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Title:
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A MODEL OF MOBILE LEARNING IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES |
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Author(s):
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John Traxler |
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ISBN:
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972-8924-15-1 |
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Editors:
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Pedro Isaías, Maggie McPherson and Frank Bannister |
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Year:
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2006 |
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Edition:
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Single |
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Keywords:
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SMS, sub Saharan Africa, appropriate technology, in-service teacher training, messaging, mobile phones |
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Type:
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Full Paper |
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First Page:
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94 |
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Last Page:
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100 |
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Language:
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English |
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Cover:
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Full Contents:
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click to dowload 
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Paper Abstract:
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In developing countries, mobile and handheld technologies have the capacity to deliver and enhance learning in ways that
are completely different from mobile learning in countries were mains electricity, computer hardware and internet
connectivity are stable, reliable, cheap and abundant. They also have the capacity to subvert the received wisdom on the
development of educational ICT.
This paper describes work currently under way in Kenya to support in-service teacher training nationally with a distance
learning programme specifically developed locally to meet the infrastructural and organisational requirements of an
environment dramatically different that of most mobile learning projects. Alongside audio and video cassettes developed
with BBC support and print material developed with CEL support, the University of Wolverhampton has been working
to bring together Kenya policy-makers, technologists and educationalists to develop a targeted bulk SMS system for the
200,000 in-service teacher participants. This SMS system will help structure the study programme, address the isolation
of distance learners and deliver learning simply, sustainably and cost-effectively. The technologies chosen are the most
robust, appropriate and socially inclusive and the development process has been designed to promote dialogue and
capacity across the various local communities of practice and expertise.
The project has explored both the business case and the pedagogic case for SMS within the programme. The former has
looked at the efficiencies, costs and alternatives associated with SMS whilst the latter has been concerned to map a crosssection
of educational transactions, ranging from delivering content to providing study guide material, onto SMS and
evaluate them. Some interesting exploratory work has been done looking at porting the ideas of conferencing.
The project has revealed the sophistication and agility of the mobile phone networks in Kenya and the developers of their
value-added services, and has been exploring the possibility of running much of the country's schools' statistical returns
off SMS. Currently it seems that schools provide regular statistical returns to District and Provincial education offices
and that these returns place a vital role in the allocation of resources to individual schools. These returns are currently
transmitted by letter-post, courier or by phone conversation. These are potentially slow, expensive and error-prone. Many
or most of them are however never used, only stored. Further research would be needed to document the exact nature of
the returns, the use to which they are put and the various ways in which they are submitted. The notion of using SMS as
the main input medium and also the medium for exception-reporting is still very novel.
Trials are now underway to explore both aspects of large-scale SMS use. The project is supported by DfID, because of its
relevance to models of appropriate mobile learning for the countries of sub-Saharan Africa, and is intended not only to
explore regionally relevant solutions. More importantly the project is intended to help build capacity locally and
challenge models of ICT rooted in Europe, the Far East and America. This account is based on ongoing research and
consultancy taking from place in the UK and Kenya starting in 2004 |
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