June was a good month for m4Lit. It were featured on the BBC for the second time: I was interviewed on the World Service radio programme Digital Planet (listen live). The episode featured other interesting ICT projects in Cape Town — definitely worth a listen.
The World Bank’s infoDev programme held it’s annual symposium in Washington DC and I was invited to sit on a panel to discuss the m4Lit project. The symposium was called Clean Green and Mobile – Making Technology Work for the Poor. There was a high level of interest in the project and it’s findings.
In Nadine Gordimer advocates book over screen, the Mail & Guardian reports on a defense of the printed book against the onslaught of technology by Nadine Gordimer, Nobel laureate and one of South Africa’s most distinguished literary figures. Below is my response.
Nadine Gordimer (Image: United Nations Photo. License: CC-BY-NC-ND-2.0)
Dear Nadine,
I too love the form of a book, the weight and smell of it, the feeling of the paper. I would be devastated if books were to vanish, relegated to museums. But one can’t ignore the changes that are happening in the world, nor the advantages that new technology offers. Books are highly durable — read on the mountain top without fear of the battery dying — but prohibitively expensive. Without libraries, our youth can’t access books. I agree that we desperately need libraries, but must concede that we probably won’t see them built and stocked for some time (if ever).
What our youth do have, however, are cellphones. The project that I lead, called m4Lit (mobiles for literacy), takes this book-poor/cellphone-rich context of South Africa — indeed of most of Africa — as a point of departure. If cellphones are what’s in the hands of young people then that is what we have to work with. On a mobisite and on MXit, we’ve published two short stories called Kontax, written in conventional English. In 7 months we’ve had over 33,000 reads of these stories. We asked young people to leave comments on chapters — over 3,000 received so far — and have run two writing competitions (e.g. make up a character you’d like to read about in the next Kontax story) with over 4,000 entries submitted. Through their comments, some of the readers have said that they don’t like reading books but that reading on their cellphones is fun and enjoyable. A few others have indicated that reading Kontax has changed they way they think about reading, from “that is something that I don’t do” to “this is fun.”
A key feature of phones, which books don’t have, is connectivity. With chapter comments left by our readers for all to see, reading moves from a solitary exercise to a more social one. While reading a book on one’s own is a very enjoyable pastime, a more social experience has huge potential for those who need help with texts through annotations (remember how useful it was when you got your hands on a school or university textbook that a previous learner had embellished with notes). This sort of marginalia can now be useful to a much wider audience, not only to one lucky learner each year. What’s more, in a publicly visible way there can be questions and answers as one reader leaves a comment wondering what is going on in the story, and another reader comments with the answer.
True, a cellphone needs a charged battery, but today’s kids have a habit of finding power one way or another. As a device it offers a viable distribution platform for the written word, not printed on paper but displayed in pixels. I think we need to acknowledge that while the pixel isn’t as soulful as a page of paper, it is infinitely better than nothing. Publishing format aside, 33,000 kids are reading and that is a good thing.
A cellphone is a viable complement, and sometimes alternative, to a printed book. If we want our youth to read, we need both. Viva the book! Viva the cellphone!
Yesterday eLearning Africa, held in Lusaka, Zambia, kicked off with a pre-conference workshop titled Envisioning Our Global Learning Future. I sat on a panel with Prof John Traxler (UK) and Jacqueline Batchelor (SA). To begin the workshop we each had to take a particular position on the future of global learning and offer that to the group. Our viewpoints needed to be somewhat divergent and deliberately provocative to get the discussions going. Below are some of the key points.
eLearning Africa workshop (Steve Vosloo, CC-BY-SA)
John: “Rethink the digital divide”
We no longer talk about society without technology. It’s inconceivable. In the same way, it’s no longer viable to talk about learning without technology. It’s no longer sensible to talk about technology and learning as two separate things — they are the same thing.
Technology makes borders of learning less relevant.
We shouldn’t look at learning in terms of previous notions of (PC-based) digital divides. Mobile phones have moved technology from the “top” (privileged) spaces, defined by scarcity, to the “bottom” (everyman) spaces, defined by abundance. So we need to rethink elearning, which includes mlearning, in new notions of divides.
Jacqueline: “People and pedagogy first, then technology”
We need to think about people and pedagogy first, not technology.
Tech is disruptive: it unbalances the dynamic between teacher and learner. For the first time the learners are the experts and this has a negative impact on the teaching-learning environment of the classroom.
It’s no surprise that mobile phones have been banned in some schools!
There is too much technology for teachers to keep up with — it’s overwhelming for a group that is already over-stressed and over-worked.
Policies and practices need to be adapted first, before we introduce technology into learning spaces.
