The result of my thesis project is a Mobile Learning Toolkit that is designed to empower trainers in Africa and other developing contexts to integrate mobile learning into their teaching.The 98-page toolkit contains 15 mobile learning methods divided into 4 categories that trainers can choose from depending on their needs – whether they’re looking deliver content; assign tasks; gather feedback; or provide support to their training participants.These methods have been designed to be as inclusive as possible, with most requiring only low end devices (basic mobile phones with voice calling and SMS capability), allowing interactive learning experiences to be delivered right to the Base of the Pyramid.In addition to the methods, an overview of mobile learning is included in the beginning of the guidebook and a set of practical tools that allow the methods to be immediately put into practice. As well as a general guide, the toolkit includes recommendations for customising the methods for the delivery of the “my.coop” training programme currently being launched by the International Labour Organization to teach the principles of managing agricultural cooperatives in developing regions worldwide. The toolkit offers my.coop participants the chance to experience the benefits of mobile learning themselves while also empowering them to use mobile learning methods to reach their own trainees, thus multiplying the impact throughout the entire my.coop training pyramid.However, the Mobile Learning Toolkit has been designed to have a value not only within the context of this training programme, but for use in the delivery of all kinds of training within any developing context. Anyone can pick up the toolkit and be inspired to use mobile learning.
The toolkit is an open source resource that is available for download below (please view in "Book" mode):
The format of the book is A5 portrait. To make it easier to print by users on the field, another version is included below with A4 spreads ready for printing. The graphic identity of the book aims to be clear and simple, with the goal that it will look good and be easily readable even after being printed in black and white and photocopied several times.
The toolkit is intended as an open source resource that can continue to be improved and added to with the feedback and collaboration of its users. As such, any feedback, comments and ideas are welcome and can be shared by email, Twitter or SMS:
I came across the Afrographique blog today, a great project by Ivan Colic, who aims to to assist the changing perception of Africa and its people by collecting as much data as possible and presenting the information in an exciting and digestible format to all. Check out the above infographic on African mobile subscriptions plus many more.
18 March 2011 // The University of Illinois is developing the Sustainable Development Virtual Knowledge Interface (SusDeViKI), which will put educational animations in the hands of people at every educational level. The animations are available on the SusDeViKI website, and can be accessed using mobile phones. This example explains how to create a natural insecticide from neem seeds.
The videos are available in different languages and accents (the above example is English with a Nigerian accent) and they come in the mobile phone ready 3gp format.
Employing farmers, aid workers and animators, the researchers are tweaking the existing practice of dispelling these lessons. Traditionally, this type of training required U.S.-based educators to visit developing nations, then put in weeks or months working with people there. At the end of the assignment, the educator would leave, and to some extent, fail to reach larger numbers of learners. With SusDeViKI being accessible to almost anyone with a mobile phone, the highly actionable lessons can reach large audiences and can be digested whenever it's convenient for the trainee. Another consideration is the fact that the lessons can be watched and re-watched as many times as needed by the students.
This approach to educating people in developing countries is very much on point when one considers that 70% of the world’s mobile phone subscriptions are found in those regions. The system is flexible enough that users with limited resources can one day not only consume information, but could potentially add to the collection of materials. In this way, a feedback loop could be closed, allowing the developers and researchers who initially constructed the system to learn from those who started out as students.
Fri 19 Nov 2010 // Danish brothers Christopher and David Mikkelsen founded Refugees United, an NGO that uses secure web and mobile technology to enable refugees to find loved ones throughout the world.
