=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-1154/paper20
|storemode=property
|title=Mobile Learning in the Global South
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1154/paper20.pdf
|volume=Vol-1154
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/biiml/Traxler14
}}
==Mobile Learning in the Global South==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1154/paper20.pdf
"This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License."
Traxler, J. (2014) Paper presented at the Bristol Ideas in Mobile Learning 2014 Symposium, Bristol.
Mobile
Learning
in
the
Global
South
Learning
with
mobiles
seems
to
have
obvious
advantages
as
an
educational
technology
in
what
is
often
called
the
‘developing
world’
or
the
‘global
South’
and
there
is
indeed
currently
a
lot
of
activity
and
interest.
This
does
however
often
seem
to
be
informed
by
inappropriate
theorising
or
by
none
at
all.
The
purpose
of
this
paper
is
to
encourage
the
mobile
learning
research
community
to
theorise
critically
about
‘development’
issues
and
make
tentative
steps
towards
recognising
and
incorporating
some
of
the
theoretical
work
of
the
development
studies
community
into
more
appropriate
forms
of
mobile
learning
for
the
global
South.
In
many
senses
this
is
at
the
boundaries
of
mobile
learning.
The
paper
draws
on
a
book
chapter
containing
full
references
and
attempts
to
outline
a
new
research
agenda.
The
Introductory
Dilemma
There
are
two
ways
of
tackling
disadvantage
in
the
‘developing’
world,
in
the
global
South.
Firstly
to
treat
it
as
merely
a
dimension
of
disadvantage,
comparable
to
gender
inequality
or
economic
deprivation
and
the
second
is
to
recognise
it
as
something
distinct
and
different.
The
choice
has
implications
for
the
development
of
any
conceptual
or
analytic
framework.
This
paper
takes
the
second
approach
in
order
to
explore
the
possibilities
of
generating
new
theoretical
approaches
at
the
broad
intersection
of
mobile
learning
with
development
studies.
The
Current
Context
–
Agencies
and
Donors
Owing
to
the
dramatic
increase
in
mobile
use,
ownership
and
familiarity
in
the
US
and
the
emergence
of
sustainable
business
models
around
some
aspects
of
mobile
learning,
it
is
no
surprise
that
much
of
the
aid,
donor
and
agency
community,
the
World
Bank,
UNESCO
or
USAID
for
example,
staffed
by
US
nationals
or
headquartered
in
the
US,
suddenly
saw
mobiles
as
the
obvious
delivery
technology
for
their
educational
objectives
in
the
global
South
in
the
recent
past.
Their
over-‐riding
emphases
on
scale,
sustainability
and
content
with
or
around
a
largely
US
perspective
on
mobile
learning
make
it
imperative
to
develop
rigorous
and
appropriate
theory.
Some
Historical
Context
–
Early
in
East
Africa
Here
we
discuss
some
early
projects
in
order
to
illustrate
how
concepts
and
practices,
taken-‐for-‐granted
or
not-‐worth-‐mentioning
along
with
the
unexpected
consequences
and
hidden
causes,
and
the
role
of
anecdote
in
the
development
of
theory.
More
Context
–
Later
in
Africa
and
India
Here
we
look
at
some
well-‐known
and
well-‐documented
projects,
partly
for
the
added
richness
of
more
detail
and
partly
to
see
how
such
projects
are
presented
and
how
the
understandings
of
the
wider
community
are
constructed.
Interface,
Language
and
Culture
Many
parts
of
the
global
South
exhibit
complex
ecologies
of
language
where
individuals
must
use,
negotiate
and
evaluate
the
relationships
between
mother
tongues,
lingua
franca,
national
languages
and
global
power
languages.
For
marginal
or
indigenous
peoples
this
is
especially
problematic
and
their
relations
with
education
and
technology
are
problematic
and
political.
For
any
peoples
living
in
such
an
environment
the
intrusion
of
mobile
technology
is
potentially
a
profound
perturbation.
Mobiles
and
Literacy
In
the
historically
literate
and
culturally
resilient
global
North,
the
interactions
of
literacy
and
mobiles
are
subtle,
complex
and
well
documented
and
literacy
itself
rests
on
universal
primary
education
systems
that
generally
date
back
to
the
mid-‐nineteenth
century.
In
many
parts
of
the
global
South
none
of
these
assumptions
can
be
taken
for
granted
and
universal
primary
education
and
the
literacy
that
goes
with
it
are
still
Millennium
Development
Goals
unlikely
to
be
met
by
the
target
date
of
2015.
The
interactions
of
mobiles
and
literacy
are
complex
but
this
literacy
is
a
pre-‐requisite
for
more
advanced
mobile
learning.
Technology
Impact
The
details
of
technology
have
an
impact
on
all
aspects
of
language
and
communication.
Here
we
look
at
the
impact
of
the
interfaces
on
language
and
expression,
using
some
apparently
trivial
examples
to
illustrate
the
potentially
pervasive
impact
of
mobile
technology
on
interaction
and
language,
both
of
which
are
fundamental
to
any
subsequent
learning
with
mobiles.
Digital
Literacy
The
notional
of
digital
literacy
is
widely
understood
albeit
strongly
contested
in
UK
universities
and
European
TEL
but
the
possibility
of
learning
with
mobiles
in
the
global
South
raises
several
new
issues.
