This upcoming February, Open Learning Exchange Rwanda will distribute handheld devices called TeacherMates to approximately 620 students at Remera Catholic II Primary School in Rwanda. The goal of this project will be to provide evidence concerning whether, or not, Rwandan teachers, with the aid of the TeacherMate, can in one school year help their students significantly increase their basic literacy skills, compared with the conventional methods currently used. The TeacherMate device has been used successfully in the United States for native English speakers and ELL alike.

Rwanda is in a particularly favorable position for the TeacherMate pilot project. In 2009 the official language of instruction for schools in Rwanda was changed to English. This poses quite a challenge for teachers who were trained in French and Kinyarwanda to effectively teach in English. Fortunately, the Rwandan government has expressed a great willingness to explore a wide range of innovative approaches to improving the quality of education.

With the TeacherMate handheld device, students learn basic components of early literacy and numeracy independently using interactive activities and games. Headphones and built-in microphones enable students to listen to stories and instruction, as well as record themselves reading out loud. In classrooms with 45+ students, TeacherMate devices allow each student to work at their own pace and at their own level of readiness.

However, the real reason to be optimistic about this project is not the TeacherMate device itself, but the whole integrated learning system that comes along with it. Using the TeacherMate Content Management System application on a laptop, teachers can customize the devices for each student, align content to their curriculum, create student groupings, set individual or class skill levels, and view student progress reports. Should the TeacherMate project succeed in Remera, it could provide valuable lessons for using low-cost technologies for achieving quality literacy and numeracy instruction in Rwanda and worldwide.