Dot Learnt

Technology has done wonders for the world of medicine in both developed and emerging markets. In an effort to fuse the teachings of the health-conscious with the world of academia, I have compiled three undoubtedly game-changing health initiatives and shown how they can be tailored to enhance education systems.

HealthMap: As our world becomes increasingly interconnected, the pace at which disease and information travels has become expedited. With international jet travel no longer being seen as a luxury, an infectious disease or new virus has the ability to bounce between Thailand, the UAE and the USA within the span of twenty-four hours. Even more so, Facebook and Twitter have helped make communication instantaneous. HealthMap merges these concepts as it automatically monitors news sites, government data sites and eyewitness reports to pinpoint on an interactive map, new patterns of outbreaks. With a few clicks, one can find out about the most recent death rates in Chad or the rate of occurrence of a virus in Mexico, all while engaging users in what the site describes as “participatory epidemiology.”

Teching out the teachers: Imagine if school systems across the world were engaged in an online platform where educators and education officials could sync up their most recent developments, setbacks or ideas regarding schooling? Through automated fine-tuning, one would discover the most relevant and recent advancements, from their Twitter account to their Global Education Collaborative homepage, in one live and interactive interface.

Cell Phones as a Lifesaver: In a partnership with the United Nations Foundation, The Vodafone Foundation has invested almost $28 million in order to revamp health clinics throughout emerging markets. Doctors and nurses no longer have to succumb to using out-dated administrative and research facilities. Doctors can now access data regarding immunization rates, vaccine supplies and the likelihood of an outbreak by pushing a few buttons on their cell phone. Doctors can also use EpiSurveyor, the software used to download the health surveys, to make a verdict regarding childbirth. The EpiSurveyor helps provide doctors and hospital administrators with important documentation that assists in making crucial, life-saving decisions.

What the Minister of Education has to say about this: Pulling up a student’s academic history with a few swipes and clicks on my cell phone? I’m in. What could be more adequate in gauging the academic level of a student or dodging the bureaucracy of paperwork and mismanagement of paper files? Wireless Generation has caught on to the idea – creating mobile technologies that help teachers track reading and math levels of their students.

Digital Villages: The telecom giants of Kenya are changing the health landscape of the country. Safricom and Telkom Kenya have recently unleashed an electronic infrastructure that looks to connect Kenyans living in rural areas to doctors in urban cities. The 800 digital villages, which they hope will soon become 5,000, sync up patients with e-health services and small medical clinics through video conferencing equipment.

Eduvillages: So by using ICT to make the world, or in this case, the country a smaller place, digital villages help combat many of the common problems faced in emerging markets. By creating a digital videoconference network, students can attend school from the comfort of their home, leaving ample time to perform familial obligations. Take a look at  P2PU’s efforts!

So there you have it. The world of edutech merges with e-health; just what the doctor called for.

Know of any other health initiatives that could inspire education systems? Shoot us a comment!

Keep Calm and Learn On,

Nora

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Image Available Under CC Licensure by truthout.org

Internationally recognized elementary educator and New York Times bestselling author Rafe Esquith warns us, “Parents, television is killing your child’s potential… Anyone raising a child has witnessed the destructive potential of the screen” (Lighting their Fires).

Henry Jenkins (Media Studies Expert and Provost Professor of Communication, Journalism, and Cinematic Art, University of Southern California) writes recent reports from the Kaiser Foundation lament the large amounts of time children spent on “screen media”:

The Kaiser reports collapse a range of different media consumption and production activities into a general category of ‘screen time’ without reflecting very deeply on the different degrees of social connectivity, creativity and learning involved… Yet, the focus on negative effects of media consumption offers an incomplete picture. These accounts do not appropriately value the skills and knowledge young people are gaining through their involvement with new media, and as a consequence, they may mislead us about the roles teachers and parents should play in helping children learn and grow (“Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture”).

