Meraka Institute and partners pave the way for cellphone learning
14 September 2005

The Meraka Institute has partnered with various institutions, amongst them the Media Lab of the Helsinki University of Art and Design, Finland, to research the possibilities of using cellphones for formal and informal learning, particularly at disadvantaged schools. An application of this technology could be the development of a Mobile Learning Toolkit, comprising cellphones for learners and a guidebook with instructions and learning exercises for the teachers. The project is titled MobiLeD.

The project also draws on the expertise of partners such as the WikiMedia Foundation (developers of the WikiPedia, the world’s largest community-owned online encyclopaedia), the University of Pretoria (Masters Programme, Computers in Education), Cornwall Hill College, Irene Middle School and Helsinki Universty’s Department of Educational Psychology.

Through MobiLeD, online information resources can be accessed via a cellphone. The following scenario explains the concept:

The learners from Irene Middle School are curious to learn about the grey rock that is being excavated from their grounds, as preparation for building a new classroom. The teacher decides that this is an ideal opportunity to teach learners more about the geology of the region and informs them that the name of the rock is ‘dolomite’. A group of learners use their cellphone to find out more about dolomite by sending the word via Short Message Service (SMS) to Wikipedia. After a few minutes, they receive a call where a voice reads them an explanatory article on 'dolomite' from Wikipedia. The children are especially amazed when they hear that there is a reported case of the formation of dolomite in the kidneys of a dalmatian, due to chemical processes triggered by bacteria…

The learning is not one-way, however. “Anyone may add information to Wikipedia by dictating information to the system. This will be stored as an audio file, and may be used to respond to other senders’ requests regarding the same information,” says Merryl Ford, Domain Specialist in Education, Youth and Gender at the Meraka Institute.

The technology will also make use of online diaries, commonly referred to as blogging. Blogs contain vast and diverse information on specific topics and is a form of 'social' software. “Once voice-blogging has been made accessible via cellphone, anyone will have the opportunity to provide information using their voices,” Ford adds. “This opens up all sorts of options, like making indigenous stories available online in various languages, without the need for conventional expensive computer technologies.”

The project, of which a test pilot was conducted in September 2005 at the Cornwall Hill College and the Irene Middle School, will also run in Brazil, India and Finland. Merryl Ford together with University of Helsinki researchers, Teemu Leinonen and Linus Roune, carried out the test pilot. Leinonen is scheduled to return to South Africa in February till April 2006, at which time the pilot will be extended.

Linus Roune, Teemu Leinonen and Merryl Ford, aim to be pioneers in cell phone learning.