Tag: shuttleworth foundation

2010: A year in review

This is my “brag pack” for 2010. Read the one for 2009.

What I did
As fellow for 21st century learning at the Shuttleworth Foundation I spent the year focusing on my m4Lit, or mobiles for literacy, project. It was launched in 2009 as a pilot initiative to explore whether teens in South Africa will read stories on their mobile phones. It turns out that they will, and based on the success of the pilot phase, I was given another Fellowship year.

Phase 2 of the project essentially involved i) offering more content (which our readers had asked for), ii) improving the user experience, iii) growing the user base, and iv) working towards sustainability.

The Praekelt Foundation was brought in to redevelop the content management system. The new system publishes to a mobisite, www.yoza.mobi, as well as onto MXit (before these were two separate systems), with additional features for interactivity such as easy commenting, voting and reviewing. I called the new offering Yoza Cellphone Stories, and assembled a freelance team to help me run it: top South African authors, an editor, graphic designer, moderators, and social media mavens.

Yoza was launched in August with fourteen stories. Today there are twenty-one stories — in English, Afrikaans and isiXhoza — and growing. Publication of new stories happens on the first of every month, with writing competitions happening all the time.

What worked
1. Publishing a broader range of content, such as soccer (Streetskillz), chick-lit (Sisterz) and teen issues (Confessions), in addition to the Kontax teen adventure series, was very well received. We also published five Shakespeare plays that are being studied by South African learners.

From 2009, our m-novels have collectively been read more than 60,000 times, our readers have posted more than 40,000 comments and submitted more than 10,000 competition entries!

Feedback from our readers is mostly positive: it is clear that we are educating as well as entertaining our readers.

“I must say: the story line it self is gripping, for somereasen everytime i read the kontax stories am kept at the erge of my sit. They are always grattifiying and i can hardly wait for another1. Thank you to the contax team cause for the 1st time in years i am reading again and i lov reading now, and am a guy so you i just dont lyk readin. So thank u again guyz you da best,” by Mphuthumi Busakwe, commenting on Kontax 5: The Sext Files.

“Gr8 story guyz.. I can’t wait 4 th nxt one 2 b published. I’m totally addicted! Love th fact tht Jayden nd Latoya r bck 2gethr. P.s Please give us more than one chapter a day,” by Ms. Makes, commenting on Sisterz 2: Hidden Danger.

“2 all soccer lovers,esp players,here r technical tips,grab them. Gud luck 2d team!” by Assah, commenting on Streetskillz 2: Silver’s Treasure.

It is also clear that there is an implicit conversation happening between the story — and sometimes the Yoza brand — and the readers. We create interesting and deliberately provocative scenarios in the stories to elicit reader opinion, and they usually respond in full force. An example is the comments on this Sisterz chapter (first read the WHAT DO YOU THINK comment prompt on that page).

2. The new interface is more user-friendly and easier to maintain. The actual CMS will be open-sourced.

3. Being on MXit in Kenya has given the project a greater profile.

4. Our stories have also been published on Young Africa Live on the Vodafone Live portal, as well as on MYMsta.mobi, loveLife’s mobile social network. Two high school teachers in the Western Cape have been in contact to say that they are using Yoza in the English classroom.

5. The READ Educational Trust runs an annual Readathon competition, and for the first time teens could enter the writing competition on Yoza via their mobile phones. We also ran writing competitions in conjunction with the Sunday Times and The Sowetan newspapers.

6. We have an open call for writers to contribute stories to Yoza. So far three have been published by authors from Lapa Publishers.

Stockholm Challenge7. The m4Lit project received an Honourable Mention in the Stockholm Challenge award, and has received much media coverage, both locally and internationally, including from School Library Journal, Global Post, City Press, Argus, EP Herald, The Times, M&G Online, Rapport, West Cape News, ITWeb, Soulbeat, Drum Beat, Mashable, Puku, Idasa, GSMA Development Fund, Educational Technology Debate, 5fm, YFM, East Coast Radio and the Voice of the Cape.

Bottom line: Throughout the year I have said, and still say, that the cellphone is a powerful learning and communication tool. Instead of viewing it as a distraction and a hindrance to education, I believe it should be viewed as an essential part of the solution. It is the e-reader of Africa, a device onto which we can quickly and easily publish content to a wide audience, as well as through which young people are given a voice. The high-levels of engagement on Yoza has shown that participatory culture is alive and well in Africa, although here it is via MXit comments and not Youtube videos.

What still needs work
1) Yoza is not producing enough content to feed the mobile monster. Our readers want more and they want it now. They don’t like waiting for the first of the next month to get their next story fix.

