How Mobile Phones and M-Ubuntu are Improving Literacy Skills in South Africa
In an effort to improve reading and literacy skills at two primary schools in South Africa, teachers are bringing cell phones into the classroom as part of an innovative program called M-Ubuntu. Ubuntu is a concept in Africa which gets at the heart of being interconnected with one another. The M as part of M-Ubuntu's name is for mobile, as in mobile phones.
Former South African Archbishop and Nobel Peace Prize Winner Desmond Tutu explains Ubuntu this way:
"Ubuntu is a concept that we have in our Bantu languages at home. Ubuntu is the essence of being a person. It means that we are people through other people. We cannot be fully human alone. We are made for interdependence, we are made for family. When you have ubuntu, you embrace others. You are generous, compassionate."
Earlier this month, I had a chance Lesego Raleholi, a 6th grade English teacher and Deputy Principal at Spectrum Primary School to find out how they've benefited from M-Ubuntu's approach to m-learning. Raleholi was joined by four Spectrum students as well as Lucy Haagen, an adjunct lecturer and reading specialist at Duke University who is a consultant on the project. All six were in Washington, D.C. for an international media and learning conference held at the University of California's Washington Center and sponsored by the MacArthur Foundation.
The Sprint Foundation supported M-Ubuntu by donating 100 cell phones for use in the South African schools. To learn more about the Sprint Foundation and its work in education and other areas, visit www.sprint.com/community.
