From the beginning of the computer age, scientists, educators, and policy makers have looked at the computer as an agent of change in education. With its amazing capacity to expand the human mind, by assisting in computation or facilitating exploration – no other technology can rival its data processing abilities. And put to work in education, the computer promises an unparalleled way to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of learning models, and increase the impact of the limited resources allocated to school systems.<\/p>\n
Beginning with innovators like Seymour Papert, and extending through the One Laptop Per Child program, which claimed to be a direct descendant of his work, there is an additional push to move computers to a one-to-one basis with children. That computers could actually supplant the top-down knowledge transfer usually practiced to a more self-directed exploration of knowledge. But reliant on one-to-one computer saturation, this specialized effort has always been restrained by the massive costs to allocate and support such technology diffusion.<\/p>\n
But why have a monolithic focus on computers? What about mobile phones?<\/b><\/p>\n
Today there is a mobile phone revolution in the developing world. From the rural Maasai to the slum dwellers of Mumbai, poor people are acquiring mobile phones by themselves – without the government subsidies of the telecenter era. In fact, mobiles represent a huge shifting the technology deployment burden from the state to private companies and individual consumers. <\/p>\n
And yet saturation levels are nearing one-to-one in the developed world already, and gaining quickly in the urban areas of the developing world. Because of their relative low costs and low operating needs, its now a given that mobile phones will always out number computers. In addition, phones are gaining in capacity and computing power, with high-end smart phones rivaling some of the low-end netbooks already. <\/p>\n
Could it be that mobile phones offer developing country governments a better learning tool and more educational benefits that computers?<\/b><\/p>\n
This month, we will have two respected discussants explore this topic:<\/p>\n