Surveying the use of mobile phones in education worldwide
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The 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"?
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. Despite growing hype, there are still precious few widespread examples of the use of phones for education purposes inside or outside of classrooms in developing countries that have been well documented, and fewer still that have been evaluated with any sort of rigor.
This study is intended to help to raise awareness among key decisionmakers in the public, private and civil society sectors about the potential importance of the use of low cost mobile devices -- especially mobile phones -- to help benefit a variety of educational objectives. By documenting the existing landscape of initiatives in this area and emerging 'good practice', it is also hoped that this work will serve as a common base for further analytical work in this area, and inform the impending explosion of development of new hardware, software and business services occurring on mobile devices, to the benefit of these educational objectives.
Much of what has been documented to date falls into one of three categories: (1) advocacy pieces about how phones *could* be used in education; (2) 'studies' of how phones have been used in a small pilot by one teacher somewhere; or (3) conceptual (often academic) discussions of the potential utility of mobile phones within various learning environments (often drawing on rich existing research into the use of PDAs for learning).
This study proposes to:
- Map the existing universe of projects and initiatives exploring the use of mobile phones in education, with a specific attention to developing countries.
- Map the existing and potential uses of mobile phones in this regard, comparing and contrasting such uses with other ICT devices, relevant to specific education challenges, needs and contexts found in a number of developing countries
- Document lessons learned so far from key initiatives in this area, proposing tentative guidance for policymakers and various stakeholder groups in this fast moving area.
- Propose a conceptual framework and way forward for further analytical work to aid in the documentation and rigorous impact cost and impact assessment of the use of mobile phones in education.
We'll be using this blog to post preliminary findings for discussion and comment as they are available.
Where are good sources to turn to learn from actual practice? All suggestions are welcome.
More information:
Note: The image at the top of this blog posting comes courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons, sourced from Flickr user saschapohflepp, used according the terms of its Creative Commons license.
This month's on-line Educational Technology debate from infoDev and UNESCO looks at issues related to "Can eBooks Satisfy? Creating Content for ICT-enabled Classrooms". Angus Scrimgeor, the president of the International Association for Digital Publications, will be facing off against Richard Rowe, the Chair and CEO of the Open Learning Exchange (and former Associate Dean of Harvard’s Graduate School of Education).
Everyone is invited to join in the discussion!
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Support for this study
This study is especially important in contexts like South Africa where the digital divide is effectively getting worse as broadband creates new chasms in society, and mobile web access open up opportunities for digital inclusion. Connectivity is the central issue of the day.
Mobile phone can never be used for education.
You nailed it. I was going through the ETD site and was wondering about the same.
Education is a constant and continuous stream of information passed on to students. For many reasons mobile phone can never be used (as is now)
i) Mobile phone may become opportunity for examination malpractices
ii) Mobile with camera creates lots of teenage related issues (sex, violence etc.,) within school environment.
iii) educational content cannot be served to millions over phone (cost).
iv) Mobile phones are distracting while at school than enhancer.
v) SMS and MMS are play things for teens than educational.
However, special mobiles with only data transfer from schools and colleges may help... will the service providers take it? No.
Kasi
editorial note
The ETD side to which Kasi refers in the comment above is the Educational Technology Debate site sponsored by infoDev and UNESCO at http://www.edutechdebate.org.
some additional information about the study
Many thanks to all of the groups and organizations who have contacted me (via email, phone and Twitter) in the past few days about this upcoming project. It is great to see that there is so much interest!
We do hope to formally partner with one or more organizations during the course of this work, and with many more groups in various informal ways.
Any consulting opportunities that arise in the course of this work will be announced on this blog and through the @WBedutech Twitter account, in addition to the normal channels.
Beginning in September, we will begin to sketch out the scope of work under this project more concretely, in consultation with a wide group of stakeholders. There is a lot of potential ground to cover here. Where does it make sense for the World Bank to concentrate its efforts? Are there on-going or planned initiatives with which we should align? We certainly don't want to duplicate what others are already doing.
One thing we hope to do with this work is to help build bridges between communities of practice and expertise emerging around this topic around the world with policymakers in government, and their various 'developmental partners', for whom this topic will be (we think) of increasing relevance in the years to come.
Re:Mobile phone can never be used for education.
I respect your opinion Kasi but hold a different position. I am not sure if the undeniable evidences in the literatures support your position as the vast uses of mobile phones in education is gaining useful attention and research with well-defined advantages.
I strongly believe that if you have look up the literatures you will perhaps see that issues of connectivity, cheap cost and wide spread uses of mobiles phones around the world and especially developing countries where electricity and broadband have continuosly hindered implementation of technology in education as some of the advantages anyone could point at and this is constituting serious thinking among educators around the world. Yes there could be wrong uses of it but I will say that it is the same with wrong uses of secondlife which some 'hates' because it is common to see bad sexual practices there. Like any tool it could be used well or badly but it does not dismiss its importance.
Technology is evolving and so all the points you raised are not beyond what human mind could tackle. I therefore support this project
I also support the
I also support the activity... in fact any activity which could enhance the education.
