The World Bank - Working for a world free of poverty

Views menu

Syndicate content
A World Bank Blog on ICT use in Education

About us

:-:

Exploring issues related to the use of information and communication technologies to benefit education in developing countries

mobile phones

Linking up with Enlaces (Chile)

Submitted by Michael Trucano on Thu, 10/29/2009 - 23:03

Enlaces logoWith apologies in advance to initiatives in a handful of other countries considered world leaders in this area (including Costa Rica, Namibia, Thailand, Mexico and Brazil):

Of all the programs in middle income and developing countries that have sought to introduce ICTs systematically into the education, the Chilean experience is perhaps the most lauded.  Enlaces has been the subject of much scholarly and policy attention since its inception almost two decades ago (including a publication from the World Bank back in 2004 [pdf]).

The fact that Chile and Enlaces is considered by many to be a global model of good practice presents policymakers in Chile with a(n enviable) challenge:

Where should Chile look for inspiration as it continues to evolve its programs exploring the effective use of ICTs in education?

A (digital) library ... in your pocket?

Submitted by Michael Trucano on Fri, 10/23/2009 - 15:26

are paper-bound books destined to go the way of the card catalogue? (image attribution at bottom of this blog posting)

Amazon, the company behind the Kindle, perhaps the world's most famous e-reader, recently announced an international version of its digital book reading device that will allow users to connect via 3G to download content in over 100 countries.   The early success of the Kindle, together with products like the Sony Reader, and the excitement over recently announced products like the Nook and Plastic Logic e-reading devices (Wikipedia has a nice list of these things), portends profound changes to the way we consume and distribute reading materials going forward.  The excellent (and highly recommended) Mobile Libraries blog explores what all of this might mean for one of most venerable of all information gathering, curation and dissemination institutions: the library. While Mobile Libraries documents issues related to how e-books and the like may transform the roles of the library in the industrialized countries of Europe, North America and Asia, there is no clear equivalent information resource highlighting what such advances might mean for developing countries.  But, in various ways, many people and projects are hard at work exploring such issues.

Checking in with BridgeIT in Tanzania: Using mobile phones to support teachers

Submitted by Michael Trucano on Fri, 09/25/2009 - 01:31

BridgeIT in Tanzania; image courtesy of the International Youth Foundation

A recent event at the World Bank focused on "Mobile Innovations for Social and Economic Transformation: From Pilots to Scaled-up Implementation" included an interesting session on the use of mobile phones in development. Following on an opening talk by Dr. Mohamed Ally of Canada's Athabasca University (you can download a free copy of his book on mobile learning), Kate Place of the International Youth Foundation provided an update on activities and emerging lessons learned from the BridgeIT project in Tanzania (“Elimu kwa Teknolojia” in Kiswahili), which provides access to digital video content in classrooms ‘on demand’ via mobile phone technology. 

Surveying the use of mobile phones in education worldwide

Submitted by Michael Trucano on Thu, 08/06/2009 - 23:03

image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons, sourced from Flickr user saschapohflepp, used according the terms of its Creative Commons licenseThe Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) schools in India has just announced a mobile phone ban, echoing similar calls in many other places (from Sri Lanka to South Korea, from the UK to the Philippines to France) to restrict student access to what are often seen as 'devices of distraction'.

Why then will the World Bank will be kicking off a study next month looking at "The Use of Mobile Phones in Education in Developing Countries"?

Mobile Phones: Better Learning Tools than Computers? (An EduTech Debate)

Submitted by Michael Trucano on Fri, 06/05/2009 - 22:12

Photo courtesy of the World Bank | Photographer: Eric MillerinfoDev and UNESCO have teamed up to sponsor a series of monthly on-line discussions on low-cost ICT initiatives for educational systems in developing countries.  The debate for June is titled Mobile Phones: Better Learning Tools than Computers? 

Are they really using Nintendo in schools in Japan? (and why might developing countries care?)

Submitted by Michael Trucano on Fri, 04/24/2009 - 05:20

*Other* mobile devices in education - thinking beyond netbooks, mobile phones and PDAs

CC licensed image courtesy of diebmx via FlickrLast week's blog entry on 'What do we know about the use of mobile phones in education?' generated a lot of email.  Some correspondents (rightly) noted that a variety of mobile devices in multiple form factors are being tested for use in educational settings outside of the three categories most people commonly think about: PDAs, phones and netbooks. 

