Mukono Digital Classroom

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Imagine a high-tech classroom with no internet. That's the Mukono Digital Classroom, an early-stage experiment exploring what offline AI could look like in a primary school in rural Uganda. The prototype you're looking at is real and functional: speech recognition, translation between English and five Ugandan languages, text-to-speech in multiple voices, exam prep with automated grading, educational videos with translated captions and textbooks with translation at a click across all core subjects—all running on low-cost hardware.

The project is centered on Mukono Primary School, a public school in the Kanungu District of Uganda supported by the Pursuit of Excellence (POE) Scholarship Foundation. POE funds lunch, breakfast, teacher salaries and training, scholastic materials and provides financial scholarships for top performing students. On the national PLE exam, the school went from a total of 3 students scoring in the top division over the past decade to 11 in the most recent cycle, making it the second-best public school in the district. POE also built 5 new classrooms and a multi-purpose room with electricity where the Digital Classroom will be hosted.

Making this work on an 8 GB server when the best available translation models have never seen many academic terms takes creative problem-solving. The system simplifies concepts before translating, draws on custom glossaries, and uses fine-tuned models trained on Ugandan curriculum content. The result is an offline LLM that can explain topics, grade exam answers, and hold a conversation—all on low-cost hardware. Translation is powered by Sunbird AI's models fine-tuned for Ugandan languages, educational videos come from Kolibri by Learning Equality, and when connectivity is available the system can tap into Claude by Anthropic for richer, more detailed responses.

This is a working prototype with room to grow, and it would benefit hugely from collaboration—whether that's curriculum content, language expertise, funding, or help deploying hardware in schools. If any of that sounds interesting, or you just have feedback or questions, please reach out to Matt Goldman at [email protected].

Hardware & Cost

2× NVIDIA Jetson Orin Nano Super ($260 each), 256 GB NVMe SSD (~$25), 2× 64 GB microSD (~$8 each), 30× Samsung Galaxy Tab A9 (~$150 each), 30× wired headsets with mic (~$11 each), 30-port USB charging station (~$60), WiFi router (~$60), various cables and surge protectors (~$50). Total ~$5,600 per classroom.

Languages

Runyankole, Luganda, Acholi, Ateso, and Lugbara via Sunbird AI’s fine-tuned NLLB translation models. Additional local languages can be supported by wrapping around any suitable translation model.

AI Pipeline

Speech recognition (Sunbird Whisper Large V3 SALT), pronunciation checking (Whisper Tiny.en), translation (Sunbird NLLB 1.3B), LLM (Qwen 3.5-4B), English TTS (Piper), Runyankole TTS (VITS). All models run locally—no cloud required.

Architecture

Two-Jetson (fully offline): Jetson A (gateway) serves the UI, runs the LLM and English text-to-speech. Jetson B (worker) runs speech recognition, translation, and Runyankole text-to-speech. Everything works without internet.

Single-Jetson alternative (~$300): One Jetson runs translation, speech recognition, and text-to-speech fully offline. Q&A and explanations use the Claude API when internet is available.

30 student tablets connect via browser—no app install needed.

Content Safety

Extensively tested safety classifier ensures the model only engages with age-appropriate questions for East African primary school students. This classifier can be tuned for local norms.

Electricity

Each Jetson draws 7–15 W under load (~10 W average). A WiFi router adds ~8 W. Each Samsung Galaxy Tab A9 uses ~3.5 W during active screen-on use and needs ~19 Wh to fully recharge its battery. For a 6-hour school day:

2 Jetsons: 2 × 10 W × 6 h = 120 Wh
WiFi router: 8 W × 6 h = 48 Wh
30 tablets (recharge): 30 × 19 Wh = ~570 Wh
Total: ~740 Wh (0.74 kWh) per day

That’s less than a single lightbulb left on for a day. Peak wall draw is under 300 W (even with all 30 tablets charging simultaneously through a USB charging cart), well within a single 240 V outlet. A small UPS or solar-battery setup could keep the system running during outages.

Connectivity

Fully offline by default. Optional Claude integration when internet is available. The tablets have no SIM cards, no cellular data, and no internet access—they connect only to the classroom WiFi network. Away from the Jetsons they are little more than basic Android tablets with no content, making them low-value theft targets.

💡 Ask how to do something

Type a question about using the app — e.g. "how do I mark an essay?"

Translating and explaining hard words3 min

Asking questions in English and local languages6 min

Running a guided lesson2 min

Exploring the map3 min

Giving the class an assignment4 min

Tracking who has done what4 min

UNEB PLE 2025

UNEB PLE 2026

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Multiple choice

0 of 0 checked

Select your class or create a new one

Class:

🔑 Change my password

This is your own password, not the class's — you use it to open every class you teach. Change it once and it works for all of them. Nobody else's password changes.

A child's password is reset from their row below (Reset PW). Whether children are asked for one at all is a school-wide setting on the headmaster page.

Headmaster: school settings & end-of-term reset →

Create

Edit

Corrections

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Saved Diagrams

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Add practice questions to a video or textbook section. They are mixed into the quiz a student takes right after that content — they are not assigned on their own. For a quiz you assign by itself, use Quiz.

Edit the sections students see for a textbook — rename, change where a section starts, delete, or add new ones. End pages are worked out automatically (each section runs until the next begins). Your edits never change the original book and can be reset anytime.

Upload a textbook PDF. The device turns it into a readable book right here — no internet needed. When it’s ready, divide it into sections so you can assign parts of it. Native-text PDFs also get translation and read-aloud; scanned books are readable as page images.

