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

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Thoughts on applications in developing countries?

Most of the sites you cite (as it were) reference materials, projects and applications in OECD countries. These resources also tend toward student use of mobile phones. I realize that some great resources (MobiLearning's WAP stuff) are being piloted in Africa (Senegal IIRC). But it seems that m-learning projects that require students to have their own mobile phones or even frequent access to family members' mobile phones are going to bypass students in "bottom billion" countries until sometime well in the future.

Research on the value of mobile phones in relation to rural economic development (small-holder farming) shows that 1 mobile phone in a village leads to very high (10x, in the study I've seen) increases in productivity. Why aren't we focusing on ways of enabling similar increases in student competencies via programs that involve one phone per classroom? Or a few phones per school?

The obvious pathway to such returns is teacher development, not student-centered SMS-ing. Got any examples? (I believe that John Traxler proposed using SMS for teacher development in relation to the basic-education imfundo project in Kenya, but I haven't seen results past the proposal.)

The equally obvious problem with focusing on teacher development, btw, is that it doesn't promote phone purchases and phone usage on a scale similar to that promoted by student-focused m-learning projects. But still...

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