2) There is a novelty factor to m-novels. The Yoza stories have not had as many reads and competition entries as the first Kontax stories. Although more comments are made on Yoza stories than before. This novelty-factor has forced us to continually try to improve the user experience and offer targeted content.

3) Sustainability is still not resolved. At this stage, m4Lit has not secured any revenue other than the Shuttleworth Foundation funding, although a number of positive conversations are currently underway for sponsorship.

Future plans
A clear business opportunity has emerged. Our readers are crying out for content about issues, e.g. teen pregnancy or how to handle money. Below is a word cloud of what our readers told us they want to read about. As you can see, it covers the full range of “issues”.

Non-profit organisations, governments and corporates want to communicate their messages to young people, e.g. healthy sexual behaviour or financial literacy. Yoza is the bridge between these groups.

We now have a platform to run Yoza, a team that can offer full-service mobile content campaigns, and a MXit footprint in South Africa and Kenya, with plans to grow into other countries. We are well-placed to transition from Yoza the “cellphone stories library” to Yoza the “mobile social marketing service”. A major milestone is to secure a big first sponsor.

We want young people across Africa to use their phones for reading, writing and learning – and believe that this can ultimately be a positive influence on their lives. In short: more content, more users, more participation, and greater impact.

Living out loud
As Fellows we are required to “live out loud”. On the topic of mlearning, I am a regular event speaker and panelist. I have presented on m4Lit at TEDx Soweto (watch video) and Tech4Africa, eLearning Africa in Zambia, and twice at the World Bank in Washington. I recently gave a thematic keynote at the Open Innovation Africa Summit in Kenya, and at the International Seminar on Mobile Technologies for Learning and Development in Barcelona.

I have been Interviewed by BBC’s Digital Planet as well as PRI’s The World, which is broadcast on National Public Radio in the USA. I regularly write for the M&G’s The Teacher. I am an advisor to the Department of Basic Education on its Guidelines on e-Safety in Schools.

Overall it has been an exciting year and I feel that the project has made a significant contribution to mlearning in Africa. I would like to thank the Shuttleworth Foundation. My three-year fellowship provided a wonderful opportunity to develop innovative projects and live out loud in the mlearning space. I look forward to seeing the work that was begun during my fellowship continue to grow.

10 Global Trends in ICT and Education: my take

10 Global Trends in ICT and Education is a post by Robert Hawkins on EduTech, the World Bank’s blog on ICT use in Education. It’s a great list, an “aggregation of projections from leading forecasters such as the Horizon Report, personal observations and a good dose of guesswork.”

While I feel that the trends apply mostly to well-resourced, developed-country educational institutions, I’m happy to report that in South Africa (SA) we are seriously exploring:

Trend 1) Mobile Learning — although we’re not focusing on smart phones but rather on feature phones with GPRS-capability, e.g. in the m4Lit (mobiles for literacy) project.

Trend 8) Teacher-generated open content — the Siyavula project from the Shuttleworth Foundation is building a community of teachers and a platform for this very thing.

I think the trends least likely to take hold in SA are 2) Cloud computing (bandwidth is just too expensive and the infrastructure for it not well enough established) and 10) Teacher managers/mentors (in-service teachers don’t want to relinquish the role of font-of-knowledge and “head” of the classroom. A number of factors, such as poor learner discipline and low teacher content knowledge (making the teacher only just a font-of-knowledge, more like a trickling stream of knowledge) make this a complex issue … it is not simply a case of teachers being resistant to change).

2009: A year in review

What did I do in 2009 as the fellow for 21st Century Learning at the Shuttleworth Foundation? For a snapshot, check out the presentation below. If you have more time, read the full post.

I have focused on mobile learning. Why?

  1. In South Africa (SA), up to 100% of youth have access to mobile phones. Access to computers is around 10%. The mobile phone is the technology in the hands of young people.
  2. Enabled by mobile phones and social media like MXit and Facebook, the way young people communicate and socialise are fundamentally changing. Mobiles are driving a “social revolution“.
  3. Most of the time mobile phones are used outside of the educational sphere. At school they are banned (I argue that this is not the right response); in the media, teens are abducted by MXit contacts, or use their phones to make and share child porn. Even the very idea of mobile phones to support teaching, learning and administration cannot be entertained because of all the negativity surrounding them (I have found this in South Africa and in Zambia!)

While the potential for learning via mobile phones is enormous, very little is being done to exploit this — in way of projects, research or policies. As a fellow, I couldn’t just stand there any longer and watch this opportunity get wasted.

