SolarSPELL worked with a partner in South Sudan to provide virtual educational learning materials to over 35,000 primary and secondary students learning remotely from July through October 2020. Empower Kids South Sudan trained facilitators to take SolarSPELL units to schools in South Sudan during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The SolarSPELL devices are digital libraries designed and produced by ASU students and professors. They require no access to internet or electricity. Each SolarSPELL device encases a solar panel, a battery, and a Raspberry Pi, which are low-cost, extremely compact computers. All the educational resources are curated and stored on microSD cards inside each device.
Each SolarSPELL unit broadcasts an offline Wi-Fi hotspot that allows users to access the digital library through common internet browsers like Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox. The virtual interface for the library is designed to resemble the experience of using the internet.