“You must choose your own path,” says her guide to Kanuki, heroine of Kanuki and the Wishing Tree, one of Worldreader students’ favorite books. It tells the story of a short-necked giraffe who seeks help in growing the long neck she needs. The eagle who leads her to the wishing tree says she must also … Continue Reading →

Worldreader’s large-scale projects always involve considerable monitoring and evaluation to examine how e-readers and access to digital books help children read more and read better. Our latest work in Ghana takes this effort even further. In 2010 when we launched our first pilot program, iREAD, we focused on providing access to required curriculum textbooks, supplementary … Continue Reading →

The last time I was at Ntimigom Primary and Nursery schools was a year ago. Since then, they have been featured on Al-Jazeera and CitizenTV Kenya, enrollment is up and absenteeism is down. Many students have transferred from other schools, and The Kilgoris Project has had to employ two new teachers to accommodate the now 400 … Continue Reading →

Part 2 of the Dr. Robert Ouko Memorial Community Library launch at the Menara Primary School in Kenya that includes the Worldreader Kit of 46 Kindles. Prior to the successful community launch and the following day, Worldreader kicked off our teacher training program. In addition to showing teachers how to use e-readers in their classrooms, our … Continue Reading →

by Zev Lowe Background: This is a Worldreader Kit of 46 Kindles in a school in Kenya that we are launching with the Dr. Robert Ouko Memorial Community Library at the Menara Primary School.  It is funded by the Gordons and their family/friends. The launch event was pretty grand. They had erected tents for the occasion (which they also … Continue Reading →

You’ve heard of Poetry Slams? It’s when poets compete on stage and perform their work. They’re usually lively affairs, and everyone walks away loving the ode and speaking in iambic pentameter. Last week, teachers and students in Ghana gave this idea a Worldreader twist. We’re not quite ready for the big time (yet), but we’ve … Continue Reading →

These last few weeks we’ve been chatting up our iREAD Vacation School. Now, that we have dug into the results and see the impact, we can’t stop thinking about it.  It started out as a really simple idea: Give kids access to books during their long vacation. Worldreader couldn’t let them take their devices home … Continue Reading →

Shadrack Lemiso is the headmaster of Intimigom Nursery and Primary School, just outside of Kilgoris. In 2009, he graduated from the University of Nairobi with a Bachelor’s degree in Education.  Shadrack, more than most, understands the value of education because he had to fight hard to get his.  When he was younger, he lived a … Continue Reading →

I’m heading to Kenya at the end of this week to lay the groundwork to bring e-readers into classrooms in East Africa. I’ll be meeting Caren McCormack of The Kilgoris Project, which serves 435 students in five schools near the Maasai Mara. Caren’s husband, Jon, heads up software development for the Kindle, and Caren is a … Continue Reading →

The iREAD launch marked the culmination of months of planning and preparation and it was very satisfying to watch everything come together. Many of the difficulties that we foresaw turned out not to be issues after all. We thought that the Primary students, who are just beginning to learn English, would have trouble with the … Continue Reading →