2017 ICT4D Conference

At this session, we'll discuss Project Connect's goal to map every school in the world and measure its connectivity. Project Connect is a new non-profit, created in January of 2017, working to provide online mapping of every school in the world, including real time data about the quality of each schools connectivity, in order to create an observable metric of the progress towards enabling educational access and opportunity for all students.



We are working on three main lines of effort. The first is working with governments and ngos, to collect existing data about school location and internet connectivity. We are also



combining existing data on school locations with high-resolution satellite imagery and machine learning to determine if we are able to develop an algorithm that can ultimately find schools. We are also doing some on the ground data collection and crowd-sourcing pilots. We will also do country-specific operational research projects where we work with providers to connect schools and learn from it.



Most importantly, this tool is meant to serve as enabling infrastructure for the broader goals of providing quality education and extending internet connectivity. So this session will be an interactive workshop, thinking through ways to improve our data collection and ensure the tool is as useful as possible as we are designing it.