The reality is that mobile phones are highly pervasive; they are used to communicate, to disseminate information and to play games; to develop identities and be social; and for creative expression. In learning terms, these are highly desirable attributes. Mobile phones are incredibly powerful — arguably more disruptive than PCs as tools for learning . Of course, there are risks and constraints. But these can only be managed if we seriously engage with mobile learning. This needs to happen inside and outside of schools (in the 21st century, as at all times in history, learning doesn’t only happen in the classroom).

Given the above, I did three things: 1) made some noise about mlearning to popularise it, to challenge perceptions (like that txtng is all bad, which it isn’t), and to offer new possibilities to teachers; 2) created an online space for mlearning related materials; and 3) focused on one particular area where I think huge impact to increase reading and writing can be made: m-novels.

1. Raised awareness of mlearning

I’ve presented at conferences in South Africa, New York and Florida. I’ve spoken to 230 principals in Johannesburg, curriculum advisors in Zambia, and pre-service teachers in Cape Town. I’ve written for the M&G’s The Teacher (SA’s largest teacher focused publication), and Tech Leader and Thought Leader blogs. These blogs invite South Africa’s thought leaders to give commentary and analysis. Together with other researchers, I’ve co-authored a conference paper (mLearn 2009) and a journal article. I’ve written a paper and book chapter related to mlearning. I interviewed teens about their mobile phone use and made videos.

Much of this effort entails putting mlearning in the minds of teachers, principals, curriculum advisors and even parents. We are in the early days of mlearning — but just where on the adoption path is hard to say. It’s difficult to compare it to traditional elearning, where for many years the focus was on providing access to PCs. Mobile phones are already in the hands of people. The focus is on utilising existing assets and providing cheaper access to voice, SMS and data services. This path is about effective use, not uptake.

2. An online resource for mlearning in Africa

I created mLearning Africa, a site for projects, papers and news about mlearning on the continent. This is the first such site on the web — a necessary step to begin connecting the few people and projects in this space.

3. Mobiles for literacy

It is well known that one of the contributors to the low-literacy levels of South African learners is that not enough reading and writing happens at schools and home. 51% of households don’t have any leisure books! Teens are actually reading and writing all the time on their mobile phones, e.g. MXit sends 250 million messages each day. (In the USA, the same has been found: huge amounts of reading and writing, but not formally — rather as IM conversations, SMSes, MySpace posts, Facebook updates, etc.  But they need to be reading and writing longer pieces of text too. Traditional literacy is a requirement for these “new media” literacies.

Since August I have led the m4Lit — mobiles for literacy — project, which has explored whether teens are interested in reading stories on their mobile phones, whether and how they write around those stories using their mobiles, and whether mobiles might be used to develop a love of reading. Read the overview of the project, or for up-to-date news the project blog. I looked at the phenomenal success of m-novels in Japan and wondered, will they work here? With SA’s severe shortage of books, and our teens not reading and writing enough, can mobile phones fill that gap?

To find out, I commissioned an m-novel, and followed how teens experienced it. Kontax is a teen mystery short story, published on a mobisite and on MXit. (Check out the story illustrations and the story launch press release). The story is aimed at 14-17 year olds, and written in English and isiXhosa (a world first for m-novels!) I didn’t just want to tell a story though, I invited reader participation — on the site they could comment, meet the characters, write on their walls. I even gave them prizes for commenting and submitting Kontax sequel ideas.

The m4Lit team researched 50 teens in Cape Town (from Langa and Guguletu) as they experienced the story, and also looked at the engagement with the story from teens around the country. This is what we found:

  • The kids love it! Over 5,000 teens have read the story since it’s launch in September. In SA, a book that sells 3,000 copies is a best-seller. Comparing ebooks to printed books is problematic for many reasons, but in the absence of other comparable ebooks, it is somewhat useful. (Do you have to sell something for it to be a best-seller — Kontax is free, after all? No. Amazon’s ebook bestseller list is based on number of downloads, not sales — there are free ebooks in the list.)
  • The readers like to comment and submit ideas. We received over 300 comments on the mobisite, and over 1,500 sequel ideas on MXit.
  • In terms of language, there is interest in indigenous language stories. Of the surveyed teens, 25% read at least some of the isiXhosa version of the story; on the mobisite, 50% of isiXhosa-speaking users posted comments in isiXhosa; and on MXit, 51% of of isiXhosa-speakers in the Western Cape read the isiXhosa version of the story (estimated). Associate Professor Ana Deumert, a linguist, pointed out: “Given the systematic marginalisation of isiXhosa, the lack of access to isiXhosa literacy in the education system and the dearth of isiXhosa reading material, the uptake should be seen as a success.”
  • From the survey we established that there is a strong correlation between language choice and communication mode, e.g. the teens spoke isiXhosa to someone else “face-to-face” but used English, isiXhosa and txtspk when communicating digitally. In schools, it is only traditional paper-based and oral forms of communication that are practised and valued.
  • From the survey, Dr Marion Walton, an expert in mobile literacies, found that “for most of our target group, digital writing takes place primarily on mobile phones. Computer use is intermittent and seems to rely on public access (school, library) rather than home access. In contrast, mobile phones and MXit are pervasive. When digital texts are created or read, they tend to be short texts on mobile phones – SMS and MXit. There was more evidence of digital reading (browsing the web) on computers than of word processing or other computer-based writing.”
  • For the survey participants most reading takes place on mobile phones or on paper. Other than Facebook, SMS and MXit (46% of what the survey participants read), everything our sample learners had read on the previous day was printed on paper.
  • There were many requests for teens to be able to write their own pieces (poems, lyrics, stories, etc.)

