To be effective in honing Outernet as an education tool that delivers any of the above examples, we must do the following:

Effectively answer the “Who/What/When/Where/Why/How?” about Outernet. This can always be honed but will not be the focus of this post. We are always open to feedback to how we can better explain what Outernet is and how it works. Create a roadmap for education on Outernet. Rome was not built in a day and neither will Outernet deliver a panacea for global education overnight. But if we have a common understanding of goals, how those goals are prioritized, and what it takes to meet them, the path becomes clearer. This also helps answer item #1. Involve educators and similarly relevant stakeholders. Students, teachers, administrators, government, developers, publishers, open source enthusiasts… the list is actually endless because education touches us all. Involvement outside the academy is just as critical as those within. Share results. When we decide to send a collection of Creative Commons licensed mathematics textbooks in Hindi, are they being used? Are they what is needed? We have seen time and again that what one party thinks another party needs and what that other party actually needs can be quite different. It’s fine to fire several inaccurate shots at a problem, as long as we find out that they are indeed inaccurate and why.

How Outernet is relevant to every educator on Earth

At first glance, one might assume that Outernet is only relevant to a disconnected school in a developing country. We do not believe this to be true. There are three (or more) levels of Outernet’s application to curriculum development:

Primary: using Outernet as the means to receive curriculum materials. At this level, users are utilizing the direct output of the system (Outernet). Secondary: using Outernet as a teaching tool. At this level, users are not concerned directly with the output of the system, but studying the system itself. Rather than actually using the water coming out of the faucet, students learn about how plumbing works. Tertiary: using Outernet as a tie-in to reinforce other lessons. At this level, users are learning about larger systems that the Outernet system exists inside of or adjacent to.

Let’s look at each of these a little more in-depth.

Primary utilization of Outernet

This is the most obvious and direct use of Outernet. In places where digital content is unavailable, Outernet is relevant to educators as a means for accessing previously inaccessible pieces of education content.

An Outernet Library (Lighthouse) being installed in a school in Uganda.

Secondary utilization of Outernet

Some questions that could be asked that we ask ourselves at Outernet frequently:

How many people in the world have the internet?

What content do people want?

What data is useful, what data is wanted?

How does data flow around the world? What communication flows are needed, and how are they implemented?

How would another school connect to Outernet?

How do we fabricate and make for the common good?

What is an enduring human connection?

What makes Outernet special is that we are an open project actively seeking involvement. Students would not just look at Outernet from behind a glass window, but are invited to come inside and tinker. It would be like studying newspapers and having students learn about the process — do reporting, conduct research, write a story — and then actually have those stories published. It’s almost like a global school newspaper that can be tailored to any age.

Specifically, students can do the following things directly with Outernet:

Build an Outernet receiver. Students can use a Raspberry Pi (another great piece of learning hardware) to create an Outernet receiver. Involvement can be varied for different experience levels and can cover assembling hardware, software/coding, and then viewing the content Outernet sends just like remote schools do. Curate content to send over Outernet. If you could give a USB drive to every classroom on Earth, what would you put on it? Students can give their answer to this question. Individually or in groups, students can find content from the web that they think disconnected students around the world would want to read, watch, or hear. Outernet will then send that content and, if they built a receiver, they can see it arrive! Publish content on Outernet. Similar to curating existing content on the web, students can share their original work with other students around the world that receive content from Outernet. Connect a classroom. Students can donate an Outernet receiver to a school they already have a relationship with (e.g. sister schools, pen pals) or Outernet can match a classroom with a school in need from one of our partners. We will install an Outernet receiver and that school will receive any content the students select, plus all the other great educational material Outernet broadcasts.

I have outlined several brief drafts of lesson ideas here. We will be releasing full modules over the next few weeks.

