One Mobile per School

1 MOBILE/SCHOOL Steve Vosloo mLab Southern Africa USAID m4Ed4Dev Seminar, 14 April 2011

About me mLearning practitioner from South Africa Focus on mobiles and literacy – see www.yozaproject.com Now Mobile Impact Evangelist at mLab Southern Africa, a brand new incubator for mobile apps and content in the region www.twitter.com/mlabsa

If you had one mobile per school … What could you do? Let’s look at three scenarios …

Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/40042565@N06/3680283341/sizes/z/in/photostream/ (CC-BY-NC-SA)

1 Mobile/school: Scraping the barrel

The worst case scenario ….

•  1 Basic phone • SIM card with no money • Very small memory for storing content •  Intermittent electricity • No mobile data coverage (voice, SMS and USSD only)

• Voice, SMS and USSD is expensive to use

Things you could do: • Regional “system strengthening” activities:

•  Education Dept broadcasting updates to headmasters and teachers

• School “system strengthening” activities: •  If a school can send cheap or free SMSes it can use FrontlineSMS

or SchoolTool in South Africa to: •  SMS broadcast to teachers: admin updates, timetable changes,

motivational messages, etc. •  SMS teacher and student attendance back to Education Dept •  SMS broadcast to parents


Things you could do: •  Classroom activities:

•  SMS dictionary lookup •  Wikipedia lookup using

MobileAudiowiki (mobiled.uiah.fi)

•  Attach a speaker and have class listen to educational audio content (paid for by Education Dept or corporate sponsor)

•  Take part in SMS-based knowledge quizzes, e.g. texttochange.org in Uganda

•  Remember: phone can also be used by groups of students, one at a time


Image: http://mobiled.uiah.fi/?page_id=101

1 Mobile/school: Looking better

A much better scenario ….

•  1 Feature phone with camera • SIM card with not much money • Small memory for storing content •  Intermittent electricity • Only GPRS mobile data coverage

• At least one of voice, SMS or mobile data is relatively cheap, e.g. in South Africa mobile data is cheap, in India SMS is very cheap

Things you could do: • All of the above, plus … •  “System strengthening” of Education Administration

•  Education Dept publishes info on mobisite which headmasters and teachers can access

• Classroom activities: •  Take/share photos, e.g. of plants for Biology project •  Record audio and video and share via Bluetooth, e.g.

Dissections for All project in South Africa (mobile phones used to create short videos of frog dissections and shared)

•  Access web: m.wikipedia.org, m.dictionary.com, m.google.com, etc. •  Read m-novels aloud from www.yoza.mobi


Things you could do: • After hours activities:

•  IM Chat (using GPRS) for live tutoring, e.g. Dr Math on MXit in South Africa

•  IM Chat amongst networks of teachers or headmasters for support and sharing

What else?


Image: http://blogs.up.ac.za/jcp2010/index.php?blog=83

1 Mobile/school: Ideal world

The ideal scenario ….

•  1 Smart phone •  1 Pico projector •  SIM card, loaded with money •  Memory card loaded with educational content •  Constant electricity •  3G coverage

•  Subsidised for educational use •  Free/low cost calls •  Free SMSes •  “Zero rated” (free) mobile data browsing

1 Mobile/school: Ideal world

Things you could do: • All of the above, plus … • Classroom utilities:

•  Play educational videos from phone through Pico projector/TV, e.g. Text2Teach project in Philippines and Tanzania

•  Download and share mlearning educational resources •  Collaborate with other schools on projects, e.g. via a Facebook

page •  Blog, Facebook, Twitter •  Download streaming video from, e.g. Khan Academy on Youtube

What else?

But maybe we should ask: What is “mobile”? •  Is an MP3 player which is connected to speakers and

broadcasting an audio lesson on English or math considered a mobile device?

•  How about a flash drive with educational content accessed from a nearby telecenter/cybercafé and used in a classroom by a teacher with a small projector to project learning materials for an entire class?

•  Comments?

Barriers to use •  Cost! •  mLearning content •  Lack of awareness of how mobiles can support

educational ecosystem •  Lack of school “acceptable use policies” – many just ban

mobile phones •  Uneven access •  Electricity (although people mostly “find a way”) •  Privacy issues

mLab Southern Africa newsletter We will publish news about mobile usage, mlearning and other mobile related issues, e.g. mhealth, from southern Africa To subscribe: www.tinyurl.com/joinmlabsa

Thank you [email protected] twitter.com/mlabsa

Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/40042565@N06/3681090988/sizes/z/in/photostream/ (CC-BY-NC-SA)