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Thanks for the comment, Boying. These are all very relevant questions that you pose.

The inclusion of text2teach here (and indeed, of any of the examples) was only meant to shine some light on some notable activities in this area, and not to imply that any of them represent good (let alone best) practice.

No matter the technology we are talking about, or its proponents, or the particular implementation, we always need to ask ourselves "why?". In the tech community, an acceptable answer is often 'because we can' (or perhaps more often, 'because it's cool!'). Novelty has its place in life, to be sure, and innovation often occurs in situations where one least expects it. When talking about the use of new technologies in resource-challenged educational environments, however, the bar for action should probably be higher than this. By saying this, I don't mean to argue against pilot projects, or even against experimentation, in such settings (far from it!). Rather, it is to sound a note of caution. One suspects that anything related to 'm-learning' is about to become the flavor-of-the-month in some educational technology circles.

Many people in the ICT4D community complain that we have 'too many pilots'. I actually feel the opposite way: We don't have enough of them. And by 'pilots', I mean 'well-documented projects designed to rigorously test a set of assumptions or hypotheses, especially where the lessons learned from such experiments might be scalable' -- and not just a 'small project', which is how many people seem to use the term.

I look forward to learning what we can from all of the pilots mentioned here (and others as well!). We hope to use this blog as one way to highlight emerging trends and issues in the ICT/education universe, provoking informed discussion and reflection along the way.