Also attending the event was the inspirational Principal of Young Scholars’ Academy for Discovery and Exploration (YSADE), a previously failing school in the Brooklyn area of Bedford-Stuyvesant, NY. In 2008, Principal Danika LaCroix took over, determined to create a school that was based not just on academic performance, but a supportive community and a place of mentoring where children learned social and emotional skills in a nurturing environment. And she is succeeding. In the past four progress reports (a complex grading system for the more than 1,700 schools in New York), YSADE has scored an A. Not only is LaCroix’s school against the odds of being a previously failing institution, 10 local shelters feed into YSADE, bringing challenges of unsettled family lives and transiency. However, through her ‘open door’ policy, which encourages parents involvement with daily planners for each student that are updated with comments and homework, LaCroix has minimised student and staff turnaround.

The moment you walk into YSADE, you can feel the warmth and vibrancy. Students’ work hangs proudly from every hallway wall and within each classroom. The buzz off enthusiastic children filters down the hall, led by passionate and engaging teachers. LaCroix ensured that the teacher recruitment process was as much as about a love for children and teaching as it was the qualification to do so. And the day doesn’t end when the school bell goes off. A large part of the success of YSADE has been its enriched learning programme, ExpandEd, which was implemented with the assistance of TASC. The activities in the ExpandEd Learning Time (ELT) programme are designed to enhance the students’ school-day lessons. By lifting the limits off the out-dated school calendar and providing about three more learning hours per day than the typical public school, the ELT programme promises students a more individualised, balanced and relevant education. “If the students are learning about bridges during the day,” LaCroix said, “after school they will be building bridges with tongue depressors.” The extra time enables teachers to include more interactive activities that they may not have had time for during regular school hours and the kids love it, as confirmed by Nia, a young student who claimed that she loved her school day!

Whilst LaCroix claims her success is down to the support she received throughout her career, she is strong, passionate and driven and without these qualities would not have seen the success she has. So on World Teachers’ Day, the mLearning team would like to highlight the truly inspiring hard work she continues to do in order to provide her 209 school children with a platform for a promising future.

The article highlights several key projects such as Yoza Cellphone Stories, which offers downloads of stories and novel or m-novels which has had an impressive 470,000 complete reads of its stories and poems. As Steve points out, unlike a book, mobile learning has the ability to provide a more interactive user experience which is shown via the 47,000 user comments that have been posted.

Another project highlighted in is Dr Maths available via the MXit social networking platform. Dr Maths has helped 30,000 school-aged children work through maths problems by connecting them with maths tutors for live chat sessions. Steve cites its effectiveness as being two-fold: it is cheap and it operates in the evenings, when learners most need help with homework.

For those in the UK, read Steve Vosloo’s full article

Mobilink recognises that an educated society that is socially inclusive is the nation’s key to ensuring sustainable development.  In order to promote education and aid sustainable development in the communities that Mobilink operates in, Mobilink has launched a Mobile Based Literacy program that brings literacy to women and girls in the rural areas of Pakistan. Women and girls form half the population of Pakistan yet female literacy rates lag far behind literacy rates for men. This gap is more pronounced in rural areas where cultural taboos often prevent women from getting access to education.

In order to bridge this gap and to enhance the lives of women and girls with literacy, Mobilink used its core strength in ICT to develop a cellular-based solution to bring education to women and girls through their cell phones. In  collaboration  with  the  United Nations Educational,  Scientific  and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and a local NGO Bunyad, in 2009, Mobilink pioneered an SMS-based  literacy program aimed at enhancing  the  literacy retention problem among women and girls in  rural  areas while also  disseminating useful  information to them through an SMS-based distance  learning model in Pakistan’s national language (Urdu).

The  project  aims  to bring adolescent  girls and women into  the  fold of the technological  revolution  by empowering  them  with  a  cellular connection  so  they  can  connect  and communicate and use it to receive instruction in basic Urdu reading and writing skills, mathematical concepts and other critical areas such as health, hygiene and disaster management.

The Mobilink program is a first of its kind initiative. Women and girls receive instruction in basic Urdu reading and writing and mathematical skills at the homes of local teachers trained by the local NGO for a period of 6 months. The learners simultaneously receive informational messages on their cell phones that cover the course content and continue to receive these messages a few months after they have completed the course with their local teacher to promote retention of course materials.

Bound by social and cultural barriers, they wind up being denied economic opportunities and are also invariably excluded from the benefits of technology. This was a key challenge for the program and considerable resistance was  faced on the part of the parents and community leaders to the idea of allowing girls to have mobile phones,  largely due to the  conservative social norms of the area. To overcome the given situation, socially  acceptable and useful literature was carefully chosen to justify ownership of a mobile  handset by female learners.

Also, female teachers trained for cultural sensitivity were used to avoid ‘purdah’ concerns  (the majority of the women in rural Pakistan are not allowed to interact with males who are not close relatives). Resistance softened once people began to see the nature of the messages and the benefits of the program became visible. The teachers also reported a stark improvement in the confidence of the young girls, as owning a mobile phone made a difference to their sense of security.