Whether you fall into the camp of “Screens are evil!” versus “Bring on the screens!” one thing is for sure, as adults we need to:

• Limit screen time and encourage children to engage in good ol’ fashioned sports and play at least once (if not twice) a day.
• Or, if you can’t seem to pry your child (or yourself) from that laptop or video game, its time you invest in copies of Dance Dance Revolution or Wii Fit.

What am I getting at here?

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Recently I attended a live webcast of TEDxChange in Dubai. Broadcast from New York City and sponsored by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the event hosted a series of famous speakers that reflected on the world’s progress towards achieving the UN’s Millennium Development Goals (i.e., end poverty and hunger, universal education, global partnership, combat HIV/AIDS, etc.). After mentally chewing on the event for a couple of weeks, what keeps coming back to me is Melinda Gates’ praise of Coke:

“Coke is everywhere. In fact, when I travel in the developing world, Coke is ubiquitous! … We’re trying to deliver condoms to people or vaccinations… Coke’s success makes you stop and wonder—How is it that they can get Coke to these far flung places? If they can do that, why can’t governments and NGOs do the same thing? … They sell 1.5 billion servings every single day. That is like every man, woman and child have a serving of Coke every week”.

Melinda then went on to point out that much of Coke’s success is due to its use of real time data, ability to tap into local entrepreneurs and incredible marketing. First two success factors aside, for this post I want to think about marketing because when it comes to using marketing and helping kids understand the power of marketing, most schools and educational content companies completely miss the mark.

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How do we educate students about technology when technology is ever changing and always advancing?

In 1965, Intel Co-Founder Gordon Moore stated, “the number of transistors incorporated in a chip will approximately double every 24 months.” His statement set the pace for the growth of semi-conductor technology (computers getting faster and faster and smaller and smaller) for the next half century, and the exponential growth of new technologies shows no sign of dropping off. So what does it mean to educate students in a world where their future careers probably do not even exist yet? In the article Achieving Techno-Literacy, which appeared in the New York Times Magazine’s September Education issue, author Kevin Kelly offers some up some of the ‘technological smartness’ that he has been passing on to his children:

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During a recent lunch with my friend Sid, we started talking about our first encounters with computers. While I never had much exposure to computers in grade school, I remember vividly the day my father proudly unwrapped our first Mac Classic. Many a suburban afternoons after that were spent playing Brickles, the Oregon Trail and Where in the USA is Carmen Sandiego.

Sid, on the other hand, grew up in a small town in North Africa. While he didn’t have a computer at home, he longed for Thursday afternoons when he could go to the library for three hours of unfettered access to his community computers. “When I was a kid, I loved building things, but I couldn’t afford the bits and parts required to do things like make an engine. What was so great about the computer is that I could create things like games (with code) and didn’t need any extra money or parts… I didn’t have a diskette or memory card. So, each week I had to start from scratch! I memorized lines of code and worked things out on paper in-between sessions”. His eyes lit up with excitement recounting the experience—the look of a true amateur (one that does things for the love of it, rather than for compensation).

His story reminded me of the wonderful research done by Sugata Mitra:

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Welcome to dot.Learnt—a group blog written and edited by members and guests of Bon Education.

Bon’s mission is to help schools, universities and organizations use digital technologies to achieve their learning goals. Therefore, we spend half of our time in the field working directly with educators, students and members of the private sector to build organizational digital literacy and robust online learning communities. The other half of our time is spent working with technology companies and publishers to create digital education products and curricula that reflect the needs and realities of the field.

Most of our work takes place in the Middle East, some of our work takes place in North America and a small amount of our work occurs in Asia. Therefore, this blog is a reflection of the thinking and learning we do while traveling and interacting with humans and technologies across the globe.

We welcome you to post comments, challenge our assumptions and explore with us.

Namaste.

Anna Batchelder

Chief Education Officer and co-Founder

Bon Education

@bon_education

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