By Keith Krueger, CoSN CEO
One of the expectations of our delegation, and certainly mine, before coming to Scandinavia was that we would see innovative uses of mobile devices in education. We did see them, but not in Scandinavia. Nokia and Ericsson hosted the delegation at their corporate headquarters in Helsinki and Stockholm, and we saw some of their amazing educational projects…but to date they are being deployed in the developing world.
The developing world didn’t have much existing infrastructure in schools, so they can leapfrog to mobile devices much more quickly. And, whereas the developed world tends to view cell phones a “problem/distraction” in schools, new emerging countries see mobile devices as bringing the Internet, and therefore the world, to their classrooms. A very different mindset.
Listen to the comments of Erkki Ormala, Vice President, Technology Policy at Nokia on how they are viewing their role in education.
I think this is a global trend. The countries that have been leading in ICT use in education have largely been PC or Mac-based traditions. In the U.S. we “wired” schools (although aggressively moving to wireless) and when we talk about technology we tend to mean “computers”. Nokia, in partnership with Pearson Foundation, has an interesting project in the Philippines and South Africa which provides the teacher with a mobile phone which has both educational content, and links them to a professional development network with other teachers.
While more of an economic development initiative, both Erickson and Nokia have started micro-financing projects which give loans to women in remote tribal communities. These are set up as a business with the woman buying mobile service and she (and it is usually a woman) rebundles the minutes to the community using their cell phone. Within a few months, the loan is repaid and the community has a business providing an essential service.
Nokia also showed us their new Internet devices. While prices are still higher than some educators will want, this sort of device could be strong competitor to traditional laptops and tablets which generally cost more. For more information on this topic, check out CoSN’s webinar in December 2007 on the topic of “Ultra Light Weight Portable Devices: The Quest for the $100 device” (archived and available in CoSN store for nonmembers). Members of CoSN also have a free EdTechNext report on this topic.
One senses that while we saw less of this sort of mobile device in Scandinavian schools than we expected, that will quickly change over the coming years due to these Scandinavian companies.
Share this article on your favorite social networking site:
digg this | del.icio.us | reddit | NewsVine