Category: Education

Using technology to influence communities

markhawkins Education, Services to affected communities Leave a comment

In the UK, for many years, the Government have tried many methods to influence the behaviour of the population for their own good. We know that smoking is bad for us, but its legal. So to discourage smoking, the government places high taxes on tobacco to discourage smoking. On the roads, the wearing of seatbelts in cars or helmets for motor cyclists are mandatory as part of an effort to reduce road deaths. The trouble is that whilst governments want to do things which are to the benefit of citizens, they are often accused of being the “nanny state” if they use too much carrot and not enough stick.  

Softer methods are being tried to influence behaviours in the UK. The government  formed the “Nudge Unit” to explore ways where behaviours in the population can be changed for the benefit of all. The unit uses social media amongst other tools to promote behaviours such as going to the doctor for check-ups are certain times in our lives. This would include campaigns such as breast cancer screening or blood pressure checks for folks of a certain age.  

There are endless reasons why a government may wish to nudge people to do things for their own good. In developed countries, governments will use radio, TV, social media, newspapers and other channels to influence behaviour. But in the developing nations of the Global South, how can governments and NGOs influence the population which a significant number of people might be illiterate, or lack access to infrastructure and technology?  In this article, I want to shine a spotlight on an organisation called Literacy Bridge. They have a very innovative approach to message rural population and a way to measure how successful their approach has been.  

For many years, health NGOs and UN agencies have delivered programmes which improves the health of the nation. Malaria is one of the biggest killers. We know that we can reduce malaria infections through programmes to distribute bed nets. But how do we get the population to use the nets properly and to refresh the insecticide in the nets? How can we promote other health related topics such as breast feeding, routine vaccinations, and other important messages? 

Social media does have a role to play alongside radio and TV broadcasts, but it will exclude a significant percentage of rural communities as many people do not have access to a smartphone. Where smartphones exists, they are mainly used by men which means that some messages targeted at women will not be passed on.

Literacy Bridge  is using technology to get messages to rural communities in a very innovative way. Their talking book is a robust unit built by ARM, a leading edge technology manufacturer which was spun off by the University of Cambridge in the UK. The talking book has a series of pre-recorded messages stored on a memory card which can be played by members of the community where the technology is distributed. The memory card is sufficiently large enough to allow families to record feedback for programme managers to collect.  

Each unit has a unique ID and its location is registered when it is handed over to the community. Whilst it is deployed, in addition to the recoded feedback, the system also logs what messages were played and how often. Over a period of time, project teams will visit the communities to collect the data and to replace the existing content with new messages. This exchange of messages and data can be done using an application on a smartphone.

The talking book runs on standard batteries. In communities where batteries are hard to source, project teams can supply rechargeable batteries with a solar charger.  

Literacy Bridge is a “Not for Profit” and is very keen that its product is reliable and has a very positive impact on the communities where messages are being delivered. Their approach is to partner with organisations to deliver messaging as part of a wider campaign. They are driven by success and have worked with organisations such as Care and UNICEF.  

To deliver reliable and sustainable technology, they do not sell talking books. They use a leasing model through local partners who will ensure that the units are supported in country.  

The quality of content is very important to Literacy Bridge.  They want messages to be accurate, and appropriate to the communities where the technology is being used. The content will be in local dialects and may take the form of interviews with senior role models, songs and plays.  

So, what does success look like?  Well in 2013, Literacy Bridge was running a programme in partnership with UNICEF in Ghana’s Jirapa District in the Upper West Region. They reached 44,000 people in 49 communities. The feedback demonstrated that 50% of pregnant women and children were more likely to sleep under bed nets when using talking books.   

Conclusion: The Literacy Bridge approach  can be regarded as ICT4D. Within the SCI IT team, we like to call it “Technology for Programmes (T4P)” as we feel that simple practical solutions to real problems is the way forward to alleviate suffering now. In the wider ICT4D community, there are people looking at artificial intelligence and big data. I am sure that the big conferences which promote these big ideas as an academic exercise will deliver something amazing in the near future. However whilst academia works hard to ask the big questions on how we can use big data for the greater good, at the same time, we need to stay focused on identifying simple and sustainable innovation which can have an instant impact on communities today.  

For more information, please visit www.literacybridge.org.

Using ICT to deliver education

markhawkins connectivity, Education Leave a comment

Previously, I have explained how advances in solar energy and future budget satellite broadband will be an enabler for educating children. In this article, we will take a closer look at how technology can be used to deliver educational content to children in various settings. Please read on to learn more about the technology, the settings in which the delivery of education needs to be prioritised and finally how the technologist needs to work closely with the educationalist to create value for money ways of delivering educational content.  

The Technology
Technologist have been accused of inventing solutions and then imposing them on a particular setting. This often leads to failure which leads to a lack of confidence in the  IT sector – we can turn this around. Successful projects will start with conversations between the education stakeholders and technical experts who can then seek out the best technical solution to deliver education. The way in which educational content can be delivered is numerous, here are some popular examples: 

·         Individual learning through the use of online applications, tablets and smartphones.
·         Teacher lead tuition in a classroom environment (sometimes with very large class sizes).
·         Supervised learning in a controlled environment.

