MobileActive.org

Mobile technological tools are being used today to collect basic information in the health, world climate, geophysics, ecology, and other sectors to exchange information, and to access scientific computing among many services. The potentialities of this mobile technology need to be spread out on a larger scale in the academia in particular, and in the society as a whole so that its benefits can become widely accessible for further development. This is an issue that needs more attention and promotion, especially in less developed areas of the world.

We define in this book Mobile Science (or “m-Science” in short) as the term that comprises sensing, computing and dissemination of scientific knowledge by the use of mobile devices. This includes (i) data gathering, (ii) the analysis and process of data, and (iii) the access to on-line services and applications directed to nurture scientists and scholars (such as mobile access to ejournals, podcasts, web lectures, webinars, virtual conferences, mobile collaboration tools, m-Learning, etc).

Based on information extracted from the Web of Science (Thomson Reuters) database of scientific publications spanning from 1980 to 2009, the worldʼs scientific product ion has grown from about 400,000 to 1,200,000 publications in the last three decades. This increment of interest in science, together with the recent technological developments in mobile technologies, is making m-Science a completely new field of interest and research development. This book aims to engage the scientific community, engineers and scholars worldwide in the design, development and deployment of the newest mobile applications.

Within this brief an applied project was conducted in collaboration with the ILO in Geneva. The ILO is currently launching a worldwide training programme called my.coop (Managing Your Cooperative), which aims to teach contemporary principles of managing agricultural cooperatives to people in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

The goal of this applied project was to identify mobile learning opportunities within the delivery of this training programme in the African context. The result is a mobile learning toolkit that contains an overview of mobile learning, 15 mobile learning methods and a selection of tools that can be used to facilitate these methods. Each method includes a general step-by-step guide plus a customisation to the my.coop training programme.

The mobile learning toolkit is an open source resource that can be used in the delivery of all kinds of training in any developing context. It has been designed to be as inclusive as possible, with most of the methods requiring only low end devices (basic mobile phones with voice calling and SMS capability). In this way the toolkit can be used to deliver interactive distance learning experiences to participants even at the Base of the Pyramid (BoP).

With the push to better school results in mathematics, science, and technology related subjects, often language education is moved into the background. In Africa, however, education is often not in the mother tongue of the learners. Pupils are in a position where they are trying to learn complicated subjects such as science and mathematics in a language which is not their home language. In some African countries, there are dozens if not hundreds of languages. Hadeda is a project where primary school pupils (and even secondary school pupils) are encouraged to practice spelling words or vocabulary words using their cell phone. Hadeda allows the language teacher to create spelling lists or vocabulary lists in English and Afrikaans. Hadeda then generates a fun cell phone application using multiple text-to-speech engines to encourage pupils to practice spelling the words.

In a world where school books, pencils and paper have to compete with cell phones, IPODs, and MP3 players for pupils' attention, Dr Math entices pupils to practice basic mathematics skills by providing games and competitions using Mxit over cell phones. Dr Math is a Mxit contact which pupils can add which gives pupils the opportunity to compete with other pupils in basic arithmetic skills such as addition and multiplication and more advanced mathematics skills such as factoring a polynomial and finding the prime factors of a number. In addition, interactive fiction games are available with mathematical twists in a plot that require some basic arithmetic skills to solve the puzzle. And, all of this is done over Mxit – South Africa's leading instant messaging provider – on cell phones.

The Swedish International Development and Cooperation Agency (Sida) recently published a report that gives an overview of the current state of mobile phone applications for social and economic developments in East Africa. Drawing on successful adoption of mobile applications in the Philippines, this Sida report seeks to answer “what hinders the take off of m-applications for development in East Africa and what role donors play in the process.” While mobile phones is the one of the most widely accessible gateways for information in East Africa, with mobile penetration covering over 40% of the population, sustainable, scalable mobile services for social and economic development are limited. The report is supported by secondary data, statistics, and field work carried out in Kenya, Rwanda and Tanzania, along with numerous interviews, meetings and discussions with key stakeholders in East Africa. Major trends in mobile usage, barriers for increased use of m-applications, as well as opportunities for scaling are discussed.

Cellphones have the potential to improve education for the millions of underprivileged users in the developing world. However, mobile learning in developing countries remains under-studied. In this paper, we argue that cellphones are a perfect vehicle for making educational opportunities accessible to rural children in places and times that are more convenient than formal schooling. We carried out participant observations to identify the opportunities in their everyday lives for mobile learning. We next conducted a 26-week study to investigate the extent to which rural children will voluntarily make use of cellphones to access educational content.

Our results show a reasonable level of academic learning and motivation. We also report on the social context around these results. Our goal is to examine the feasibility of mobile learning in out-of-school settings in rural, underdeveloped areas, and to help more researchers learn how to undertake similarly difficult studies around mobile computing in the developing world.