Learner's Block

Learner's Block is an open source project that lets individuals and organisations provide their educational resources, websites and apps to users offline.

Anyone can benefit from the device. While we have built the device with education in emergencies in mind, with a particular focus on the huge growth of EdTech during COVID-19, Learner’s Block is intentionally non-prescriptive. Look at its features and flexibility, and feel free to use it as you see fit, in the sectors you feel can benefit.

As with any technology based project however, costs are incurred. Donations will be used to cover costs of:

As per the principles and philosophies of the Open Collective platform, everything raised and spent will be made available to see, right here.

Not a single cent will go to waste. Funds will be used for hardware grants if the amounts in any category surpass what is expected to be required in the long-term.

Donations to the Donation category are preferred as it allows for funds to be moved around where they are needed most.

Note:

Features of the Learner’s Block are chosen by our community through our voting platform at https://vote.learnersblock.org. When specialist skills or time is needed to make the most voted for features come to life, funds will be drawn on accordingly. Certain features cannot be funded directly, donations through the funding tier are for a pooled fund guided by the voting platform. Bug fixes will always be given priority to maintain a stable platform.

Hardware grant donations will be used for hardware grants only. We appreciate that this is what you had in mind when you donated, and we will therefore fulfil your wishes. If you are able to provide a more open donation, we would encourage use of the Donation tier.

Hardware grant recipients will be provided the option to keep their identities private, and donations in the Hardware Grants category may therefore be recorded as anonymous recipients. 

A Learner's Block is free, feature rich, adaptable, durable, technologically advanced and built to be as simple as humanly possible to operate (see our website for more details). But it is more than just its features, it is about the way we operate. 

EdTech has become big business, especially in the humanitarian and development world. Private companies, technology experts and even non-government organisations (NGOs) - many of which inspired and informed by San Francisco start-up philosophies - have been burrowing away on their EdTech interventions. While adding value, and certainly admirable, this drive raises concerns. It is clear that certain actors in the EdTech industry are treating EdTech, and the COVID-19 crisis as a business opportunity. For others, it is erroneously seen as a panacea for education around the world or substitute for the right to education. 

Understandably, educators - many of ourselves included - are still wary of being involved in EdTech. We are still trying to identify how or if EdTech should be blended into learning. This however, does not permit our absence from the conversation. The world is currently writing and cementing a new chapter of education interventions and it is vital that this one is written in concert with different authors than those who wrote the last.

How? Well, a new breed of organisation is changing the shape of industries the world over. Community built, community led, community focused projects leave behind the market-based principles and politics of the private and NGO world that have so often constrained the education sector and left control of our education interventions in the hands of the few. 

The Learner’s Block adopts this community organisation philosophy from start to finish. All of its features are chosen by the community through our voting platform and funded by our community through a completely transparent Open Collective initiative. It is built on the principle that EdTech can best fulfil needs when it is, adaptable, as simple to use as humanly possible and is free, easily accessible and controlled by the organisations, educators and learners that use it. Through the Learner’s Block we thrive to keep EdTech in the hands of the education community.