I was honoured to be a discussant in the IIEP-UNESCO strategic debate in Paris on the question Can education systems anticipate the challenges of AI?
Stuart Elliot, author of the OECD report ‘Computers and the Future of Skill Demand, was the main presenter with an exciting framework to help understand the impact of AI on skills and education using the OECD’s PIAAC data.
Stuart’s slides are here. My slides and the full video recording.
In 2018 around half the world’s population will be online, which is a major achievement. It also means there is still much work to be done to include the other half.
The next four billion users look different to those already benefiting from digital opportunities for livelihoods, life and work. New and diverse strategies are needed for their digital inclusion. (As this becomes more recognised it may herald the golden age of ICT4D, which already practises inclusive strategies.)
Studies show that, in general, the offline population is disproportionately rural, poor, elderly and female. When it comes to digital skills, women are 1.6 times more likely than men to report it as a factor limiting their use of the internet. Offline people often have limited education, low literacy and typically hold informal sector jobs.
In an increasingly online world, people without the required digital skills and literacy – the 750 million people who cannot read or write and the many more who have low literacy – now face a double exclusion, not only from full participation in the real world but also from opportunities in the digital one.
There is a need to both develop the digital skills and literacy amongst this group, as well as create inclusive digital solutions that are suitable for the digital skills they have today in order to ensure inclusion and equal participation for all.
UNESCO Guidelines for Digital Inclusion for Low-skilled and Low-literate People
Recognising that apps and services, if designed appropriately, can provide an entry point for low-skilled and low-literate people into digital usage and can support improved livelihoods and skills development, UNESCO is currently drafting a set of guidelines for more inclusive design of digital solutions. The work is though UNESCO’s partnership with Pearson.
The draft guidelines have been developed in consultation with an international expert group, and are informed by a landscape review Digital Inclusion for Low- skilled and Low-literate People and a set of fourteen case studies.
There are many excellent guides to effective digital development and how to practise user-centred design. In a way that complements and extends existing resources, UNESCO aims to focus the lens on low-skilled and low-literate users as much as possible with the guidelines.
The Target Audience
The primary target audience for the guidelines are digital solution providers – from large providers such as Google and Facebook, to start-ups – as well as implementation and development partners, such as FAO, GIZ, UNICEF and USAID, who can shape the terms of reference for digital solution development.
The secondary audience includes policy makers – for using the guidelines to create inclusive policies and regulatory frameworks, and mobile network operators and technology providers – for creating enabling environments for greater digital inclusion for all.
Seeking Public Input
In order for UNESCO to create guidelines that are informed, valuable and balanced, it is seeking input from the public. So this week there is one long read — the draft guidelines.
Please review and provide input on the document. When reviewing the guidelines, consider these broad questions:
UNESCO is also creating a list of external resources to accompany the guidelines. Please feel free to suggest additional resources to the draft document.
Feedback should be sent by email to ICTliteracy@unesco.org by 30 April 2018.
All input is valuable and will be reviewed by UNESCO. Please note, however, that it is not possible to include all input in the final version.
Drawing on the collective feedback from a range of stakeholders, UNESCO will release a final version of the guidelines on 7 September 2018 in celebration of World Literacy Day.
Thank you in advance for your valuable feedback!
Image © Jayalaxmi Agrotech/Anil Kumar
There are over half a billion children living in countries affected by conflict and disasters, making them three times more likely to be out of school than children living in stable, but low-income countries. 51% of all refugees in the world are children, and refugee girls at secondary level are only half as likely to enrol in school as their male peers. How do we provide quality and inclusive education in these contexts?
To help answer this question three reports on edtech for refugees, displaced populations and those living in deprived contexts have recently been published. Two of them certainly add to the body of knowledge of what works and what doesn’t when providing education in emergencies. They offer a clear-eyed view of edtech possibilities, based on evidence and removed from hype. The third offers predictions on the future of learning and technology in low-resource contexts.
Each report is rich in content and worth reading. Below is a brief description of each and a sample of highlights that caught my eye.