Not only is this an awesome education project for students who can learn about how to think like editors and teachers, but they are building a valuable part of the Outernet library. Creating real world impact while navigating the learning process is a synergy not lost on students. For students relying on Outernet’s content, having a place to find content that their peers have chosen (in addition to educator-selected material) makes Outernet a better, more vibrant resource.

In other words, utilizing Outernet’s secondary education platform makes its primary education platform stronger.

Tertiary utilization of Outernet

Outernet exists because of so many other systems in the world. Some include:

Global economics, poverty, and flow of resources.

History, colonial legacies, and inequality.

Gravity, orbits of satellites.

Radio waves, frequency, communication technology.

Language, culture, preservation of identity.

Editorial, broadcast TV and radio, and ethics.

Building Outernet into a lesson plan for any of these topics gives a real world application to these big ideas. Again, we will be publishing lesson modules with examples of this over the coming weeks.

3. What’s next?

Including Outernet in curriculum design already happened during the fall of 2015 at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Charles Schweik included Outernet in his undergraduate honors seminar entitled “The Workshop in the Study of Knowledge Commons,” co-taught with two of his Research Library colleagues, Marilyn Billings and Laura Quilter. The final result was the students each selecting a piece of content to be sent over Outernet. Outernet sent that content during the week of December 14, 2015 as part of our weekly content selection. You can see the content itself here and its inclusion in our content schedule here.

Charlie will be writing more about the process and what next steps are, which we will publish very soon. Here is a summary from him:

In this pilot seminar class, we asked students in different majors at UMass Amherst (e.g., Engineering, Computer Science, Nursing, Journalism, Finance, etc.) to search online for open access (e.g., Creative Commons licensed) educational material that they thought students in some other part of the world — also interested in their major and who did not have Internet access — would find really useful. We used our course management system, Moodle, to create a wiki where each student could post a short description and a link to their finds. Next, we asked the students to review other student’s posts, and then come prepared to a work session class to argue for their two favorite items for inclusion in Outernet’s broadcast. One of their favorites should be one they found themselves, and the other should be one that one of their colleagues found that they really liked. In two final work class sessions, each student proposed their favorites, and as a group, we all looked at them briefly and discussed them. We had limited time in these sessions, so in the end, we only provided Outernet a list of 10 chosen documents. But as a pilot, this process worked pretty well, and while I (Charlie) do not have student course evaluations, informal feedback I received suggested the students really enjoyed this thought exercise and the fact they were contributing to, as Outernet calls itself, “Humanity’s Public Library.” As to next steps, I am still reflecting on this experience, but what I’d like to do next is build a student group at UMass that has an “Outernet Partner” — another university perhaps — in some location of the world where students do not have Internet access, but at least one person there has a method to Tweet. I’d like to establish a “full circle” communication system, where our partner school communicates to us subject or content areas THEY want, and we leverage our UMass students energy and interest to locate the very best open access material they can find for them following a similar process to the above. We communicate these items to the Outernet content folks, who then provide this content in their signal, either as Weekly Content, or possibly in the Core Archive if applicable. A puzzle I have is how we then can communicate back to our partner to let them know that their requested content will be transmitted in a particular Weekly Content feed. But in short, this is the process I’d like to try and undertake next.

An early draft of this Twitter request process is being piloted this week. The results will be discussed on Outernet’s community call next Thursday, January 21, 2016. I encourage anyone reading this to join the call.

Beginning in February 2016, GEMS Academy in Chicago will be teaching an Outernet inspired “Global Learning Project,” which is an adaptation of the curriculum document linked to above (and here, again, to save you from scrolling). We will be documenting this process along the way and sharing our findings with the community. Any other schools or teachers who are interested in participating are encouraged to mimic this curriculum, modify the curriculum, or create their own. All materials will be openly licensed. If you do want to participate and are interested in sharing feedback, please contact me. Communication amongst classrooms during this process would take this to another level of collaboration.

We are moving forward quickly and invite you to come along. Curious young minds do not have the luxury of patience.