MobileActive.org

USAID recently hosted the International Mobiles for Education Symposium (M4Ed4Dev for short) in Washington, DC. The conference brought together academics, development professionals, tool developers, educators, and representatives from the private sector to assess the current state of mLearning and consider future developments. Given the varied backgrounds of the event’s participants, it’s understandable that a number of different, often conflicting, viewpoints were expressed. Here are a few.

Content Delivery Systems or Learner-Generated Content?

In general, the mobile tools discussed and demonstrated at the event can be divided into two distinct types: Those that deliver content and those that enable students to generate content and/or interact via mobile phone. Content delivery applications (which make up the majority) are largely designed to provide educational content chosen by educators to students who wouldn’t otherwise have access. Examples range from preloaded e-readers in Ghana to “internet a box” projects such as the eGranary.

Somalia is suffering through its worst drought in 60 years, and people are fleeing the famine and conflict. A large number of Somalians already live in diasporas across Africa, Europe, and North America. A new service from Voice of America’s Somalia Service and AudioNow makes it easier for Somalians in the United Kingdom to listen to coverage of the drought and other audio news updates, via a basic mobile phone. 

“You have a well-educated, motivated, and mobile population that is willing to dial up and listen to radio broadcasts on their mobile phones,” said Steven Ferri, Web Managing Editor of VOA in Africa.

MobileActive.org interviewed Apala Lahiri Chavan, an expert in Design for Emerging Markets. She is the current Chief Oracle and Innovator of Human Factors International. Through her experience working in the fields of human and computer interaction and user experience with a particular focus on emerging regions, Lahiri Chavan and her team have done cutting edge work in the design of interactive systems. More information about Lahiri Chavan and the work she has done can be found here.

In our interview, Lahiri Chavan talks to us about the importance of paying attention to contextual user needs when designing mobile technologies for users in emerging markets. She started her career as a computer programmer, although soon realized the lack of user-centered research employed in the development of interactive systems. This then motivated her to want to be an ‘advocate for the user’ as she explains in the interview. She wanted to start designing information systems that people could intuitively understand. Her passion to work with people in developing countries is what led her to the field of Contextual Innovation.

Contextual Innovations is a "systematic multidisciplinary process of inquiry into the new frontiers of user system interactions. It allows you to gain practical knowledge about your target markets to develop entirely novel, more useful and effective products and services." The importance of Contextual innovation is that is pay’s special attention to the unique user requirements of developing regions such has high illiteracy rates, multilingualism, and dialectal variation. Lahiri Chavan also also speaks about the importance of engaging citizens of emerging markets in to the design process.

To get a more detailed account of the phrase “Contextual Innovation’’ see Lahiri Chavan video about Design for Emerging Markets. She talks about the design process that must be employed when designing systems and products for users of developing regions. In this animation Lahiri Chavan goes through several processes of design innovations and calls attention to the importance of cross-cultural challenges. 

Telcos or mobile operators have been in the news lately, implicated in the suppression of communications, tracking and surveillance of pro-democracy and human rights activists, and in their close collaboration with repressive regimes and their security apparatuses around the world. Now there is a new initiative spearheaded by advocacy organization Access Now that advocates for mobile operators to sign a set of five principles focused on human and democratic rights in return for their licenses.

Nothing New: How Cozy Telcos Are With Repressive Regimes

Vodafone's recent decision to shut down its communications network in Egypt and the delivery of pro-government propaganda via text message over its network made the news but that was just the tip of the iceberg. The examples abound: Uganda operators monitored and blocked certain SMS keywords in the advent of the recent election there, pro-Zanu propaganda is widely delivered over Zimbabwean operator networks, Russian mobile operators agreed to 'police' the Internet and their networks at the behest of the Russian government, and Belarussian telcos routinely supply information to the security police, including location information of known political activists.

This close collaboration of many operators with repressive states has been going on for some time but there is now a new activist movement forming, holding telcos accountable and to a higher standard. Led by activist shareholders and advocacy organizations like Access, activists point out that the negative publicity of this corporate behavior carries  financial implications that pose a risk to telco investors.