Mobile technologies for education: The experience in the developing world

Humanitarian Centre, Cambridge

30th March 2011

Panelists• Dr Niall Winters, Senior Lecturer in Learning

Technologies for Development at the London Knowledge Lab, Institute of Education, University of London

• Dr Sacha DeVelle, Director, Cambridge to Africa• Dr Bjoern Hassler, Senior Research Associate, Centre

for Commonwealth Education, Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge

• Dr Sara Hennessy, Lecturer in Teacher Development and Pedagogical Innovation, Centre for Commonwealth Education, Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge

• Geoff Stead, Head of Innovation, Tribal Group

Image credit: Nick Short, Royal Vet College

Focus on the context

• “… takes the mundane details of lived experience as the basis for understanding context, not as a stable description of the world, but as the outcome of embodied practice. The examination of the unquestioned, background assumptions and practices that support everyday activity is the essence of most phenomenological analyses of the role of technology in social settings.” (Dourish, 2004)

How do we think about mobile learning?

Context as underpinning mobile learning

• Prevailing view with the ML community

• “Context then is a central construct of mobile learning. It is continually created by people in interaction with other people, with their surroundings and with everyday tools” (Kukulska Hulme et al., 2009)

Convergence

New Learning New Technology

Personalised Personal

Learner-centred User-centred

Situated Mobile

Collaborative Networked

Ubiquitous Ubiquitous

Lifelong Durable

Table from: Sharples, M., Taylor, J., & Vavoula, G. (2007)

The context of Africa

http://www.economist.com/node/18008202?story_id=18008202

Develop for now vs develop for later?

Online connectivity

• 50% increase in search requests from sub-Saharan Africa– 40% coming from mobile devices

• Facebook is adding 100,000 per month in Senegal• Number of youtube plays is doubling each year

within sub-Saharan Africa

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-02-22/google-recording-50-annual-growth-in-african-search-requests.html

Example projects

http://app.en25.com/e/er.aspx?s=667&lid=12965&elq=fe3bb12076b849ff99cfd5c7e0fdadc2

Discussion points

• What are the commonalities across the examples?

• What is their pedagogical approach?– How innovative do you find it?

• Do the projects address social inclusion?• Do you think the examples are sustainable?– Why/Why not?

• What are the main benefits/criticisms?

Discussion points• How can we use mobile technology to improve

education in developing countries?• Which mobile technologies are most versatile and

appropriate for interactive teaching in poorly resourced classrooms?

• What are the roles of NGOs, the private sector and research institutions in contributing to mobile education?

• From ‘M-Ubuntu’ to mobile phones for higher education and social inclusion, what can we learn from existing mobile education initiatives?

Contact

• Email – n.winters@ioe.ac.uk / @nwin