From a technology point of view, a programme based on teacher-led education will be the cheapest to deploy as a small number of computers will be needed, perhaps just one. This approach also keeps the costs of supporting services such as power supplies and internet connections to a minimum. Using the technology, teachers are enabled to present content to larger class sizes. Outside of class time, teachers will be able to access the equipment to help them to keep their skills up to date and perhaps to learn new subjects to teach? The chief challenge to this approach is to make sure that there are sufficient good teachers in the first place. This can be a massive challenge for some countries where quality teacher development programmes are either poor quality or non-existent.

So how do we provide education to children in the communities where there are no teachers? This is where technology can bridge the gap, but its more expensive. Technologies exists which enables teachers to run classes from remote locations. Some software houses have developed solutions where student computers are linked to the teachers computer.

The teacher has full control over the student computers so that formal learning can be conducted. Using the control buttons, the teacher has the ability to launch specific education content either for the whole class or on a student by student basis. There is also a function which blanks the students computer screen displaying the text “Pay attention to the teacher”.

Via remote links, qualified teachers can run classes to a larger audience over many sites simultaneously. Local supervisors are present at each site to facilitate the students. In an off grid setting, the same technology can be used by classroom supervisors to run some of the pre-loaded lessons.

Looking more closely at self-paced online learning, there are hundreds of providers in the market like Cornerstone who have built up Learning Management Systems for a wide range of topics. Much of this online training has its roots into workplace training for compliance topics such as health and safety. But if a google search is made for LMS which work in an online/offline environment, choices are more restricted. Choices become further reduced when there is a requirement for multiple platforms (Microsoft, Apple and Android).

The purpose of LMS is to serve up training and to monitor the students’ progress. This can lead to a course completion certificate or qualification once the module is complete.

So – what about offline self-paced learning? One of the revolutionary products emerging is the Actionable Data Book (ADP) is an advance on the e-book approach as it contains word search, video and interactive content. Where it differs from the e-book is that the ADP standard is non-proprietary which means that as an IEEE standard which takes a different approach from the propriety systems like Nook or Kindle. The ADP format is a standard which will run on systems regardless of brand.

Context driven solutions
Taking a step back from the technology, let’s look at examples of contexts which education is delivered and some of the associated challenges: 

  • Refugees/IDPs: Figures from the UNHCR (May 2017) states that there are over 65 million forcibly displaced people worldwide. Just over 21 million of these people are under the age of 18. Where populations are displaced, education is disrupted. The conflict in Syria is leading to a lost generation where a significant cohort of children will not receive education. The task to capture 21 children and provide education is enormous. Technology will have a major role to play in addressing the need. In settings where people have smartphones, some education tools can be distributed through apps. In some settings, distributing technology to children can place them at risk from mugging.
  • Disaster Preparedness: There are many communities who normally have access to education, but are at risk from natural disasters such as Cyclones, Tsunamis and Volcanic Eruptions. In such circumstances pre-positioned technology can be sent to places of shelter to set up classrooms so that children can continue education. Such preparedness plans could be aligned so that education delivered could be aligned to national curriculums (if they exists).Quite often such interventions are short term using quick deploy satellite communications systems such as the SpeedCast system used in Australia.

 

  • Rural: In developing countries, technology enabled education will have a very positive impact on a large rural population. Whilst Africa is mostly off grid in rural settings, the combination of sustainable solar energy solutions and the arrival of low cost internet access within the next two years is going to make the delivery of education easier in rural places. In developing technology aided educations is not going to be cheap. Future programme delivery must be sustainable. This means that it needs to incorporate an ongoing funding model, perhaps with some cost recovery, a reliable supply chain of contents, technical management to keep the technology working, and an element of M&E to capture the programmes impact on communities (leading to continuous improvement).

Education content
What do we teach the children using technology?  This is a question for the education experts to solve and clearly it will be context driven. In the emergency or refugee setting, there are basic life skills content covering topics on how to stay safe in the hostile environment. To deliver education using technology, it’s the educational content which needs to drive the project. Developers of such content should consider designing their solutions to work on as many technologies as possible. In India, the Vodafone Foundation is supporting the Social App Hub, https://knowledge.socialapphub.com. This is a directory of education and life skills apps which have been reviewed and validated by experts.

So returning to our teacher/student example, the success in developing a via product is by ensuring that the solution used to deliver education is content agnostic. If its built in the Microsoft windows environment, we start to get the flexibility so that teachers can either launch pre-made content or even develop their own content using tools such as PowerPoint.

So, to conclude, Technology has the ability to improve education in a variety of settings. With the arrival of cheaper internet access just over the horizon, now might just be the right time to lobby donors for funding to run large scale programmes to educate the next generation.