Solar-powered, Digital Classroom-in-Box: A Digital System to Mitigate the Digital Divide of Post-pandemic Education

In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, many schools (primary, secondary, and tertiary) have been forced to go online, using fully virtual and hybrid models of schooling. Leveraging digital technology to carry out learning has been the de facto alternative to simply halting schooling. While the pandemic has wreaked havoc on schools, it has also accelerated digital delivery of education into a mainstream practice. Along with numerous benefits, digital learning also poses some challenges, such as inequity in access to educational resources. Digital learning is still out of reach for large populations in many developing regions, either due to lack of infrastructure or because it is not affordable. Since digital learning, as well as digital divides, will still be with us in the post-pandemic world, there is a need to develop pathways for delivering access to education, while also being cognizant of digital divides and a lack of resources in many areas of the world. As one of the ways to answer that need, we investigated the impact of a solar powered education system that is designed to deliver educational contents to less privileged people of the developing world, particularly in rural locations, and mitigate the digital divide in education. The engineered system is composed of a solar panel, battery, a pico-projector, and digital content stored in the projector. The system unlocks the opportunity to deliver education at remote locations where internet and electricity are not commonplace and reliable.