Having met with remarkable success and positive feedback from communities, Mobilink is committed to continuing and improving this program. To date, Mobilink has helped educate 1500 women and girls in rural areas through this program in its first two phases in which the program and its design were tested rigorously. In the spirit of continuous commitment to female empowerment programs and to innovation, Mobilink has launched the third phase of this project and will target 2,500 learners in this phase of the project in collaboration with project partners.

For the third phase of this project, Mobilink has developed a messaging solution that the NGO partners will use to disseminate instructional messages and questions to learners. Program participants will be able to respond to daily questions via SMS and therefore there will be daily SMS-based monitoring of the student’s progress.  Mobilink has donated 2,500 SIMS, developed the messaging application and will provide messaging facilities for the educational messages free of cost for this initiative.  As a value addition, the third phase will also enable 100 participating teachers to coordinate with supervisors and report on student progress via data-enabled SIMs provided by Mobilink.  The current phase also extends the outreach of the program, reaching out to learners in KPK, Punjab and Sindh through 100 learning centres.

Mobilink remains committed to the uplift and development of communities across Pakistan and particularly dedicated to helping Pakistan erase illiteracy and empower all Pakistanis with the benefits of education and technology so that they can improve their lives, the conditions of their families and communities and not lag behind the rest of the world in the information technology revolution.

 Key findings across the youth from the four countries are as follows:

• Education is one of the three biggest priorities in life for the young people surveyed, with 39% naming it as their key priority to providing the financial stability and improved standard of living that they currently lack;
• Only one quarter of participants named the classroom as their primary source of information and education. Friends and family were seen as far more important information sources, named by 41% while 43% relied on television;
• One in four said that the number one barrier to accessing educational resources was lack of funds, and in Ghana, this number reached almost half of those surveyed;
• Seventy-four percent of mobile owners surveyed said that it is the number one asset they own and 63% believed that they could learn through even a basic mobile device; and
• Eighty-five percent of young mobile users made voice calls every day and 67% of respondents believed that calls would be the most desirable method for receiving content such as educational information.

For a long time now, mLearning has been about pushing devices and content without much planning beyond trials and experiments and we need to move away from launching services in this manner and consider the incentive and need of the learner. Without designing to meet these needs, mobile learning solutions will simply be pushed out, limiting the potential for uptake and scale.

When planning solutions in developing countries, we need to consider the devices and technology that are already prevalent in the hands of learners. Learning and training occurs when there is a motivation to do so. The most successful mobile learning solutions have been designed with this in mind. For example, the BBC Media in Action and DFID initiative Janala is designed to teach the Bangladeshi population English via mobile when the local Government saw a great need. Another great example is the USAID funded initiative PAJE-Nièta in Mali that is being driven out by the Education Development Centre teaches entrepreneurial skills which offer local youths hope for a better future.

We need to ensure that we create the best possible solutions for learners in order to offer them a connection to opportunity and a pathway to a better life. Thinking beyond its capacity to disrupt learning and classroom environments, we need to focus on informal learning and teaching vocational and 21st century skills that can help to close the gaps between work skills mismatch and a lack of other training.

The mLearning team is working closely on ways to use the findings to assist other organisations involved in this sector support the industry in developing and designing mLearning services. The recent coverage in the Guardian and The Hindu have shown that mLearning is gathering pace and set to be an exciting space in the coming months.

The report was launched at the eLearning Africa event on 24^th May in Cotonou, Benin and is available online here.

The research findings can be used to identify the gaps in education and understand what will drive new and existing solutions forward and help them to achieve scale and commercial and social sustainability.

Whilst on the road in the four emerging countries we visited—Ghana, India, Morocco and Uganda—we met with many youths who were disillusioned by the current state of education and job opportunities available to them.

Speaking to youths in Morocco, we were told “We’re like the dead here. After 7pm everything is closed and there is nothing to do and nowhere to go. We have a lot of theft here, infrastructure is not that good, and there are no professional schools. If you want any of that then you have to go downtown so that’s why we don’t finish our studies.”

In rural areas, already present mobile technology can provide opportunities for those have difficulties accessing educational resources via other means. “The phone is a tool to help you, not just to pass time with.”

A presentation on the initial findings from the qualitative research conducted can be found here.

We encourage people to share their own experiences and thoughts as we work towards building a collaborative community. If you would like to feedback or contribute in any way, please contact us at mlearning@gsm.org.

The power and availability of mobile technology have provided many great and disruptive innovations, especially in emerging markets. Initiatives such as Mobile Money, Mobile Health and Mobile Agriculture have provided much needed services to those often in the greatest need. Mobile Learning is a more nascent area but with 69 million children out of formal education and 774 million adults who cannot read or write, the potential for mobile to provide access to learning resources and tools is vast and very promising.

So please check back with us regularly as we update and share information, knowledge and best practices on this exciting new area. We encourage people to share their own experiences and thoughts as we working towards building a collaborative community. If you would like to feedback or contribute in any way, please contact us at mlearning@gsm.org.