In addition to the interesting research findings, Kontax drew a huge amount of interest from the media, including from the BBC (radio and web), SAfm, Metro FM and Business Day. It also won a Bronze Pixel in the Bookmarks Awards 2009 (the only medal in it’s category).

So, for me two things are important:

  1. Kontax has clearly demonstrated that mobile phones are a viable platform for teen reading and writing, as well as for teens to network around their literacy practices.
  2. Teens are doing their digital reading, writing and communicating on mobile phones; it is crucial to understand and take advantage of this for educational purposes.

This must be exploited in SA. If we can provide m-novels for teens and a platform for them to write their own content, then we will make a profound impact on literacy in this country.

What next?

The question we always ask at the Shuttleworth Foundation is So what? What do we do with the m4Lit findings? I believe the following must happen:

  • More stories must be published … a “mobile library” — where we publish Kontax and public domain titles.
  • Kontax must be grown — more readers and more translations (done via crowd-sourcing) in other South African and international languages. An m-novel with high readership – one prominent success story – is a very powerful way to get other people into this space, like authors, publishers, teachers.
  • Teens must be given a space to write and read and comment on stories, poems, lyrics, etc., via their mobile phones. Fan fiction sites like fanfiction.net have been shown to be spaces for peer-to-peer language and grammar learning.
  • Alignment of Kontax – or any story on a mobile phone, and learner writing around that – with the curriculum, ideally having it used as a prescribed text. There has been an offer from a high school in Cape Town to include Kontax as a prescribed book next year, and with learners writing assignments on it (for marks). In the bigger picture, there is simply not enough recognition within the education system of mobile literacies, despite the striking prevalence of both in South African teens’ lives. This must change.

I will continue to make noise, to put mlearning materials online, and to employ mobile phones for teen reading and writing. SA simply cannot afford the wasted opportunity cost of not doing these things.

Beginning to define the C&A skills theme

The Foundation has five core themes, one of which is communication and analytical (C&A) skills development. This is a very broad theme that needs to be defined and focused, something that I’ll be doing over the coming months. As a starter Helen King, the Shuttleworth Foundation’s Principal Advisor, pointed out the following regarding this theme:

  • The Foundation seeks to promote the development of C&A skills of school learners. Where possible, technology should be used in skills development.
  • The focus for the Foundation is not on the bright learners who will have access to good maths and science educators and go on to become mathematicians, scientists, engineers, etc. It is concerned with the vast majority of learners who are currently being failed by the system because they receive inadequate maths and science teaching. Reasons for this include there not being enough educators in these subject areas and not enough text books for learning.
  • While most of these learners won’t pursue careers in maths or science, they nevertheless need C&A skills to be productive members of society.
  • The question then is: how can learners effectively be taught C&A skills in schools in ways that can fall outside of the maths and science classroom, and in the context of a developing country in the 21st century?

The Shuttleworth Foundation 101

Shuttleworth FoundationAfter a full week at the Shuttleworth Foundation (SF) I’ve got a better sense of its overall goals and the space in which it operates.

  • The SF’s primary focus is on formal education in schools (all grade levels). Informal learning is also relevant if it contributes to the formal learning outcomes.

  • The SF operates in South Africa (SA), but with the hope that any applicable educational software, models and projects developed will be used internationally.

  • Many schools in SA face dire challenges: not enough educators, too many learners per class, lack of electricity, corrupt and defunct school feeding schemes, learners in grade 7 who still can’t read or write, overworked and overstressed educators, no or limited bandwidth. But while these harsh realities exist, there are many schools that have adequate facilities for learning. The SF works on certain assumptions: the school has a computer lab with internet connectivity, learners are literate, educators have (at least) basic ICT skills.

  • The SF searches for “quantum leap” solutions that will have a large-scale impact on education in SA and beyond. As an organisation, it is small and agile enough to focus on innovative approaches to education.

  • The SF is committed to all things “open”: open-source software, open content and creative commons licensing.