It started with a web-based system allowing refugees to create and search profiles in order to find loved ones by name or identifying characteristics. By expanding the program from web-based to mobile phones, the organisers hope to reach people in areas with poor computer access and training. Now, people can utilise the Refugees United system over simple SMS or WAP-enabled phones.“Even the most remote refugee settlements, you still find mobile phones everywhere,” David Mikkelsen says. There's a series of keywords, so if you send 'REG' to the number, it assumes you're registering and it sends you back a request that starts off by asking your name. Then it asks your age and your gender and so forth. You can search for people on the system, and if you find someone you think might be family you can send a message as well.The site urges people contacted by other users to ask a series of personal questions to establish that the contactee is in fact who they claim to be.The expansion of the platform to mobile phones will be implemented in collaboration with Ericsson, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Ugandan mobile operator MTN, and Delta Partners.
Aug 2, 2010 // frog Executive Director of Global Insights Jan Chipchase gave a speech entitled “Scaling the Mobile Frontier” to members of the U.S. State Department about his research in the field of mobile money.
Chipchase raises several interesting issues in this talk which must be considered on a wider scale of mobile services, not only mobile banking:
// The 2 key motivations for individual handset ownership are convenience and privacy. // We need to think about literacy vs. competency. What exactly is the required knowledge for a mobile user to complete a task (e.g. a phone call, a fincancial transaction, etc)? // Illiterare mobile users display competency of use through rote learning. If a user is sufficiently motivated they can rote learn anything. // Product ownership is not the same as product use. // 'Corner-shop app stores' as an important touchpoint and channel of distribution. // We need to consider user literacy vs. our literacy of users. What do we really know about the people we are designing for?
frog's work in mobile banking is part of their larger 'Mobile Mandate', a programme of projects that aim to amplify the positive social impact of mobile technologies through the transformative power of design.
The “Stop Stock-Outs” campaign is based around a little-known, but devastating, problem. Medicine stock-outs - where local clinics and pharmacies run out of high-demand, crucial medicines - are a potentially lethal problem in a number of African countries, yet governments insist they don’t occur. The team behind the Stop Stock-Outs project set out to find a solution and asked themselves, ”What could be more powerful than a map which contradicts these government claims?”
Last year, activists in Kenya, Uganda, Malawi and Zambia started surveying clinics in their respective countries, checking stock levels of essential medicines. After visiting clinics and pharmacies, activists report their results using their mobile phones through structured, coded text messages (SMS) – “x,y,z” – where the first number represented their country code (Kenya, Malawi, Uganda or Zambia), the second their district or city, and the third the medicine which they found to be out of stock. The messages are then visually displayed on an online map, showing specific reports by location and building up “hot spots” of activity. Within the first week alone, the team collected reports of 250 stock-outs of essential medicines. Because incoming data automatically populates the map, it represents an almost real-time picture of stock-outs. After a successful launch and a week piloting the service, the “stock-out SMS number” has been distributed to medicine users throughout each country so that anyone with a mobile phone can send in a stock-out report. However, unlike reports from official, known data collectors, these messages will firstly be checked by staff at Health Action International before being posted up on the map. Then the government can’t deny it’s happening and the public pressure can really start.
Nigel Waller dropped the surprising statistic that worldwide there are one billion people who use cell phones – but don’t own one; instead they share, borrow or rent them. The Cloud Phone was intended to serve this market. At first Waller tried to create a cell phone that could be manufactured for just $5 so that everyone could afford one, but he couldn’t pull it off.Instead Waller went with a $25 phone, but designed it so that a village of users could share it while still maintaining individual phone numbers accounts on a single phone. Activation cost? Just 10 to 20 cents per person.
The Cloud Phone is a service that allows people to have their own identity, and to log in and log out of other people's mobile phones, just like you can log in and out of your e-mail account using someone else's PC. In this way users can have their own personal mobile number for private communication, at half the cost of a SIM card and without the hassle of carrying a SIM card around.
When a user logs in with their own number and pin code they will be greeted with a menu. For example it says, "Hello, John. Your balance is $1. You have two missed calls. You've got one SMS message."
The Cloud Phone was developed by Movirtu and Frog Design, after they met at the PopTech conference last year, and the development process included a field study with 12 residents of the Kibera slum in Nairobi, Kenya.
