by Mary Adams
Of the 7.7 billion people living on this planet, over five billion have access to a working mobile phone.[1] Reasonably priced phones are compact and have efficient battery life, multimedia support and interactive user interfaces. In developed countries, mobile phones have exceeded other communication devices and become a gateway to personal entertainment, photography and as a portal for personal business and banking. The arrival of low-cost, low-consumption smartphones and tablets in undeveloped countries has been creating equal access opportunities. Mobile learning (mLearning) means providing educational information and communication technology for children, teachers and parents via connected mobile devices such as feature phones, smartphones and tablets. mLearning has a huge potential to reach children excluded from education systems by using technology to bridge gaps in equal access. 
(Image by rawpixel from Pixabay)
More than 90% of primary-age children in low-income countries and 75% of children in lower-middle income countries are not expected to read or do basic math by the end of primary school. For millions of children around the world, books are often unavailable or unusable. Equal access to learning materials and books is essential to acquiring critical life skills. Children who do not develop reading skills either inside or outside of school are on a lifetime trajectory of limited economic opportunities and poor health.
The digital revolution happening in sub-Saharan Africa has led to a boom in trials using information and communication technology in education – both in and out of the classroom. Since launching in 2011, All Children Reading has provided more than one million books and learning materials to children in more than 140 languages. Big Ideas: Mobiles for Reading Challenge tapped into university students to develop mobile-based innovations to improve early grade reading for children in developing countries. The Big Ideas committee sought new innovations, or enhancements to existing ones, that could provide scalable approaches for improving and measuring children’s reading. To tackle the lack of books and textbooks, the group’s fundraising concept, A Grand Challenge for Development, has overseen the distribution of Kindle-style readers to 600,000 children in nine African countries. Educational testing results prove the considerable impact of mLearning on reading.
In 2018, International Book Bank published Mobile Learning in Low-Resource Countries. The tablet-focused, private Bridge International Academies – 470 schools in five low-resource countries – was launched with funds from Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates, among others. The schools provide teachers with tablets to guide them through scripted lessons and track their own and their students’ progress. An interim report revealed that Bridge K-2 students in Liberia were performing better across all literacy and numeracy metrics, reading faster and solving basic math problems more quickly than prior to this intervention. The successes also are attributed to longer school days, teacher training and monitoring, standards aligned with learning, and the technology-enabled teacher program, as well as significantly higher expenditures per child.
Technology isn’t a substitute for teaching, and it isn’t an asset in itself. Technology can offer a holistic approach to teaching and learning that enables teachers to engage with students using the right tool at the right time. That means that mobile learning can succeed anywhere. If the world puts its energy and resources behind the Global Goals by 2030 initiative, then an essential pillar of attaining Goal 4 (Quality Education) would have to be mLearning.
Sources:
Image: Image by rawpixel from Pixabay
https://allchildrenreading.org
