals accessing the content do not require an Internet connection, yet their experience is as if they were connected.

     This innovative approach is what allows students to access the delivered education content using their smart device and the Wi-Fi network that is created by the edge media gateway server, and experience learning as if they were connected to the Internet.

SOLUTION

     LearningSpots are implemented at designated locations where students can go to interact with their school’s online learning service. The edge media gateway hardware at the LearningSpots consist of satellite (or digital terrestrial) reception capabilities and various embedded web and streaming servers, all running on solid state disk drives (SSDD) of 1TB or 2TB in size.

     These SSDDs hold vast amounts of multimedia-rich, educational material that is managed by the school system. The Learning Management System (LMS) that has been integrated with the LearningSpots solution is Moodle, but, other LMS's could be considered for integration as part of a project.

   Whatever LMS brand is chosen, it can be integrated with Curriki, a non-profit education technology company, that provides a free-use authoring platform called CurrikiStudio, that provides a very easy way for educators to adopt blended learning and online teaching. The most important feature of CurrikiStudio being that educators create once, and publish to the various LMS's already integrated with CurrikiCloud, which include Google Classroom, Canvas, Docebo, TalentLMS, Moodle, and others.

     Students can log-in when physically present at a LearningSpot and experience an “online” interaction experience with their lesson assignments, even though they are not actually connected to the Internet itself. If time at a LearningSpot is limited, a student can download lessons and go home to complete them. A trip back to the LearningSpot is required to “upload” the statistics regarding their engagement with the downloaded lessons that were completed, and get the next lessons.

     Educators are provided student usage data and offer limited chat support through the low bandwidth (128kbps) return data connection that can be via satellite or some other wireless or fixed network that may be available.

     The LearningSpots solution can start with a few locations and quickly move to 1000's by simply installing more LearningSpots.

     In addition to COSatellite Solutions’ LearningSpots product providing a reliable and complete technical solution that exceeds the vision of most local, state, federal and country ‘Free Education to All’ vision statements, we have made it incredibly affordable.

     How affordable? As low as $75* one-time per student, including a 10” Android Tablet & Keyboard (Wi-Fi), and $6* per Year per student 

*Rate is for 1m+ 'online learning' students across 5,000 LearningSpots locations within the same satellite coverage area under contract, with a new tablet w/keyboard given to each student. To obtain a quote for your project, click on the "TELL US ABOUT YOUR LEARNINGSPOTS PROJECT" button below.