Ask HN: Providing cheaper EdTech tools for rural zones

43 points

8 years ago

We are building a company (http://www.keedo.tn) to reduce the gap in education accessibility between urban and rural zones and private/public systems. We provide web apps and learning tools (we already started developing some tools like a virtual piano, body anatomy viewer, maps for geographic subjects, stories reader and so on) and we are fully cloud based, so everything is accessible and shared over the network.

Our big challenge is to provide a cheap computer with internet connection, (wifi/3G) support and acceptable performance. For information, the family income for our first clients in such regions, is on average $130 per month. We love the OLPC_XO http://laptop.org/en/laptop/ project idea (worldreader.org also) but their price is still high for our target clients and we try to avoid donations as much as possible.

First we thought about low cost white label tablets (most are china ODM/OEM providers), but from experience and reviews, they seems to be less performing with intensive usage. Now we have two solutions, either we use an already proven SOCs like PINE A64, Raspberry pi or we develop our custom pc. Any pointers, suggestions or collaborations will be highly appreciated!

42 comments

42 comments