Revolutionise Education

Because those of us based in the developed world are always thinking of computers as things with 15-inch or 17-inch or 24-inch screens, it can be hard to see the potential of something much smaller, even if it's right in our pocket. I was talking with a software developer friend of mine recently and going on as I do about the potential for cell phone software to revolutionise education, literacy, and public health in the developing world.

And he said to me "but can you really create a valuable user experience on such a small screen and with such a slow processor". So I asked him if he'd heard of the iPhone, or the Gameboy. Neither of those devices seem to have much difficulty in creating a compelling and useful user experience, and how long do you think it will it be before there's a sub-$100 iPhone or equivalent?

The whole history of consumer electronics suggests that we won't have to wait for long.

Meanwhile, this revolution of personally-financed relentlessly-connected computers largely goes unnoticed by the international development community, and because their paradigm revolves around desktops and laptops they spend millions developing specialized laptops for schoolchildren in developing countries, which will surely only ever reach a small fraction of them, while the network of invisible computers continues its exponential penetration into those same regions, below the radar.

Of course, even in the high-growth areas of sub-Saharan Africa, the fastest growing cell phone market in the world, most people still don't have a cell phone of their own (though many have access to one via a friend or family member).

But important sub-groups in that region have much higher penetration than the general population, including knowledge workers such as teachers or healthcare providers.

The question we should be asking ourselves, then, is not "how can we buy, and support, and supply electricity for, a laptop for every schoolteacher" (much less every schoolchild), but rather "what mobile software can we write that would really add value for a schoolteacher (or student, or health worker, or businessperson) and that could run on the computer they already have in their pocket?"

Consider just one application: continuing education for clinical health workers.

Many developing country health providers get trained once, at the start of their career, and never get any additional training at all.

This is because transporting these workers to a training conference is hugely difficult in countries where roads are inadequate, or don't exist, or fuel is scarce -- and sending paper-based materials to workers is either expensive, or more likely impossible given a poorly-functioning postal mail system.

But imagine a system that lets managers at a national level, who probably do have access to the internet on a desktop computer, coordinate and transmit SMS-based continuing education messages to the computers - sorry, to the cell phones - of those health professionals. What a difference would that make to the level of up-to-date knowledge available to a clinic worker? And how would that impact the quality of care?

And what other groups might benefit from that kind of educational program? What about teachers? What about students?

Unfortunately, as of this morning a Google search for "educational software for Windows" got 41,300 results, while a search for "educational software for cell phones" got exactly 9 hits.