A case in point: Last month reports emerged in the Japanese media (English re-cap here) about the 'mandatory' use of Nintendo DS portable video gaming devices in a set of schools in Osaka.  (Please note that the word 'mandatory' does not appear in the Japanese article linked to here; the English re-cap may or may not be based on other sources.)  Reports about use of the DS (and before that the Nintendo GameBoy) in education in Japan appear sporadically in the press.

What do we know about using mobile phones in education?

Submitted by Michael Trucano on Fri, 04/17/2009 - 11:47

Perhaps the most well known, and biggest, program exploring the use of mobile phones in education in a developing country is the text2teach project in the Philippines (part of the larger 'BridgeIT' initiative). 

28% of Africans now have a mobile phone subscription, according to data released by the ITU earlier this year, part of a larger trend that sees two out of every three mobile subscribers around the world living in a developing country.  The flagship ITU publication  Measuring the Information Society (pdf) notes that two-thirds of the world's cell phone subscriptions are in developing nations, with Africa, which has a 2% subscriber rate as recently as 2000, growing the fastest. And it is not only adults who are making use of this new technology.  Survey work at a low-income high school in South Africa's Samora Machel township suggests that mobile penetration among youth in some places might be higher than one might suspect.

While the explosive use of mobile phones in developing countries is well-documented -- and undeniable -- and evidence is emerging that phones are slowly making their way into the hands of teens, just what this might mean for the delivery of education in developing countries is a little less clear.  This topic first started to get serious attention among small groups of people in international donor agencies around 2005, with a 'mobile learning' workshop in Tokyo sponsored by ADBI and UNESCO serving as a sort of landmark event for the topic.  The workshop report (published as Mobile Learning for Expanding Educational Opportunities) is in many ways typical of work around this time, focusing largely on the possible usage models and relevance for using mobile phones in a variety of ways to support new teaching and learning processes.  Further afield, Dfid began to support work in this area in Africa, and papers written on mobile learning in Africa sounded similar notes to what was being discussed in Asia, as revealed in titles like The Potential for Using SMS to Support Learning and Organisation in Sub-Saharan Africa (pdf) and Transforming learning through technology: the case of using SMSs to support distance students in South Africa (pdf). 

While the evidence base is still quite spotty, some lessons (largely of the anecdotal variety) and usage models are slowly emerging from pilot projects in places as diverse as Thailand and Mongolia.  The increasing ubiquity of mobile phones has helped enabled pilots looking at mobile gaming to support literacy in India.  Even the World Bank has got into the act, through Development Marketplace funding for a small pilot in Bangladesh.

Perhaps the most well known, and biggest, of these pilot programs is the text2teach project in the Philippines (see video at the top of this blog post), which provides a way for teachers to request educational videos via text message, with the videos delivered to a television at the school via satellite. 

Exploring what might be possible should smartphones drop greatly in price in the coming years, projects like Dunia Moja, a joint initiative of Stanford University (USA) and partner universities in Southern and Eastern Africa, are exploring how communication and joint research between students and faculty on environmental issues can be facilitated and supported. 

A slew of new publications and resources are emerging to help us sort through all of the initiatives.   Canada's Althabasca University (editor: Mohamed Ally) has just published a very useful general survey on Mobile Learning: Transforming the Delivery of Education and Training (free e-book available).    IRRODL has published a short article by Scott Motlik reviewing what we know about Mobile Learning in Developing Countries, which serves as a nice complement to a short article on the same topic by John Traxler that the Commonwealth of Learning published back in 2005. 

When we talk about the use of mobile phones in the education sector, it is clear we are still in the very early stages of developments, and I expect that this will be an area of major research interest and activity in the coming years -- and a recurring topic on this blog.

Phoning it in: Using mobile phones to collect data

Submitted by Michael Trucano on Fri, 03/13/2009 - 18:02

image courtesy of kiwanja.netGoing forward, isn't it more likely that the ICT tool of choice for students in developing countries will be the mobile phone, and not the computer?  This is a question of hot debate in many circles. Whatever the eventual resulution of this debate (and no doubt it will not yield a simple either/or answer), there are still precious few widespread examples of the use of phones for education purposes in classrooms in developing countries.  It's inevitable that various forms of low cost handheld computing and communication devices for students  (and perhaps one of these will be something still called a 'phone') will proliferate in schools in developing countries in the coming decade.  But perhaps the mobile phone's impact in the education sector will be more widely, and quickly, felt in another way?