Unless we put people first and develop and adopt a pedagogy that suits a technology-based educational environment, then the technology will only continue to fail us.
Me: “Technology will save education”
I started off by pointing out that today’s technology (new, pioneering) is tomorrow’s resource (taken-for-granted) — based on this paragraph from a piece by Douglas Adams: “‘Technology’, as the computer scientist Bran Ferren memorably defined it, is ‘stuff that doesn’t work yet.’ We no longer think of chairs as technology, we just think of them as chairs. But there was a time when we hadn’t worked out how many legs chairs should have, how tall they should be, and they would often ‘crash’ when we tried to use them. Before long, computers will be as trivial and plentiful as chairs (and a couple of decades or so after that, as sheets of paper or grains of sand) and we will cease to be aware of the things.” Textbooks were once technology, but now they’re learning resources. Computers and mobile phones will be mere resources in the not-too-distant future. We need to think of technology like this.
Education is broken. One reason for this is that it hasn’t changed in a hundred years, while the world outside of the classroom has changed dramatically.
There is an urgent need for educating learners on e-literacy and information literacy. How can this happen without technology?
Tech has radically changed the way we live, work, play and communicate. Why shouldn’t it radically change the way we teach and learn?
Some argue that tech has failed education, that is has made no difference to the grades of learners over the last 25 years. I would say that is because the tech hasn’t been fully integrated into the education system. PCs are in the computer room, teaching and learning stays the same in the classroom.
Education needs a major overhaul. Technology is our only option to avoid the “crisis of relevance” facing young people today.
A discussion followed, with lots of interesting perspectives coming from delegates across Africa. John pointed out that when elearning is driven by ministries, departments and corporates then it is based on a particular way of thinking: controlled, top-down, expensive, tethered. Mobile phones threaten that paradigm. John is not sure if that is a recipe for success or for frustration.
Jacqueline, who is a teacher, told us that technology complicates teaching because the software doesn’t work properly yet, or that learners have different phones with different OSs, or that not everyone has a phone that can access the internet. Until the “technology works” it’s going to be very hard to get it into schools.
At the end we admitted that there are no easy answers to the global learning future, and that many problems are not unique to Africa. The truth of tech or people first lies in the middle. Both are needed.
We are pleased to announce that the Kontax series is now also available on the MYMsta mobisite. MYMsta, short for Make Your Move, is the world’s first HIV/AIDS related mobile social network. It’s a project of LoveLife, based in South Africa.
We will continue to experiment with publishing approaches, e.g. MYMsta has a 1,000 character limit on its content pieces (to keep data costs down for its users), so the Kontax story will be published in smaller chunks than the usual chapter length. Two installments will be published every week for now. There is no manual for mpublishing — we can only try different approaches to see if they work or not!
Thank you to Duncan Harling at LoveLife for working with us and publishing Kontax.
The first TEDx Soweto happened on Freedom Day — 27 April in South Africa — appropriately held at the Apartheid Museum. The theme was “The Age of Participation”.
It was a fun and interesting day, with lots of different perspectives and stories — less of a technology focus than the usual TED formula, which I think really worked. A key theme throughout the day was the highly differentiated society of South Africa, with so many people not really having access to meaningful participation in the Web 2.0 way that many of us in the audience do. Not everyone has an iPhone, not everyone watches YouTube. I spoke about literacy in the age of participation, mainly covering the findings of the m4Lit project and the huge potential of mobile phones for literacy development in Africa. A key point I made was that in the developing world participation for most people will happen through mobile phones.
Highlights
For me the following speakers and messages were highlights. Speaker bios and links are on the TEDx Soweto site.
Khaya Dlanga, blogger, ad exec, youtuber and general good guy, told his life story (in a very funny way!) — about a rural herd boy form the Transkei who, by the age of ten, had already kicked a marijuana habit; who had to drop out of advertising school because he couldn’t afford the fees; and about his first CV, based on which he was immediately hired. It was for a copy writing job and contained something along the lines of:
I’m black
I don’t belong to COSATU
Some of my best friends are white
I used to write FREE MANDELA and ONE MAN ONE VOTE on school walls
As you know, that was a very successful campaign
When he first started posting videos on YouTube — before he became famous — he deliberately used an oblique username so that he wouldn’t be recognised (“Back then it was embarrassing to post videos of yourself on the internet!”). He spoke about the need to create a narrative about yourself on the web before others create one about you. Think about what your strengths are, who you want to be, and be it. He ended by recalling how this herd boy came to ask Barrack Obama an interview question via YouTube, clearly an achievement he is very proud of!
