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Free mobile data for maths students

Content and applications are extremely valuable to the use of technology in education. But, one of the biggest stumbling blocks is connectivity and the associated costs of connectivity students need to negotiate in order to access educational tools.

At a press conference to launch the official availability of ‘Mobile Maths’ – a mobile browser-based educational tool aimed at Grade 10 maths learners in South Africa – Nokia announced that learners and teachers’ data usage when interacting with the tool will be zero rated, providing they’re using Cell C or MTN as their network operator.

A reason for the absence of the other two network operators in the country, namely Vodacom and Telkom Mobile, wasn’t forthcoming, but said Gerard Brandjes, Vice President of Nokia South and East Africa, Nokia’s goal of making this service available to as many users as possible means that talks with other  operators will continue.

Brandjes said the zero rating of data is an important detail in the overall viability of the tool, since the barrier to entry for Grade 10 learners wanting to improve their familiarity with mathematics as a school subject is even lower than before.

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Technically, Thuthuka Mhlongo, Developer Outreach Manager Sub-Saharan Africa at Nokia said that a sim card from either of the participating operators with no prepaid balance on it will work equally well as one that’s packed with credit.

He said that from the moment learners access the portal (located at http://momaths.nokia.com/za) the data costs are zero rated. Any traffic to or from the web server’s IP address bears no data cost whatsoever.

Brandjes said that Nokia is extremely happy with the project’s progress in the short time it’s been in operation. From a pilot programme started in 2009 with 250 Grade 10 learners across six schools, he said the project has today evolved into something that’s used by over 7000 Grade 10 learners, across roughly 90 schools in three provinces. To date, 4m activities or exercises have been completed using Mobile Maths.

Over the history of the project, Brandjes said research has shown that 53% of learners engaging with the tool became more active learners, 69% of the teachers that have students using the tool are users themselves and overall competence levels in mathematics grew by 14% when learners used the tool.

The most interesting statistic however is the fact that 82% of the application’s usage took place outside of school hours. Draw your own conclusions from that, but to me, that almost certainly suggests a higher level of engagement than the education industry average.

Rounding off, Brandjes said, that depending on the success of this project, tools for other subjects might follow in time. It will however depend on the level of success achieved with this project.

 

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