The 'E to M' of ICTs in EDU - on the cheap

You may know well about e-learning. How about m-learning or f-commerce?

I mention f-commerce, i.e. Facebook commerce, because money is an important issue in the places I often work. In Bangladesh or Vietnam, education providers have a very tight budgets. In Bangladesh the entire budget for one student over five years, including administrative costs, was around USD 20. It may not seem like much but when there are 1 million people, one more sheet of paper amounts to 1 million more pieces of paper. So, when the cost of education for one student increased to USD 37, many questions were raised. 17 million more what?

I don't think many people in the Bangldeshi education system would be asking for mobile phones for all of the learners, or teachers. Not until mobile devices are more affordable and above all, the technology has been shown to be reliable in delivering greater learning outcomes.

But, hey, that's what we are searching for, and developing, m-learning.

What is needed is ce-learning? 'CE' stands for cost-effective.
My concern with the model that Cochrane and Bateman (2010) propose is that is appears to be suited to tertiary education, and it is very equipment intensive. For his ideal learners seem to require laptops and mobile phones, very ideal. Moodle for Mobiles is based on a similar model, iPhones and Android devices.

In my idea world, we can make use of what currently exists, and what currently is in use. If the vast majority of people use Yahoo Chat or Facebook, then learners and educators can find ways to make use of these. Mobile learning might mean taking a trip to a local internet cafe - if the school doesn't have the technical know-how and working equipment.

Even better, make use of the most common mobile device. The old-fashioned mobile telephone. In Bangladesh, education providers in the formal and non-formal sectors are providing services using mobile phones. Start with the basics: would 1 million SMS messages cost less than the paper equivalent?

What can be done with a mobile phone? My clever colleague (studying for a PhD) argued his ordinary mobile phone could do just about anything an iPhone could do. What then do people do? If there are four basic things people do online: search for information, read, communicate, and be entertained, then we can get a idea of how to make use of a mobile device.

I think it is practical, useful and surely cost-effective to deliver reading content to mobile phones. Learning involves a certain amount of information. Digital materials can be produced with less cost, and distributed quickly. One such example of this in Bangladesh is BBC Janala.



In practice, the m-learning initiatives I have encountered made use of audio. Multi-media is engaging.

A lesson from several studies indicates that technology and unprepared teachers will not resolve any issues. Web 2.0 teaching tools are as raw as a steak in a butcher's shop. It's going to take a real chef to make the steak desirable. To implement a dynamic, learner-centered and constructivist approach, teachers will need a to be involved. Fortunately research has shown that in-service teacher training can be conducted using common mobile phone technology. A new term is waiting to be coined - m-training, h-training, location-based learning, mistt, ez-learning?

Christopher

Power, Tom and Shrestha, Prithvi (2010). Mobile technologies for (English) language learning: An ex- ploration in the context of Bangladesh. In: IADIS International Conference: Mobile Learning 2010, 19 - 21 March 2010, Porto, Portugal.

Sarah Lucas Pouezevara Rubina Khan (2007) Learning Communities Enabled by Mobile Technology: A Case Study of School-Based, In-Service Secondary Teacher Training in Rural Bangladesh