Across the globe some 273 million people have either no education or very little access to even the most basic of education, let alone education for continuing personal development. UNESCO, a large scale training provider across the developing world, has long been seeking to end poverty through greater education. Can new technology be the answer to this age old problem?
The rapid development of new technology for the internet provides the first real hope of achieving this goal. At various educational conferences around the world different solutions are being discussed. Software that can use streaming media technology to provide learning on any mobile device must surely be the future for delivering education to everyone, no matter how remote their location or how poor the infrastructure is in their country of origin.
Long Distance Learning via Phone
New technology is making it possible to deliver basic education as well as continuing personal development training via a mobile phone. Streaming media allows training providers to record training sessions for future use and deliver it via mobile devices to the end user, no matter where they are.
The beauty of long distance learning is that it can be done at the student’s own pace, away from prying eyes, if the adult learner student feels embarrassed or shy about their lack of basic reading and writing skills for example, and can be delivered at very little cost. The forward-thinking software developers who offer the kind of software that allows education providers to build up a library of educational material and courses, which can then be transmitted to students across the globe, are at present still few and far between.
However, those who do offer new streaming media solutions do so without the need of buying a software package – a cost effective subscription fee, either paid monthly, quarterly or annually, allows educational providers to stay within their educational budgets and deliver the most up-to-date curriculum to their students.
Mobile phones offer the cheapest and most practical device for the provision of education. Relatively cheap to purchase in the developed parts of the world, they can be reconditioned once discarded for a new model and shipped off to developing parts of the world. Studies have shown that users in the remotest areas of Africa rarely use phones more than a year out of date. This allows education to be delivered to a boy looking after his herd of cattle just as much as it provides adult education to someone in the UK, who never learned maths or how to read at school when they were small.
Mobile phones do not need a lot of electricity to be recharged. A solar panel on just one roof in a remote village could power up a large number of phones. Solar panels on village roofs are considerably cheaper than building roads or providing school buses to the nearest town. Where infrastructure is not in place, mobile phones for the delivery of education will be the way forward as the most cost effective solution.