John Perlman, radio presenter and football philanthropist, spoke about the Dreamfields project, his way of getting involved in the 2010 Soccer World Cup. Dreamfields provides sponsored sports kits (Dreambags) to school kids in South Africa. Everything to kit out a whole team is in the Dreambag. They also build soccer fields and hold regional tournaments. One school to which they gave the kit beat Morocco Swallows U19; another of their teams became provincial champs within 6 months. It’s an awesome project that is making a real difference in the kids’ lives. The bit I liked the most was that Dreamfields is not about finding the next Ronaldo or Kaka or Lucas Radebe. Rather, it’s about helping kids have a dream and be the best at whatever they do, whether they become Constitutional Court judges, CEOs of top companies, plumbers or carpenters. There are many roles in society that all need filling — the key is to be the best at whatever you do. Go John!
Steven Newton, head of Google SA (not for much longer though), spoke about the need for relevant, affordable content in Africa, which will be accessed via mobile phones. He’s not too worried about the issue of access to mobile phones — that’s a problem that can be solved (I agree — mobile phones present more of an effective use than an access issue).
Simon Gear, environmental scientist, offered a way for each individual to do their bit to arrest climate change. He asked us to picture a triangle with health, wealth and happiness at the corners. Through examples he showed that by improving any 2 of the 3 of those, the environment will be helped. For example, by going for a walk in a park you improve your health and your happiness. Well used parks are better looked after by the municipality, so the environment is helped. Or by eating less meat every week you improve your health and your wealth (veggies are cheaper than meat). “Factory farming” of animals is reduced this way — so the environment scores. On the issue of happiness, he pointed out that people who spend their money on experiences are happier than those who spend it on things. Basically, we need to buy less and do more.
There were interesting ideas through violin sounds from Samson Diamond, the Standard bank Young Artist of the Year for 2010. Along with his sister and another co-performer, he made beautiful music to demonstrate that it takes different sounds (people) to work together in a way that is harmonious (like a true society should be).
We were taken on a dreamy journey through the three principles of drawing by Khaya Mtshali, graphic designer, lecturer and wise young soul.
To end the day BCUC gave a blistering performance — one 25-minute song that left the performers sweating!
BCUC (Image: Steve Vosloo, CC-BY)
Lolights
One or two participants didn’t stick to the time schedule (obviously not familiar with the strict TED approach). They also could have made more of a point, a message. I wasn’t sure what the big idea was that they thought was worth spreading (the TED motto).
Overall, though, I thoroughly enjoyed it and found it a valuable day. Big up to the TEDx Soweto team for organising the event (and self-funding it after potential sponsors dropped them at the last minute). The organisers pointed out that they’ve had to really sell TED as a concept. For so many of us TED is the standard for big ideas and compelling presentations. No sell necessary. We all need to do our bit to raise awareness in SA of the value of the TED model, and the exciting potential of holding our own TEDx events. African solutions to African problems!
I really look forward to attending future Soweto TEDxes!
At the World Bank’s Innovation Fair “Moving Beyond Conflict” event in Cape Town, Parvathi Menon, the CEO of Innovation Alchemy gave a short but very insightful presentation on innovation. A key question she asked was: What are the series of innovative ideas that together make an innovative proposition? People often stop at the first idea and think that’s the innovation. Don’t do that! The iPod was the platform not the key innovation. The killer “app” was being able to buy a song at a time for 99c and easily drop it onto a player.
Africa is book-poor but mobile phone-rich, so m4Lit‘s idea to use phones as a way to get teens to read and write is an innovative one, right? No. Applying Parvathi’s points to m4Lit: for our readers the innovation isn’t reading and writing on mobile phones. It’s reading kick-ass stories, affordably, easily (they always have their cellphones with them, they don’t always have books or magazines with them), and being able to make comments and have the world see them in near real time (beats writing a snail mail letter to the author). These are the “layers” that make up the innovative proposition. The mobile phone simply enables all of this. Key to realising the innovative proposition is telling readers that the stories are there — so need to market effectively (and innovatively) — and quickly moderating readers’ contributions.
On Saturday 15th March the Reading Association of South Africa held a conference called “Literacy Works: Best practices in literacy teaching and a focus on mew media: their place in literacy teaching” at the University of Cape Town. It was an informative day, with everyone there clearly enthusiastic and committed to improving the literacy levels of South Africa’s youth.
Texting and literacy Kevin Sherman, an ICT Education Specialist at the Schools Development Unit, University of Cape Town, spoke about using text messaging to teach literacy skills. It was a fun session where various groups had to translate conventional English passages to txtspk and back again. Afterwards we thought of all the learning activities that we’d employed in the exercise — a list of about 20 points. When weighing up this list against the negatives usually associated with texting, e.g that it might be bad for spelling and grammar, the positives very much won.
