motivating 2nd class...

Lecture this last week was quite motivating. The initial focus was on some of the leading research projects in the web-based and mobile technologies fields. Some examples included mobile applications that create concept maps (essentially an "e-portfolio" of sorts); mobile health education applications; LMS as an iPhone application as well other great projects. Professor Paul followed the discussion by showing where some of these leading research projects can meet the needs of some of the most marginalized communities.

Some of the most compelling research projects were a few that Professor Paul has been working on. For example, his storytelling competition project in Rwanda was exceptionally motivating especially because of the under-served community that is targeted by the project. His mobile application project in Oaxaca Mexico was also truly inspiring. Both of these examples are mobile technologies that promote learning and motivate children to use their creativity to think and learn both about themselves and their communities.

The idea of helping the under-served communities of this world is something that I'm sure is on the minds of many individuals, and yet is something that is still tremendously needed. How do you create something that can motivate someone to want to learn or something that will make individuals more inclined to change the way they live? What type of platform can be used to make the most impact yet be something that is sustainable in the long term? Contemplating some possible solutions takes me back to the discussion that took place in last week's class: in order to be effective, we need to have a clear understanding of all of the issues that are plaguing the particular communities we would want to focus on.

Much of the conversations during class were focused on how you enable children to learn, but I think my particular focus is more on how do you teach parents to allow children to learn. Parent education is something that I see being pivotal in the success of a community to excel. In my mind, parents are the single biggest influence in any child's education. Many times children are forced to work or marry because the parents mandate it. Teaching parents that learning and education is the key to success is something that I hope to focus on in future work.

As far as platforms, I found what Professor Paul said about mobile cell phones during lecture very fascinating. It seems like cell phones and other mobile devices are truly enabling much learning in developing countries. I quickly looked up some statistics about how cell phones are being used across the world and found a few interesting graphs from the ITU (International Telecommunications Union).

Seems like mobile telephone subscribers are still growing at a fairly rapid pace both in developing and developed countries. If you compare these numbers to those of the fixed lines it is quite impressing! Even as compared to internet users, mobile technologies are growing at much faster rate than internet usage. Perhaps mobile technology really is the platform to focus on!