What Works and What’s Missing in Edtech in Emergencies and Displaced Settings
EdTech for Learning in Emergencies and Displaced Settings: A rigorous review and narrative synthesis, by Save the Children, set out to answer the question: How can the utilisation of edtech (at home or at school) for teaching and learning best facilitate the learning process of children in crisis-affected settings?
The report found that while there is little applicable evidence that is relevant for those engaging in education in emergencies, there is nearly three decades worth of research into ‘what works’ in edtech in general. Save the Children felt that if it “cautiously cast the net a little wider, there were areas where research from more stable contexts could be used to inform practice in emergency settings as well.” The authors reviewed over 130 academic papers on edtech’s impact on learning outcomes.
Some of the main findings include:
Education Possibilities for Refugees
The second report A lifeline to learning: Leveraging technology to support education for refugees is from UNESCO. Drawing on a review of over 117 relevant papers and reports and analysis of 52 distinct projects, the report seeks to better understand how mobiles can open educational opportunities for refugees.
Key findings include:
Both reports highlight the need for more evaluations and exploration of edtech learning possibilities for refugees and displaced populations.
Looking Ahead
The final report, again published by Save the Children, is The Future of Learning and Technology in Deprived Contexts. Looking forward to 2020 and 2025, the report is based on a literature review, interviews with experts, a workshop and consultations with Save the Children staff.
Tim Unwin, one of the authors, offers a useful summary of the key points. Concerning changes in basic education which are likely to be apparent by 2025, some observations include the following:
Concerning ICTs for education in crisis-affected areas in 2025, a few predictions include:
The focus is clearly on continued learning, psycho-social support and integration into the host setting. These predictions provide great suggestions for where to focus attention in new apps and services.
Photo: (c) S. Sheridan / Mercy Corps
UNESCO, in partnership with Pearson, has released the final batch of case studies of digital solutions that are inclusive for people with low skills and low literacy, helping them to participate in the knowledge society in innovative ways. The case studies, authored by Dr Nathan Castillo and myself, were released during UNESCO’s Mobile Learning Week.
The new case studies are:
The latest case studies affirm the six digital insights drawn from the earlier cases in the series. Each has an interesting story to tell and is well worth a read.
For me, MOPA is particularly interesting because it demonstrates how a user-centred design approach and the inclusion of different stakeholder groups can empower citizens and strengthen accountability for public service delivery. It demonstrates six digital practices that are instructive for ICT4D practitioners.
Citizen Monitoring of Municipal Services
Maputo has a serious solid waste management problem. Many of its 1.2 million residents live in informal settlements, hard to reach because of poor road infrastructure and dangerous during flooding because of drains and rivers blocked by trash.
The Maputo Municipality attempted to address the solid waste challenge by outsourcing waste collection to private companies which used waste removal trucks in the urban sectors, and micro-operators using pushcarts for suburban neighbourhoods. Overseeing and quality controlling such a decentralised network of 45 operators proved to be very difficult.
Today, through the participatory digital reporting and monitoring MOPA platform, citizens are encouraged to report waste issues and monitor the public waste management service in the Maputo Municipality via USSD, website and, most recently, via Android app. After a year, 3,500 registered users have contributed almost 7,000 sanitation reports to the MOPA digital system, 96% via USSD.
It’s a really cool project, basically what happens when a UX company – UX Information Technologies – teams up with city government – the Maputo Municipal Council – and gets support from the World Bank. The development process followed is thorough and the solution is wonderfully pragmatic.
Understand the Problem, Engage All the Users
Good product development means we should design with the user and understand the existing ecosystem. The MOPA team decided to do this through four types of workshops to gather user-oriented design insights, validate workflow systems, and collect ideas for improving the service.
Talk the User’s Language
Citizens can report on particular rubbish containers to say, for example, it is full or burning. Containers have physical locations, but residents don’t identify containers by address. MOPA found out that they rather refer to them in relation to something, for example, the receptacle in front of the Custodio warehouse is the ‘Custodio’ container.
The MOPA team mapped the city with these peoples’ labels, which improves the reporting quality and better fits the residents’ language. In the background the system can match the peoples’ label with the official address.
Make it Super Easy
To submit a report, the MOPA platform requires three data points for location identification: municipal district, neighbourhood and place. But how do you get citizens to report based on location when they don’t have GPS? Keep it old school with paper and USSD.
