The Digital Library project is intended to provide a low cost WiFi device hosting a library of digital documents, browser based applications and other materials suitable for use in a classroom or similar environment, with around 40 PCs, tablets and mobile smart phones as client devices.
No Internet connection is required to use the device – the content is stored locally on the digital Library.
Several off-the-shelf router devices may be used, starting at a cost of around $20. The software is based on the well proven OpenWRT software.
Library content may be stored on USB, SD Card memory devices which may be 8GB to 128GB in size. A USB connected SSD may also be used for larger storage. Multiple USB devices may be used, allowing local content to be managed separately to the main library.
A basic library image has been developed containing some 40GB of content, largely drawn from the OER2GO website (oer2go.org). The library contains material with licences that allow free use.
Additional applications such as Sugarizer (which provides the interactive Sugar graphical learning environment) have been included.
The basic library image includes:
• Wikipedia for Schools
• Khan Academy Maths and Science Videos
• Phet Interactive Simulations for Science and Maths
• Siyavula / CK-12 Textbook
• African Story Books / Book Dash / Cat and Dog Books / Mustard Seed Books / English Storybooks
• Gutenberg Project – Great Books of the World
• Blockly Games
• OLE Nepal Collection of Digital Learning Materials
• Women in African History
• Maps of the World
• MedlinePlus / Hesperian / Khan Academy Health and Medicine
• InfoNet-Biovision Articles on Agriculture, Environment and Health subjects.
• Practical Action Knowledge Bank of Technologies
• Sugarizer Interactive Sugar graphical learning environment from XO laptops.
Users can add local content to the main library memory device or to a second memory device, either by uploading files via the web interface, or by preparing files for the memory devices on a separate PC.
The Digital Library can connect to an upstream network via Ethernet or WiFi in order to provide access to additional on line resources such as an Internet connection. DNS Filtering is supported to ensure inappropriate content is not accessible through the Digital Library.
Firmware for various devices is available to download here:
http://download.villagetelco.org/firmware/digital-library/
An associated project has been developed to provide a classroom micro-server for the Kolibri application developed by Learning Equality (learningequality.org)
This project uses low cost Android TV boxes running Armbian/Debian as the hardware platform, originally developed by Inovato (inovato.com) as the Quadra device.
These may be used in conjunction with Digital Library devices to provide WiFi access for a classroom.
Firmware and documents are available here:
https://terabox.com/s/1se4fp28Ajb73V1qcQ_nAzg