IEET is sending an initial shipment of 25 cellphones to Madagascar as part of it’s African Futures Project, to elevate daily life there via techno-progress.
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Posted by
Kris Notaro on 08/27 at 05:53 PM
This is excellent! As Hank Pellissier’s article points out:
“Many African schools and universities are almost devoid of books. Recognizing this, the Wikipedia Foundation and Orange - a French telecommunications company - are providing free cellphone access to wikipedia later this year. Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, believes access to global cyber-libraries will benefit African education “from primary school level through universities and in research communities as well.”
Cell phones aid African academia in multiple ways:
* School lectures are recorded by the devices, for later listening.
* Calculators provide help with math.
* In Niger, where illiteracy is high, adult students who learned on a phone-based curriculum progressed 30% faster than pupils in normal literacy classes.
* In South Africa, the social networking company MXit set up a math tutoring service, so perplexed pupils can query live tutors instantaneously via their mobiles.
* Distance learners - a large demographic in Africa - are similarly enabled.”
We need more projects like this one! Education, education, education!
Posted by
hankpellissier on 08/27 at 09:16 PM
Hi Kris—thanks for your concern with education. We are also looking to help a USA group with donated tech equipment, so if you know of a school or youth group in your area that needs technical equipment, let me know and I will see if I can get some equipment donated. Thanks for your interest!
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