I participated in a brief online session with Shafika Issacs, Founding Executive Director, Schoolnet Africa, part of the HP Catalyst Series hosted by the New Media Consortium entitled "Developing STEM Learning Through Technology in Africa."
Listening to the challenges, espcially with providing access to women and girls, it occurred to me that micro finance might offer a sloution. The gender gap in ownership of mobiles is quite stark, so much of the gains and advantages of this technology isn't getting to the BoP. Why couldn't we apply the lessons learned from Nathan Eagle's work in crowd sourcing language translation and health in a similar way for education? pay the students to learn. It's not to suggest they need motivation, but rather access. Pay off the phone and air time by answering questions correctly, and then move on.
Why not? If you think about investment in the long term, creating access and empowering young people to become educated, indeed self educated of sorts, would pay handsomely down the road. If you consider the vast amounts of money invested in ICT Development why not start the funding at the bottom and let it grow? What's the financial model? For participation in the program participants are asked to give back when they are successful. Yes, you have to subsidize the phone, the air time, the management of the system, an app, but really--this puts the device in the hands of the student immediately.
We ban the use of phones in class in the west. Its a lost opportunity. There are some interesting examples of this technique in Sri Lanka for creating digital stories by Shilpa Sayura. I think this might work in other challenging environments.
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