One
is
the
nature
of
the
subset,
if
any,
of
digital
literacy
that
might
be
called
mobile
digital
literacy,
another,
given
the
presumed
relationship
between
literacy
and
digital
literacy,
is
nature
of
digital
literacy
in
societies
that
might
be
oral,
pre-‐literate
or
post-‐literate,
another
is
the
inflection
of
digital
literacy
in
societies
where
the
only
digital
technology
is
mobile
(and
in
fact
these
societies
are
newly
digital)
and
finally
the
nature
of
digital
literacy
in
societies
where
the
languages
underpinning
literacy
are
a
complex
and
fluid
ecosystem.
These
issues
are
closely
inter-‐related
and
separating
is
largely
a
device
to
facilitate
discussion
and
analysis.
Theorising
Development
We
are
looking
for
some
engagement
or
synthesis
of
mobile
learning,
an
essentially
Northern
enterprise,
with
the
theoretical
frameworks
of
development
studies
in
the
hope
of
moving
towards
a
more
culturally
sensitive
and
culturally
sustainable
basis
for
further
work.
Development
is
perhaps
one
of
modernity’s
lesser
grand
narratives
and
although
western
intellectual
communities
may
now
espoused
post-‐modernity
or
even
move
towards
post-‐post-‐modernity,
the
world
of
ministries,
agencies
and
their
political
worldview
are
still
largely
informed
by
modernism’s
notions
that
history
is
going
somewhere,
that
things
will
get
better,
that
education
and
science
will
help
improve
things,
that
language
will
describe
things
and
understand
them
and
that
cause
and
effect,
good
and
bad
will
easy
to
analyse.
Capability
We
have
mentioned
the
capabilities
approach
and
this
seems
to
be
gaining
a
very
broad
consensus
as
a
successor
to
a
purely
economic
or
materialist
account
of
development.
Work
in
understanding
its
implications
for
education
is
only
beginning
and
operationalizing
it
presents
challenges.
Sustainability
This
has
been
a
significant
strand
of
development
thinking
and
emphasises
sustainability
as
the
priority
for
development.
In
the
context
of
learning
with
mobiles
this
resonates
with
the
current
emphasis
coming
from
the
corporations
and
agencies
for
sustainable
business
models.
There
is
clearly
a
difference
in
where
revenues
and
profits
reside
and
on
the
level
of
local
and
community
involvement.
Diffusion
of
Innovations
The
‘diffusion
of
innovations’
has
provided
e-‐learning
communities
in
the
global
North
with
their
lexicon
and
mechanisms
for
much
of
its
existence
and
the
mobile
learning
community
may
have
inherited
these
perspectives
in
its
early
days.
In
the
global
South
‘diffusion
of
innovations’
models
are
widely
adopted
as
the
mechanism
for
development
and
for
formulating
and
optimising
it.
Culture
–
there’s
an
App
The
global
South
is
essentialised
in
the
same
way
as
Africa
and
Africanness
are,
used
as
the
basis
for
scaling
and
transferring
pilots
and
projects.
Given
the
importance
of
culture,
in
pedagogy
and
in
change,
perhaps
it
is
time
to
look
for
another
basis
for
analysing
findings
and
outputs.
The
work
of
Hofstede
provides
one
such
basis,
albeit
modernist
and
simplistic
–
there
is
however
an
app
for
it.
Information
Systems
This
approach
to
development
adopts
the
ideas,
concepts
and
methods
of
IS
development
used
in
the
North.
The
familiarity,
experience
and
authority
of
these
methods
amongst
consultants,
corporations
and
ministries
both
in
the
global
North
and
global
South
perhaps
accounts
for
their
popularity.
In
relation
to
learning
with
mobiles,
it
may
in
some
respects
be
appropriate,
for
example
where
mobiles
are
used
for
logistical
and
organisational
support,
and
for
mobile
EMIS,
educational
management
information
systems,
and
in
other
cases,
for
example
designing
mobile
learning
experiences,
it
may
be
inappropriate.
The
capacity
shortfall
in
much
of
the
South
may
mean
that
more
appropriate
IS
approaches
such
as
prototyping,
soft
systems
or
RAD
are
not
available
even
if
there
were
culturally
appropriate.
ICT4D
&
m4d
Where
these
various
frameworks
and
conceptualisations
specifically
address
ICT,
and
in
the
global
South
this
is
a
far
more
inclusive
term
than
in
the
global
North,
they
have
coalesced
under
the
term
ICT4D,
ICT
for
Development,
and
this
has
provided
a
template
for
a
younger
sibling,
m4d,
mobiles
for
development.
These
represent
fairly
all-‐embracing
communities
brought
together
for
practical
reasons
of
networking,
funding,
dissemination
and
advocacy.
Both
these
communities
have
not
been
very
pedagogically
sophisticated
and
there
is
a
space
between
the
theorising
of
Western/Northern
mobile
learning
and
the
development
studies
perspectives
of
ICT4d
and
m4d.
ICT4D2.0
It
is
attractive
to
look
from
an
account
of
ICT4D
where
the
global
North
provides
or
inflicts
ICT
on
the
South
to
one
that
is
consciously
framed
in
terms
of
meaningful
and
authentic
participation
and
collaboration.
This
has
been
called
ICT4D2.0
and
echoes
the
technical
transition
from
web1.0
to
web2.0.
It
consciously
separates
ICT4D
research
from
the
infiltration
or
legacy
of
any
‘scientific’
perspectives
and
has
significant
ethical
and
methodological
implications.
There
is
the
potential
as
ICT4D2.0
gains
traction
to
develop
common
cause
with
the
participative
and
user-‐centred
practices
of
the
mobile
learning
research
community.