As part of its awareness-raising campaign, the UX team produced posters that were distributed in all neighbourhoods with a unique USSD string for each container. Each string captured the essential location data.
By storing the USSD string as a contact under ‘MOPA’, whenever residents want to register a report the key location data is already captured and they go straight to specifying the type of incident.
Use Soft Power
While disruptive innovation is the rallying cry of today, the MOPA team did not try to become the “Uber of” waste management. Instead they decided to work within the current parameters, but bring efficiency to the process. We could call this “soft power innovation”. Soft power is “the ability to attract and co-opt, rather than by coercion (hard power) … to shape the preferences of others through appeal and attraction”.
Local service providers are still contracted to collect the waste and the City still manages the process. Everyone keeps their jobs, but they need to do them better. The residents and the data management tool empowering the City bring an efficiency to the process using simple tools already in their lives.
Open the Platform and Data
The UX team organized Mozambique’s first e-Government hackathon – #apps4maputo – challenging local developers to produce the most innovative digital solution utilising an API into the MOPA platform. MOPA is built on open source software and generates open data.
The winner developed an app called OurMoz, which submits reports to the MOPA platform from any Android-enabled device.
The hackathon allowed the UX team to expand its user base to include smartphone users and practice being collaborative and open in textbook style. It also set the tone for the underlying platform to be used for other civic participation use cases.
Keep the User Informed
SMS notifications allow residents to receive confirmations of their submitted
reports, and update them on the status of the report. In the City’s offices the reports are published on an online map, which the municipality uses along with a dashboard to track, validate and verify with the waste removal companies when each issue has been resolved. The resident is then notified via an SMS sent through the platform. Such a feedback loop shows that the municipality is transparent and responsive.
Overall, the results are impressive: more than 88% of reported issues are resolved, with an average response time of 2.7 days. 186 informal dump sites across the city have also been eradicated. MOPA is an exciting example of simple innovation using the tools that people have. Aside from moving towards a cleaner city, perhaps the biggest impact is the empowerment residents feel by playing their part in this process. That is a key foundation of digital inclusion.
Image: (C) by Municipal Council of Maputo
Quartz Africa reports that last year feature phones took back market share from smartphones in Africa. The market share of smartphones fell to 39% in 2017 (from 45%), while feature phones rose to 61% (from 55%).
Quartz Africa sees the reasons as likely to be twofold: first, the growth of big markets, like Ethiopia and DR Congo, which until recently have had relatively low penetration. Second, low price.
Transsion, a little-known Chinese handset manufacturer, now sells more phones than any other company in Africa. It’s three big brands outnumber Samsung’s market share there. The devices are cheap and appealing for new users.
The FT reports that Transsion’s phones are specifically designed for the African market: they have multiple sim-card slots, camera software adapted to better snap darker skin tones, and speakers with enhanced bass (seriously). Many of the feature phone models have messaging apps. The batteries remain on standby for up to 13 days!
What does this mean? That you should freeze your flashy new app project? No! There’s no need to stop planning and developing for a smartphone-enabled Africa. The trend is clear: smartphones become cheaper over time and their uptake increases.
But we know that in Africa, especially, mobile usage is unevenly distributed and these stats are a good reminder that the non-smartphone user base is still huge. Many of us need to remain true to that reality if we want our ICT to be 4D.
The age old question – which mobile channel should we focus on? – has not gone away. And the answer still remains the same: it depends. What is your service? What devices do your users have? What are their usage preferences? Do they have data coverage and, if yes, can they afford data?
Low tech, like IVR and radio, can be beautiful and extremely effective. In a meta-study of education initiatives in Africa, the Brookings Institute found that most technology-based innovations utilize existing tools in new ways. They give Eneza Education as an example, which built its service on SMS (even though there is now an Android app available).
At the same time, apps are certainly rising in the development sector. While not in Africa, the Inventory of Digital Technologies for Resilience in Asia-Pacific found apps to be the dominant channel. From my own experience I’m seeing more apps, often as one part of a mix of delivery channels.
A forthcoming case study in the UNESCO-Pearson initiative is MOPA, a platform for participatory monitoring of waste management services in Maputo, Mozambique. Citizens report issues via USSD, website and, most recently, via Android app.
