Steve Vosloo, Shuttleworth Foundation, Cape Town

mLearning in Africa: Lessons from the m4Lit project

ABSTRACT: in 2009, the m4Lit (mobile phones for literacy) project set out to explore the viability of using mobile phones to support reading and writing by teenagers in South Africa (SA). Two m-novels, part of a series called Kontax, were published on a mobisite www.kontax.mobi as well as on SA's most popular mobile instant messaging platform, MXit. In the seven months following launch the stories had been read over 34,000 times, users had submitted over 4,000 entries in writing competitions for the stories, and over 4,000 comments had been left by readers on chapters.

Kontax showed that, for some teenagers, mobile phones are a viable platform for distributing longer form content and enabling reader participation. While m-novels are enormously popular amongst the youth of Japan, they also showed potential in a developing country. In Africa, a "book-poor" but "mobile-phone rich" continent, the potential for increasing reading and writing through mobile phones is enormous. As one girl commented on the Kontax mobisite: "Awsum :) Im realy nt much of a reader but reading of my phone jst seems alot easier...and co0ler! :)"

Since the pilot phase, more stories have been published in order to better understand mobile literacies. There are many more questions than answers at the moment, despite the high uptake of mobile phones amongst South African youth and their importance in the way teenagers socialise and conduct text-based communication.

The presentation will include a description of the m4Lit project and key research findings from the pilot phase. Insights and lessons learned will be shared, as well the key challenges, risks and questions surrounding mobiles for literacy in SA.