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

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