My point was the cellphone "as is" may not serve the indented purpose.
Good luck and looking forward to have Cellphone-like device which will be useful for my son.
Creating the future
It seems to me that this will be a very important study to provide some background to the use of mobile/cell phone technology & culture to enhance global knowledge and understanding. I believe that much of the success of the use of mobile phone technology will be based on the success of teachers in developing agreed values and ethic along with instilling independent learning practices in students. I have no doubt that the same issues were confronted by parents/educators in the past when they sent their children to school where they would be with many other children - 'they will never learn like this they will just play and talk' ... but protocols (values/ethics) and discipline had to be designed for this. The same for teaching children to read and write. There were undoubtedly cases where children duped their parents who were illiterate. Teachers were never able to stop the whispering or note-passing in class nor the naughty children using the dictionary or library finding inappropriate materials.
What is important is that we capitalise on a cost effective way of engaging children in learning in a medium that they can relate to and using applications that are applicable. Just like our past educators used the games of the times to teach we must adapt and engage our scholars the same. Let's face it; it is going to be more pervasive not less. Let's do what the best colonialists have done. Not fight it but encompass it.
Rather than argue about whether we should let's explore how we can do it best.
Potential Use of SMS In-Box
I fully support the view that mobile phones may have myriad potential uses. The extent of its acceptance and use in the developing countries in every day life is phenomenal. Hence it offers the greatest potential if rightly used and harvested in education sector.
In Sindh province of Pakistan, we have had a very interesting idea on a potential use of SMS through Mobile phones. Our challenges is how to create audit trail of uses of funds disbursed to School Management Committees (equivalent of Parent Teacher Councils). The idea under consideration is to obtain a central SMS box facility with a cellular company for storing transaction information from all School Management Committees as soon as they intend to spend funds. Every time the SMCs will send in an SMS at a designated number some specific information in accordance with simple prescribed protocols. The SMS received will confirm the unique ID of the SMC and its account and confirm the information is appropriately recorded, and will also inform the sender of the balance of amount remaining with it [ funds lie with the SMC at their local bank account].
The central monitoring agency in this case, let's say, education department, may access information on SMC expenditures, both district wise, or even school wise, and can send a field monitoring team to check if the transactions reported did result in the goods promised to be purchases.
This initiative may resolve the major challenge of creating an audit trail in real time basis. If used successfully, it will offer plethora of opportunities for its use in obtaining monthly enrolments and drop outs. This may be just the beginning.
Best regards,
AK Shaikh
RSU, Sindh, Pakistan
two related reports from the Commonwealth of Learning
Those of you interested in this topic may also wish to see two recent reports commissioned by the Commonwelath of Learning (COL):
Using Mobile Technology for Learner Support in Open Schooling (Developing Countries)
http://www.col.org/SiteCollectionDocuments/Mobile%20Technology_Final%20Report.pdf
[pdf, 1.12 MB]
Using Mobile Technology for Learner Support in Open Schooling (Europe)
http://www.col.org/SiteCollectionDocuments/Mobile_Technologies_FinalReport.pdf
[pdf, 432k]
Mobile Phone for Literacy Program in Pakistan
Dear friends,
Let me inform you about our literacy programme with mobile phones.
We are implementing this programme with a NGO and a Mobile carrier.
The idea is simple. By sending many interesting SMS in national language to learners (adolescent girls) every day and night , we try to keep up/enhance their literacy.
Learners are really having fun to read and write messages. Simply, they love to receive and send messages among friends.
Due to inadequate capacity of the mobile phone ($ 28) we provided, we can not send longer messages in Urdu.
However, I am sure that learners will have inexpensive smart phones like iphone, HTC, Blackberry, etc with gmail/hotmail/yahoo in due course (5 – 10 years time).
Then, we will be able to share more interesting texts, info, documents, and stories without any significant cost and interactions among learners will be unstoppable.
Though there are pros and cons in this approach, I am hoping it becomes the de-fact standard to eradicate illiteracy.
Your comments and advice would be highly appreciated. If you are interested in this initiative, I can send you the concept paper as well.
Best regards,
Ichiro Miyazawa
UNESCO Islamabad
ichiro.miyazawa@un.org.pk
mEducation is the future
When I was taking my online masters degree, while it was very convenient, I wished that i could use my mobile phone to get access to my classes instead of carrying a laptop around. I think it is inevitable that more mobile phones will be used for education worldwide.
iPod enabled learning
One ionteresting example of a for-profit training company leveraging mobile devices for training is BarBri's Bar Exam Review package. Here's the link
http://studyfor.com/bar-exam/studying-barbri-bar-exam-lectures-ipod-492/
My colleague used this system and passed the Florida Bar on his first attempt. While he's quite bright and motivated, it is also a testament to the fact that training apps for iPods / iPhones and iTouch are a reality and should be explored in the formal education environment.
Surveying the use of mobile phones in education worldwide
With the mobile phone and the personal computer market converging and because millions of people have their first Internet experience on a phone ... this somehow suggests that Nokia should jump into the laptop game.
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