Matthew Kam, Carnegie Mellon University, USA

Mobile Phones and Language Literacy in Rural Developing Regions

ABSTRACT: Literacy levels in most poor countries remain shockingly low and formal education is making little progress. MILLEE improves literacy through language learning games on cellphones – the “Personal Computers of the developing world” – which are a perfect vehicle for new kinds of out-of-school language learning. The project focuses on developing scalable, localizable design principles and tools for language learning. The challenges are (i) to integrate sound learning principles, (ii) to provide concrete design patterns that integrate entertainment and learning, and (iii) to understand cultural and learning differences in children in developing regions.

I will describe a framework called PACE which addresses these challenges and ten rounds of fieldwork that contributed to its development. I will discuss the complex adoption ecology in developing regions, and how MILLEE preserves learning principles while supporting rich localization and customization at multiple stages in the adoption hierarchy. I will discuss our work which patterns learning games after local children’s traditional village games and the benefits this approach offers. Finally, I will describe the findings from our semester-length after-school program deployment and out-of-school ethnographic studies.

The MILLEE project is starting its 7th year. It has received major sponsorship from the MacArthur Foundation, Microsoft, National Science Foundation, Nokia, Qualcomm and Verizon. MILLEE was featured in the press in India (where previous pilots were based), a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation television documentary, and ABC News. With a generous donation of 450 cellphones from Nokia, we are commencing a controlled experiment with 800 rural children in 40 villages in India. Our academic collaborators in Africa and China are replicating our work with rural learners in their local communities.