Usage patterns show that 96% of reports are still sent through USSD, 3% via mobile app, and only 1% through the website. Given that specific user base, and the quick-and-dirty nature of the transaction, it’s not surprising that USSD is a clear winner.
Another example of a channel mix is Fundza, the South African mobile novel library. It started life as a mobisite and now also has an app, which largely provides a window into the same content just in a nice Android skin.
The app is used by less than 1% of users, with the mobisite taking the lion’s share of traffic (via feature phone and smartphone). Fundza is also on Free Basics, where the breakdown is quite different: 65% mobisite, 45% app (perhaps pointing to the benefits of being bundled into someone else’s very well-marketed app).
There are many reasons why individual apps may or may not succeed, and these examples are not meant to downplay their utility. Overall, the world is going to smartphones.
However, the bottom line is that you should not write off the humble feature phone in Africa just yet. It does old tech very well, internet messaging and the mobile web, which for many ICT4D projects is still their bread and butter access channel.
On World Teachers’ Day (5 October) we celebrate the wonderful people all over the planet who have dedicated their lives to the education of others. Without the commitment and patience of teachers, none of us, the educated, would be where we are today.
However, on this day we also know there are not enough teachers in the world. In fact, to meet the first target of Sustainable Development Goal 4 — ensure that by 2030 all girls and boys complete free, equitable and quality primary and secondary education — is it estimated that 69 million new teachers will need to be recruited. Furthermore, pre-service and in-service teachers need to be trained and supported throughout their careers. All viable options, including digital technologies, need to be leveraged to achieve this goal.
In the spirit of solving the twin challenges of teacher supply and teacher quality, UNESCO recently released the report Supporting teachers with mobile technology, which draws lessons from UNESCO projects implemented in Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan and Senegal between 2012 and 2014. I managed the project in Nigeria along with Mark West, the report’s co-author. The projects, implemented through a partnership between UNESCO and Nokia (now part of Microsoft), aimed to explore how mobile learning technologies can support teacher development.
The report offers rich descriptions of the four different project contexts, approaches and evaluations, and is well worth reading. Below is a selection of key points from the conclusion, some well known in mobile learning, others new. Hopefully they inspire the edtech community to keep working to support teachers.
Findings about the perceived impact of the projects
Lessons learned
The report offers a few recommendations for the continued efforts to support teacher professional development using mobile technologies.
The 2016 UNESCO Mobile Learning Week kicked off on Monday with a webinar entitled Innovation and quality: Two sides of the same coin? The virtual event, held in partnership with Education Fast Forward, debated the extent to which mobile technology can strengthen the quality of education and facilitate learning.
I blogged about the five key take-aways on ICTWorks – you can read the post there.
(Image: @AndrewGraley)
At the 2015 UNESCO Mobile Learning Week, I sat on a panel about literacy. Below are my speaking notes. Thank you to Ms Saniye Gülser Corat, Director for Gender Equality at UNESCO, for moderating the panel.
Brief for the panel:
Due to a history of educational inequity, many more women than men are illiterate: globally, 64 per cent of illiterate people are women. Limited access to physical books and other learning materials disproportionately affects women, particularly in developing countries. Cultural norms can make it difficult for girls to leave home in order to attend literacy trainings or participate in outreach activities. Motherhood and assumed family obligations can further prevent women from building literacy skills in formal education settings.
How can mobile learning interventions break through barriers and promote literacy for women and girls in ways that are sustainable and scalable? How can mobile technology help develop essential literacies beyond reading and writing, such as media and technology literacy?
Much has already been achieved by mobiles for literacy.
The Goethe Institute of Johannesburg last month hosted an mLiteracy Networking Meeting to examine the opportunities and challenges for mobiles to increase literacy development, especially in Africa (see my speaking notes from the meeting).
It was an incredibly valuable, interesting and much-needed gathering by some of the old and new players in this space. The good news is seeing how far mobiles for literacy has come, how it has grown, how many young and old people it is reaching and engaging. How the mobiles for literacy field has not only provided another much needed medium to access reading material, but also allowed readers to comment and write their own pieces. It has given readers a voice, something not possible at such scale or immediacy in the print medium.
