This may be of interest to educators particularly those in the field of literacy education. It also may be of interest to those working in the area of digital literacy and educational access for underserved populations.

1. Mobile Learningcell phonesliteracy education and accessa project by Michelle Commeyras for LLED 7045:International Perspectives of LiteracySpring 2011

2. What is mobile learning? “The exploitation of ubiquitous handheld technologies,together with wireless and mobile phone networks, to facilitate, support, enhance and extend the reach of teaching and learning.” MOLeNetprogramme. Video about m-learning? with Geoff Stead Director of Tribal's Digital Learning Studio.

3. Phones for Literacy Mobile phones are being used to develop children and adults’ language and literacy capabilities. Also researchers are studying the literacies of youth who use mobile phones to send and read messages. World Bank studying use of mobile phones in education in developing countries. Go to website!

4. Why mobile phones? More than 90 per cent of the world’s population now has access to a mobile network. Growth has been strongest in developing countries. In Africa it is forecasted that 41 per cent of the population has mobile phones. source: Nigerian Compass online article. You Tube video on the growth of mobile phones. Go to Video!

5. U.K. Daily MailMay 28, 2010 CHILDREN as young as seven are more likely to own a mobile phone than have their own books Surveyed 17,000 schoolchildren aged seven to 16 85.5 per cent of pupils have their own mobiles, compared with 72.6 per cent who have their own books. The Sunday Mirror reported in 2001 that “Thousands of teenagers are to be given free mobile phones to help them read and write.”

6. Texting

7. Text Messaging Phone txt chat ‘harms literacy’ in Guardian Home, January 22, 2001 Dr. Lodge an academic from University of East Anglia warned that texting had already led to a notable drop in standards of grammar and spelling among his students.

8. Text Messaging Professor David Crystal said texting helps literacy standards simply because it means children are spending more time reading and writing. Source: 2b or not 2b tht is the q: Whether tis nobla the mnd 2 sffa the slngsrrows of outrgous4tune in The Western Mail, May 22, 2008 David Crystal is honorary professor of linguistics at the University of Wales. YouTube - David Crystal - Texts and Tweets: myths and realities?

9. Reading ability and text-messaging behavior ‘txtN is ez f u no h2 rd’: the relation between reading ability and text-messaging behaviourby J.E.L Coe & J. V. Oakhill (2011) Compared better and poorer readers on three text messaging behaviours. Better readers use more textisms (ez). Better readers used more letter/number homophones (h2) Poorer readers less able at producing and understanding textisms.

10. Daily Star, U.K.May 26, 2008 New research says kids can boost their reading and writing skills by sending mobile messages British Journal of Developmental Psychology TXTNG is a gr8 way 2 gt 2 da top of ur class

11. Folklore and Mobile Communication in Hungary Across 4 years collected 650 folkloric SMS texts. Typical genres: jokes, proverbs, sayings, greetings in rhyme. Reduced chain letters (a genre dating back to Middle Ages). Sending SMS en masse made it a contemporary conduit for folklore.

12. Adult Literacy

13. Pakistan Female literacy development in Urdu through connectivity. Women receive 5 messages a day on their cell phones. They copy the messages into a notebook. Mobilink Article Islamabad March 25, 2010 You Tube on UNESCO & Mobilink Literacy Program

14. Less than 15% of Niger’s adults are considered literate. What is Project ABC? Project ABC is a collaborative initiative between Catholic Relief Services/Niger, Tufts University and the University of Oxford that uses mobile phones as a tool to promote adult literacy and numeracy in Niger. The mobile phone complements traditional literacy classes. Learners practice what they are taught via calling and SMS.

15. Celedu (Cellular + Education) Celedu’s vision is to help the next billion people at the bottom of the pyramid by increasing their living standards through education and literacy. Their mission is to provide a mobile platform for literacy and language learning content using a game interface. MIT Lab working in India You Tube Video in India

16. India Dr. Matthew Kam started MILLEE in 2004 as his Ph.D. thesis at UC Berkeley. Focus is on “making learning opportunities more equitable around the world through affordable, culturally appropriate technology.” http://www.millee.org MILLEE: Mobile and Immersive Learning for Literacy in Emerging Economies See ABC News Report

17. Schools, Teaching and Learning

18. Tanzania The Bridgeit Project. Supporting Teachers and Teaching with mobile phones. Access to digital video content to show students on in classroom television. You Tube Video on Bridgeit Tanzania began as “text2teach” project in the Philippines

