Bringing offline AI to your school: a pilot checklist

Aboki has not been piloted yet, and we would rather a first pilot be small, honest and useful than big and rushed. This checklist is what we would want any school, NGO or community programme to think through before starting. Use it with us, or on your own.

1. Decide what you want to find out

A pilot is a question, not a launch. Write down one or two, for example:

• Do pupils use homework mode at home, and for which subjects?
• Do parents feel confident handing over the phone?
• Which questions does Aboki answer badly?

Keep the group small. One class, or twenty to thirty families, is plenty to learn from.

2. Check the phones families already have

Aboki is made for the phones people already own, not new devices. Ask families what phone they have and how much memory it has. Phones with Android 7 or newer and 3 GB of memory can run Aboki Lite; 4 GB phones can run Aboki Study, which is better at school subjects. The guide which phone can run offline AI shows how to check.

3. Plan how the file reaches each phone

This is the hardest part of any rollout. The model file has to get onto each phone once, and families should not pay data for it. Options that work well together:

• Download the model once on the school's Wi-Fi, onto one phone or a computer.
• Copy it onto a few SD cards and pass them around, or connect phones to the computer by USB.
• Let families share it onwards with Xender or Nearby Share. Our phone-to-phone guide is written to be printed and handed out.

4. Prepare the library

Aboki reads offline library packs before answering, which makes it more accurate on those topics. The starter pack covers a handful of subjects. Teachers can add more: in the app, Library has a Make your own pack option with a template you fill in with your own topics, then share like any other file. A pack written to your own syllabus is one of the most valuable things a school can bring to a pilot.

5. Set up homework mode with parents, not for them

Homework mode needs a parent PIN, and the parent should be the one who knows it. Show each parent how to switch it on, pin Aboki to the screen and look at what their child asked. Our parents' guide walks through it.

6. Be clear about the limits

• Answers are mostly in English for now, even though the app itself speaks Hausa, Yorùbá, Igbo and Pidgin.
• Small models make mistakes. Pupils should check with the textbook or the teacher.
• On cheaper phones, answers come slowly, a few words at a time.

Saying this to parents at the start builds more trust than finding out later. See what Aboki can't do yet.

7. Decide how you will listen

Aboki collects nothing from phones, so it cannot tell you how it is being used. That is deliberate, and it means a pilot has to learn by asking. Simple works best: a short conversation with each family after two weeks and again after six, and a page where teachers note questions Aboki got wrong. With a parent's permission, the questions in the Parent area are a useful thing to look at together.

8. Talk to us

We want to support first pilots, help write library packs and fix what does not work. See Aboki for schools and for organizations, or email us.