DRCA: MILLEE
From the Mobile and Immersive Learning for Literacy in Emerging Economies (MILLEE) project website:
The MILLEE research project aims to enhance access to literacy among children of school-going age in the developing world. More specifically, we aim to complement the formal schooling system by applying mobile learning technology to augment educational opportunities in out-of-school settings.
http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~mattkam/millee/
We heard about a recent set of field work undertaken with the MILLEE research project to study uses of a set of games they have developed for use on mobile devices. The team handed out a number of mobile phones to children and observed, interviewed about, and analyzed the ways the phones and applications were used.
After the children had the mobile devices for a week or two, the researchers observed some unexpected behaviors. The children were sharing devices among each other. The observers noticed that class and gender were largely influential in determining how much time a child could spend using the tool.
This seems like a very important thing to think about. I’m sure this is complex and difficult to achieve, but I think that just as it is possible that a technology could be designed for uses that reinforces or allow gender and class discrimination to persist, it could also be possible to design technologies that challenge those differences. Choosing to make mobile technology is a way of designing to challenge the problem that the poorest children face — they do not have time or money to study in school and have to remain at home or to go earn money during the day. If a child has a mobile application for learning English, that child can practice with it anywhere and in times when the child is not busy with other duties.