Primary school teacher, Fiona Beel, talking about how much her learners have enjoyed blogging (License: CC-BY-NC-SA)
Mobiles for literacy
I spoke about the m4Lit (mobiles for literacy) project, presenting an overview of the project findings. The presentation and research reports will be launched on Wednesday, 17 March. What was interesting is that nobody in the audience during Kevin’s talk or my talk was opposed to texting and using cellphones to get kids to read and write. Usually there is the voice of dissatisfaction in the audience, but not a single one on Saturday. One of the teachers did mention, however, that his school has a strict ban on cellphones, so learners would need to do their cellphone reading and writing after school.
Education reform
The day started with a presentation by Dr Ursula Hoadley, who was part of a task team organised by the Minister of Basic Education in 2009 to review the implementation of the Curriculum 2005 (1997), Review of C2005 (2000) and the National Curriculum Statement (2004). The committee traveled around the country, listened to teachers’ complaints and suggestions for change. What they found was massive confusion around the different policies, and therefore inconsistencies in the way these were implemented.
Over the last decade, in the classroom there has been a focus on group work, the construction of learner knowledge, and a marginalisation of textbooks. The policy focus has been on the “how of teaching,” with a neglect of the “what of teaching” — and this has resulted in problematic practices in the classroom. Teachers complained that they didn’t know what they actually had to teach!
Some of the committee’s recommendations include:
Streamline and clarify policies:
Single document per learning area/subject per phase, grade R to 12.
Design clear, succinct, unambiguous policy and guidelines in clear language, e.g. get rid of “learning areas” and “learning programmes”, and replace with “subjects”.
Reorganise subjects and time allocations in the Foundation Phase (FP) to give more prominence to languages and mathematics.
The abandoning of Learning Outcomes (LOs) and Assessment Standards (ASs) as curriculum organisers — from OBE. LOs and ASs have not shown to effectively mark learning progress for learners and also draw teachers into bureaucratic box-ticking.
Learning and Teaching Support Materials (LTSM):
That a national LTSM catalogue be produced. BUT there are also too many textbooks in the market — need to rationalise and ensure quality.
That the role of textbooks be reasserted.
A textbook for every learner for every subject in every grade.
A return to a focus on content and clear guidelines on what needs to be implemented and how — a “return to syllabus”.
The Minister of Basic Education wholeheartedly accepted the report. Now it needs to be implemented. The bureaucratic machine of government, and the tensions between the report’s recommendations and existing laws and policies is making implementation a slow and uncertain process. Much heated debate is raging at the moment, e.g. the argument for state control of publishing, e.g. one textbook for a particular subject per grade, as opposed to a choice of 16 different textbooks offered at the moment.
The audience noted that we should be aware of binary thinking towards policies, where the pendulum now swings away from “process” back to “content”. Ursula responded that the report was not a pendulum swing where practices that are appropriate in certain settings, e.g. groupwork, are thrown out wholesale. The report is an attempt to address the criticisms and failures of the last 15 years, to make it simpler and easier for teachers to teach.
There is a justified obsession with mobile in developing countries. There are far more mobile phones in the developing world than the developed, and therefore a delivery device in nearly every pocket.
Mobile phones know where you are, what time it is, are communications devices and are fully programmable. Starting question: Given these features, what story can you tell?
The Carrier is the first transmedia graphic novel as an iPhone app. In it’s “print” form, the novel would consist of 680 panels, 35 chapters — about 120 pages if printed out. Really it’s just images on a screen. But given the transmedia way it is told — in real time over 10 days — the story is a lot more.
Because mobile phones know what time it is, stories can be revealed over time. Depending on the time of day that reading begins, readers begin the story in a different way. This puts the storyteller in control. In real time the story pushes out messages.
The authors have created a lot of fictional sites — alternate reality game-like. They also created merchandise in Cafe Press that they linked to, which readers could buy. Messages were pushed to iPhone readers using Urban Airship (first 250,000 messages sent a free!) Geoff considered using SMS for messaging, but that option was too expensive (the author pays for the messages, not the reader).
This was an interesting presentation, given the transmedia features and story extras we built into Kontax.
June was a good month for m4Lit. It were featured on the BBC for the second time: I was interviewed on the World Service radio programme Digital Planet (listen live). The episode featured other interesting ICT projects in Cape Town — definitely worth a listen.
Because mobile phones know what time it is, stories can be revealed over time. Depending on the time of day that reading begins, readers begin the story in a different way. This puts the storyteller in control. In real time the story pushes out messages.
Steven Vosloo 