Smart jungle innovation
Applying mobile-first and internet of things to educational opportunities in the jungle
It has been a while since I talked about what we are doing with technology. So here is an update.
Laptop vs Cellphone
I continue to believe the best approach is to start training on the mobile phones whenever possible. Last year I even started trying to work as much as possible from my phone. That experiment was rudely interrupted when my phone was stolen. It was several months before I could buy a replacement. But it gave my an insight that the phone is actually more indispensable than laptop. I will write a more detailed post about the Laptop vs Cellphone experiences.
Smart Jungle Automation
My background is automation, so I was very intrigued when one of the jungle communities told us they wanted to explore automation projects in their schools. We spent the last several months exploring some smart cities and marker spaces in Europe. Late last year, a friend asked me to the concept of a “digital nose”. This grew into a full hardware development project that Yuri and I have been working on for the past several months. This has given us an opportunity to explore more the internet of things (IoT) and embedded systems.
The community we are working with wants to transition to fully solar in the near future. As part of that process, they want to find ways to reduce their energy usage using automation. We initially started looking at some cities projects and educational kits. We visited Malaga Spain early this year. Malaga has been a leader in smart city engineering. Over the past several years, Malaga has reduced residential energy use by forty percent.
We have been exploring sensor development for smart agriculture and smart cities and looking at some of the educational kits that are available. We will be taking some of these same ideas back to the jungle communities. We hope to eventually create a “smart jungle” educational kit.
Teaching Innovation
I see many organizations offering training on office applications and business in the poor communities. These are worthwhile skills, but when I spent time in one of the jungle communities, I saw that there was very few jobs for those skills. The concern I have is that you have to build up the business need for the skills while also teaching the skills in the community.
My approach is to give people some tools and education that people can use to address needs they have in their daily lives. An inspiration on this ideas is The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind. In short, a boy in Mozambique salvages from the dump to build a wind turbine to power a water pump, and saves his dying community. Their are many ways that technology can be used to improve peoples lives, but instead of telling them what to do. I aim to provide education and tools to encourage people to find ways to build their own solutions.
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