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The wide use of mobile phones is presenting educators with a new, low-cost tool for teaching. Photograph: Siegfried Modola/Reuters Photograph: Siegfried Modola / Reuters/Reuters
The wide use of mobile phones is presenting educators with a new, low-cost tool for teaching. Photograph: Siegfried Modola/Reuters Photograph: Siegfried Modola / Reuters/Reuters

Four mobile-based tools that can bring education to millions

This article is more than 9 years old

The ubiquity of mobile phones is providing a new low cost tool for teaching in some of the poorest communities

“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world”, Nelson Mandela is famed for saying. Yet access to good quality learning is still denied to millions around the world, particularly in developing countries where teaching standards and education facilities are often poor.

The ubiquity of mobile phones is presenting educators with a new, low-cost tool for teaching. Here we look at four mobile-based solutions delivering real results for low-income learners.

1. MobiLiteracy: at home literacy training

Professional teachers aren’t the only ones that affect a child’s learning journey; parents can be instrumental too. In developing world countries, where teachers are often over-stretched, active parental input at home is critical. MobiLiteracy Uganda, a pilot programme that kicked off last year with a grant from the US development agency USAID, uses SMS and audio technology to promote literacy learning outside the classroom.

The scheme differs from most ‘m-learning’ initiatives by targeting the parent first rather than children. MobiLiteracy offers the chief education provider at home daily reading lessons in the local language via their mobile phone. Because the lessons are available through both SMS and audio, even illiterate parents are able to participate. Developed by US mobile media company Urban Planet Mobile, it’s due to be rolled out at scale in the Ugandan capital of Kampala soon.

Among Urban Planet’s other solutions is a mobile-based English language course that runs in 40 countries worldwide. The service, which is also available via email, Whatsapp, Twitter and other social messenger services, is being introduced in eight African nations this year. The list includes French-speaking Rwanda, where primary education recently shifted into English.

2. Dr Math: interactive tutoring

Sitting down to do maths homework is already an uphill challenge, especially when the questions are flummoxing. Using MXit, a hugely popular social messaging platform in South Africa, Dr Math enables primary and secondary school pupils to request real-time support from volunteer tutors – a large number of whom are engineering students at the University of Pretoria. Whether riding the bus or at their desks at home, students can post their problems and online tutors will message back with guidance (the rules prevent them giving the final answer).

Likened to a text-based call centre, Dr Math kicked off in 2007 and has had over 25,000 registered users to date. Tutors are available afternoon and evening, five days a week. The South Africa Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, which manages the scheme, recently released a ‘how to’ set of tools that enable education providers elsewhere to replicate the service.

3. Worldreader: accessing e-books

For most young people in the developing world, the likelihood is that the phone in their pocket (if they own one at all) is a traditional feature or mass market type – not a smartphone. The limited processing power of early generation mobiles limits the scope for e-learning applications. Worldreader, an educational non-profit, has successfully got around the problem by teaming up with biNu, a Sydney-based app developer which boasts technology that compresses mobile data, to deliver smartphone-like speed for basic cell phones reliant on low-bandwidth 2G networks.

The partnership has spawned an e-book service that is attracting over 335,000 active readers per month. Worldreader Mobile, which works on e-readers as well as traditional mobiles, has around 4,000 titles that can be accessed for free. The books range from textbooks and short stories to international classics and locally published works. All are categorised by age group. The service is available across the developing world, with uptake especially strong in sub-Saharan Africa and India. Worldreader’s costs, which amount to about $0.50 per e-book delivery, are kept low thanks to preferential deals with hundreds of publishers around the world. Most of the available books are in English (the norm for digital publishing generally), but Worldreader has also digitised books in a number of native languages, including Kiswahili, Twi and Yoruba.

4. MoMaths: peer-to-peer competition

Rich or poor, children around the world love gaming. MoMaths is one of a growing crop of m-learning solutions that is tapping this trend to supplement classroom education. The South African initiative, which is run by Finnish phone manufacturer Nokia, sets inventive maths problems that pupils can access via all types of mobile phone. The service now counts over 10,000 exercises of varying degrees of difficulty. The on-screen teaching platform, which is designed for learners in school grades 10-12, includes dynamic graphics and games to keep pupils engaged. What really sets MoMaths apart is the ability of web-based phone users to compare their scores and usage time with their peers, integrating an element of competition into their learning.

After five years of piloting the service across the country, Nokia launched MoMaths nationwide last year in association with South Africa’s Department of Science and Technology. Courtesy of a partnership with South African mobile operators Cell C and MTN, students can access the material on these networks at zero cost. Research shows that the maths competency of ‘MoMathematicians’ improves 14% faster than that of pupils not using the service.

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