Gender sensitive does not equal gender specific.
In many cases we do not need initiatives focused only on women and girls, but rather on women and girls, men and boys. In other words, a holistic approach that is gender sensitive. Of course there is spill-over when particular genders are targeted – as with the example of Business Women, a mobile service for women entrepreneurs in Nigeria that has reached 100,000 women AND to which 20,00 men have also subscribed.
The need for specificity.
We know that local context is a key differentiator. There are different gender-related opportunities and barriers across and within countries, cities and communities. There is no one-size-fits-all solution, and so when answering questions about improving literacy for women and girls, we need to provide broad enough responses that can be adapted and applied appropriately to specific audiences.
Pearson is playing a key role in improving literacy.
Last year Pearson launched Project Literacy, a five-year campaign to help ensure that by 2030, every child around the world has the support they need to become a literate adult. On the Project Literacy site, almost 200 organisations and people working in literacy have posted their challenges and inspirations.
Take an ecosystem view.
For an initiative to be successful and scalable, it is essential to understand the full range of stakeholders, enablers and constraints in the mliteracy ecosystem. This view is recommended by the UNESCO Policy Guidelines for Mobile Learning.
For your initiative, who can increase visibility, lower costs, benefit from your content? Which policies support your work, or hinder it? Who provides the devices that the women and girls use, who supplies the network infrastructure? Which stakeholders have been the hardest to engage with? Interrogating the ecosystem was a key theme of the Goethe Institute mLiteracy Networking Meeting – a sign, I think, of how the mliteracy space has matured.
Target content and programmes.
From Yoza Cellphone Stories, and also other mliteracy projects, we know that the romance genre is very popular. Equally are stories that talk to the social issues of the audience: pregnancy, HIV/AIDS, drugs, mothering, job-seeking, education, etc. Content must be targeted to the communities who we want to consume and engage with it. This does not re-enforce gender stereotypes but rather recognises the different life experiences of women and girls, men and boys, and so normalises and mainstreams differences across these groups.
Content that develops the skills of readers supports the recommendation from the UNESCO Mobile Phone Literacy – Empowering Women and Girls project: “The particular needs of the targeted women and girls must be addressed and life-skills and empowerment opportunities offered.”
Questions for reflection: Give an example of how you have targeted specifically women/men, or girls/boys? And did doing so alienate the other group?
Increase visibility.
Visibility of resources and opportunities via mobiles remains a challenge – obscurity is the biggest threat to the many excellent initiatives. Visibility includes a number of aspects:
Questions for reflection: How have you increased visibility for your project? How have you engaged communities / gatekeepers to sensitize them and seek political support?
A wonderful piece by Anathi Nyadu, a FundZa writer and attendee of the Goethe meeting, describes how he used to have to scrounge newspapers from the bin and steal books to satisfy his love of reading. But he believes his niece will never have to do either, thanks to mobile literacy.
I recently had the privilege of attending the 8th Global Symposium on ICT in Education 2014, themed Transforming Education with 1:1 Computing (3-5 November, 2014, Gyeongju, Republic of Korea). All presentations are here.
I presented on 2 Case Studies at National Level: 1:1 Educational Computing Initiatives in South Africa – namely the large-scale tablet implementation at CTI and MGI higher education institutions, and the ICT4RED school tablet rollout in the rural Eastern Cape district of Cofimvaba.
28 countries were represented, sharing their experiences of planning and implementing 1:1 computing initiatives. The event was hosted by the Korean Ministry of Education and the World Bank, along with KERIS, UNESCO Bangkok and Intel. South Korea is one of the leaders in digital learning, so it was a fitting context for the conference.
A number of lessons were learned and known ones confirmed, shared below (download here).
The prospects for mobile learning
(Introductory chapter of Prospects journal issue on mobile learning)
By Professor John Traxler and myself
Mobile Report April 2014
by @Native
Innovations out of Africa: The emergence, challenges and potential of the Kenyan Tech Ecosystem
a report by Julia manske published by the Vodafone Institute for Society and Communications
Pearson’s Learning Curve 2014 report makes a few references to mobile, in particular:
Steven Vosloo 
