Free international webinar on mobile learning
Yesterday I posted on the Reach Further blog for Blog Action Day on how Online communities bring the world together to share I talked about ELKS, the community of expertise for the UN-GAID run by BDRA at the University of Leicester – a network for e-learning practitioners and researchers to share good practice, ideas and opinions.
ELKS is hosting a free webinar on mobile learning, anyone can become a member (it’s free) to join in.
Tuesday 21st October from 11 am – 12 noon BST
The webinar will take the form of a 20 minute presentation and a live chat followed by a discussion.
Mobile technologies for education in development contexts – challenging the obvious.
Speaker: John Traxler,
Reader in Mobile Technology for e-Learning, Director, Learning Lab, Conference Chair, mLearn2008 Ironbridge, Associate Editor, International Journal of Mobile & Blended Learning (School of Computing and IT, University of Wolverhampton).
In the seminar John will talk about his work on mobile learning in Kenya, the lessons learned and their transferability to other developing country educational contexts.
A short introduction to the seminar:
In 2003, the Government of Kenya announce the introduction of Free Primary Education, leading to an increase in primary enrolment of nearly one million. The subsequent fall of the school population pointed to a retention problem aggravated by over-crowding and under-training. A major challenge was to increase the numbers of trained teachers rapidly whilst at the same time improving the quality of the school system and using it as a vehicle for radical social and cultural transformation across issues that included child-marriage and other tribal practices, perceptions of endemic corruption, poor communications, an over-centralisation and widespread adult illiteracy. Ministry developed an in-service distance learning programme intended to meet needs for 200,000 primary school teachers.
Mobile learning in the form of an SMS service was introduced as part of the in-service programme.
The SMS component underwent field trials in 2006. The system is free to authorised users using a short-code. The messages themselves have a limited and predefined syntax, each type starting with a keyword, and the system has been extended to gather and analyse schools’ enrolment data. At the end of the second trials, the technical and organisational achievements of the system are impressive.
A spin-off of the current system making school exam registration and results nationally more accurate, fast and transparent has already become a self-funding service for Kenyan parents.
This presentation looks these projects and at the confusing insights they provide into the notions of ‘development’.
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The webinar is free to ELKS members and staff of member institutions but numbers are limited in the chat session so please book your place by emailing hw74@le.ac.uk
Membership of the ELKS community is free and open to e-learning practitioners and researchers around the world: email hw74@le.ac.uk to join.
The webinar will take place in Adobe Connect and online in the ELKS forums