Innovative and Sustainable Mobile Learning in Africa

Mobile learning, based on the use of mobile and wireless devices to support, enhance and deliver learning, is rapidly gaining ground as a component of blended and technology enhanced learning in the developed countries of Europe, North America and the Pacific Rim. It grows out of the specific cultural, technological and organisational affordances of these countries. In the dramatically different affordances of sub Saharan Africa, mobile learning is developing in a noticeably different direction. This paper brings together accounts of two contrasting initiatives, both of which support in-service teacher training and novel but appropriate blended learning formats, in the region in order to illustrate the differences and the difficulties of mobile learning and in order to explore their potential synergy. The paper also throws light onto a problem now confronting mobile learning in the developed countries; that of finding pedagogically attractive formats that are sustainable and equitable...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2006
• Where: WMTE
• Authors: John Traxler, Jenny Leach
• Keywords: Appropriate Blended Learning, Developed Countries, Mobile Learning, WMTE 2006