Textbook PDF

Title

Subject

Grade

Your uploaded textbooks

Create an Essay Task — a prompt students write a long answer to. Assign it from the Assign tab like any other content. A submitted essay stays yellow (awaiting you) until you grade it below: Pass marks it complete, Incomplete sends it back to the student's queue for another attempt. All attempts and feedback are kept.

Mark a first draft with AI Each submission gets a suggested score out of 10 and specific feedback, ready for you to edit. Students see nothing until you press Pass or Incomplete. Needs internet.

Your essays

No essays yet.

Build a Quiz — a multiple-choice quiz you assign on its own from the Assign tab, separate from any video or textbook. When a student finishes it, it is auto-scored and stays yellow (awaiting you) until you review it below: Pass marks it complete, Incomplete sends it back for another attempt. All attempts are kept.

Your quizzes

No quizzes yet.

Search YouTube for safe, educational videos, preview a 45-second clip, then download the ones you want (max 720p, for offline play). Downloaded videos are not shown to students until you watch them and confirm they are safe for children.

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Where should downloads go?

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Your videos

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📱 Adding a New Tablet

How to set up an extra tablet so it joins the classroom and works like the others. Takes about 5 minutes per tablet once you have done one.

⚠️ The one thing people get wrong
The tablet must be connected to the internet for a few minutes during setup, so it can activate its licence. The classroom Wi‑Fi does not have internet. If you skip this, the tablet will keep showing a “Please Get a License” message forever, and you cannot fix it later without doing the whole setup again.

What you need

The new tablet, charged
A laptop with the Sunbird tablet kit on it (a Windows laptop is set up once, following the “Setting up Sunbird tablets from a Windows laptop” guide)
The USB cable that came with the tablet
A Wi‑Fi network with working internet — a phone hotspot is fine

Step 1 — Switch the tablet on and answer its questions

The tablet asks for a language, a Wi‑Fi network and an Amazon sign‑in. You cannot skip the Amazon sign‑in.

Choose the Wi‑Fi with internet, not the classroom network.
Do not set a screen lock, PIN or password. If the tablet has one, it will ask for it every time it starts and the classroom will not open.
If it offers a software update, let it finish before carrying on.

Step 2 — Turn on the developer setting

On the tablet:

Settings → Device Options
Tap Serial Number seven times — it will say you are now a developer
Go into Developer Options and switch on USB Debugging
Plug the tablet into the laptop, and tap Allow on the message that appears (tick “always allow” if offered)

Step 3 — Run the setup on the laptop

Open Git Bash on a Windows laptop (or the Terminal on a Mac), type this, then press Enter:

                            cd ~/Desktop/sunbird-tablets && bash tablet-fire.sh
                        

(On the developer’s Mac the folder is ~/sunbird-local instead.)

The same command works on a brand-new tablet and on one that is already in use and needs fixing or checking — it looks at the tablet and does only what is missing. On a new tablet it works on its own for about a minute, then stops once and asks you to do one thing on the tablet. Leave the Terminal open — you come back to it.

Step 4 — Load the classroom settings onto the tablet (new tablets only)

When the laptop asks, on the tablet:

Open the app’s menu by sliding your finger in from the left edge of the screen. If nothing happens, tap the screen seven times quickly and enter the PIN.
Settings → Other Settings → Import Settings from File
Choose MASTER-golden-fully-settings.json
Leave the settings screen

Then go back to the laptop and press Enter. The laptop switches on kiosk mode itself and checks that the Home button no longer leaves the classroom.

Step 5 — Check it worked

The laptop prints a list of ticks. You want to see:

                            === READY — ... ===
                        

If it says NOT READY, the tablet is not ready. Do not hand it to a child. Run the same command again; if it still fails, get in touch (below).

Last of all, unplug the tablet, restart it, and make sure it opens the classroom on its own and there is no “Please Get a License” message.

Two things that will happen

🎤 “Permissions required — Microphone access”
This appears on some restarts, sometimes after the tablet flashes its own home screen for a few seconds and then returns to the classroom by itself. That is normal. Always tap OK, then “While using the app”. Never tap Ignore. Tapping Ignore leaves the microphone dead, so speaking and reading practice stop working, and it stays broken until someone fixes it. This is a fault in the tablet’s own software, not something you did.

🔌 After a power cut
Tablets rejoin the classroom Wi‑Fi on their own within about half a minute of starting up. If one does not after a few minutes, restart it once before doing anything else.

If you get stuck

Contact Matt Goldman.
Do not spend a long time trying to fix a tablet that will not finish setup, and do not give a child a tablet that failed the check — it is quicker to ask.

It helps if you can say: which step it stopped at, and anything the laptop printed in red or after the word FAIL. A photo of the screen is perfect.

Contact details: [add email / phone / WhatsApp here]

Usage Tracking
This session: 0 KB data, $0.000 Claude API
All-time: 0 KB data, $0.000 Claude API

Select a class above to view student progress, or create a new class.

Tap a word to explain it. Hold a word to translate its sentence. Pinch with two fingers to zoom in.

Tap any underlined word for an explanation. Translate the whole page to your local language.

NCDC Syllabus

Official Uganda curriculum topics with links to textbook pages

Pick a level and activity:

Sound 1 of 4

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sat sap

Explore the map. Pinch to zoom, drag to scroll.

Welcome, Student!

Welcome back!

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📋 My Work

Essay