FTI Partnership Meeting

1

New Technologies for Literacy Trends and Evidence

• FTI Partnership Meeting
• Copenhagen
• April 20, 2008

Prof. Dan Wagner International Literacy
Institute University of Pennsylvania www.literacy.
org
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Main points

• Why technology for literacy?
• Trends in Digital Divide Who, where, and what
• Examples (India and South Africa)
• Moving forward the evidence agenda
• How ICT can work for the the poor

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Why technology for literacy?

• If ICT is the solution, what is the problem?
• -gt Getting ICTs to focus on the poor, however...
• Private sector investments are focused on access
• Government sector is focused on
  secondary/tertiary
• Education ICT sector is focused on ICT literacy
• -gt The EFA Need to help the bottom half of
  populations

4
Global spending on ICTs is going up
Overall Global ICT Spending US trillions
Global ICT Spending by Region US trillions
WISTA, 2008
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But donor spending (DAC) on ICTs is going down
OECD, 2004
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Who is affected?

• Digital divide is decreasing between countries,
  but
• Digital divide is increasing within countries.
• Who are excluded countries?
• Illiterate low-literate youth and adults
• Dropouts from primary school
• Ethno-linguistic minorities
• Refugees/migrants
• People with disabilities and special needs
• How many people? More than half the population in
  many FTI countries (1-2 billion people)

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Where are the poor? Global Illiteracy and
Technological Illiteracy
Youth and Adult Illiteracy Rates (15 years and
older, 2000)

• Large inequalities by gender, ethnicity and
  language
• In poor countries, more the half the population
  is illiterate or low-literate
• 100-200 million children are OSY (out-of-school
  youth).
• Poorest in LDCs ( 1/day/person)

TechnologicalIlliteracy
Traditional Illiteracy
OECD countries
Africa
Arabregion
Latin America
East Asia Oceania
South Asia

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What kinds of ICT inputs?

• Access
• Has been improving dramatically, but limited
  impact
• Connectivity
• Has been improving moderately, mainly urban areas
• Content (language and subject)
• Some small efforts
• Learning competencies
• Relatively rare

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BFI-India Key Features of Software Design

• Emphasis on learning choice Language choice
  (from 5 languages). Telugu is main implementation
  language.
• Learning approach
• - Relevance of content
• - High quality instruction
• - Multilingual basis for literacy
• - Extremely user-friendly

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India Children, youth and adults, learning gains

• Duel Evaluation Design
• Peri-Urban adults
• Ages from 15 to 25 years
• 0 to 4th grade schooling
• 12 wks of BFI (90 min/day)
• ALSO, Rural 7-8 year old children in Grades 1-2
• Costs module production, about US150K
• Cost per CD 1
• No internet required

Math
Reading
Score change per hour
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South Africa Limpopo Province

• High poverty
• History of poor and changing education
• 11 official languages
• Mass Literacy Campaign
• Prototype is in testing now
• Cost (estimate) US200K in 4 languages

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Moving forward the evidence agenda

• Monitoring and Evaluation of ICT in Education
• InfoDev/World Bank Handbook for Developing
  Countries
• How to
• Use indicators to measure effects
• Plan for ME
• Build ME capacity
• Promote pro-equity approaches
• FREE at www. Infodev. org

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Concluding thoughts

• Donor support provides key leverage for funds
  being committed to ICTs
• Investment should be made directly toward EFA
  goals
• Particular EFA needs (such as language and skill
  levels) must be addressed
• Examples and evidence is growing
• The costs are modest when invested in learning
  rather than hardware