19. Philippines Mobile phones were preloaded with 387 interactive, educational videos in math, science and English. Each video is 3-5 minutes. Project began in 2003 with 203 schools. Philippine Daily Inquirer article. You Tube Text2Teach Bridgit Solution in the Philippines

20. Schools in New Zealand using cell phones Associate principal Matt Tamariki said many of the children would not get the chance to use new technology if it was not part of the classroom. Each afternoon the children in Year 5 to 8 classes clear their desks of paper and pens and use phones to complete tasks. MrTamariki can send lessons to the phones and students can let him know how they are going by either texting or file sharing. Lessons can be conducted exclusively through the phones, or with the phones as aids to the written work. The other is Mobile Learning for Boys. This includes an online digital reading clinic to focus on improving reading comprehension, spelling and writing skills of students. The New Zealand Herald, September 3, 2009 Cell Phones in New Zealand Secondary Schools: Boon, Banned or Biased by Fielden and Malcolm (2007). “There is limited use of mobile technologies for school related learning.”

21. New Zealandsource Otumoetai Intermediate School to Use Student Cell Phones in the Classroom. “Why should schools purchase video and voice recorders when just about every student carries one with them everyday? Cell Phones are easy to use and do certain things very well. Using student cell phones can free up resources to purchase other equipment and does not tie up technology staff who have to support endless PCs and other hardware.” A hotline will be set up for students to send text messages if they have concerns or are being bullied or harassed.

22. New ZealandSourceApril 2010 More mobile phones per head of population than any other country in the world, making it an ideal place to pioneer mLearning. 90% of students own a mobile phone and are comfortable with the technology. Mobile phones were much cheaper than PCs. A program called WordWall allows students to answer questions asked by the teacher using their mobile phones. YouTube - Howick College Robert Douglas on MLearning YouTube - mLearning Capability Pilot - Part 1 “Schools run the risk of being pen and paper islands in a digital sea,” Kerr said. He ran a 12 week pilot project at Howick College.

23. Australian study with grade 7 students. "The kids who used their phones a lot were faster on some of the tests, but were less accurate. "If you're used to operating in that environment and entering a couple of letters and getting the word you want, you expect everything to be like that." Professor M. J. Abramson The Journal of Bioelectromagneics study published in 2009.

24. Canada Craik School in SaskatchewanSource Initially, only about 40 percent of the class had cell phones, but kids who had them were willing to share. The text message function was mainly used at first, but it became clear that these gadgets had a lot more classroom potential. Video and sound recording came into play, and the phones’ Bluetooth networking capabilities allowed for easy information sharing. Dolman found they worked perfectly for her classes’ “lit circles,” in which the students divide into smaller groups to discuss different aspects of a particular book. Previously, she found it difficult to monitor each of the different groups simultaneously. But kids who had video functions on their phones could record their discussions then Bluetooth it to Dolman’s phone, and she could watch each individual discussion, without missing a moment. You Tube Video Interviews with teachers and students and classrooms excerpts.

25. M Novels

26. Cell Phone Novels“If You…” by Rin "I started writing stories on my keitai when I was a high-school student," Rin said. "Usually, you don't write novels during recesses between classes, and others might think you were a bit strange if you did that. But if you write on your keitai, nobody knows you are actually writing stories. I was writing stories when others thought I was sending e-mails." Go to Japan Times story.

27. South Africam4Lit (mobile phones for literacy) A story titled “Kontax” was published in English and in isiXhosa. Readers were invited to interact with it as it unfolded. Readers discussed the unfolding plot, voted in polls, left comments, and submitted their own short story sequels. YouTube - TEDxSoweto - Steve Vosloo - 18 minutes

28. "For the foreseeable future the cell phone, not the Kindle or iPad, is the eReader of Africa. Yoza aims to capitalize on that to get Africa’s teens reading and writing.“ Steve Vosloo Yoza m-novels: Kontax, the flagship title about a group of four teenage friends in Cape Town. The Yoza library features all four m-novels in the series written by Sam Wilson and Lauren Beukes of Clockwork Zoo. Streetskillz is a brand new soccer series written by talented young writer and soccer fanatic Charlie Human. The first story - Golden Goal - is set in the month of the soccer World Cup. Unforgettable international soccer reality merges with a dramatic fictional street soccer competition in Du Noon township in Cape Town. Sisterz is a sassy new series by local chic lit star Fiona Snyckers. Latoya’s Secret launched straight into the depths of dark family secrets, the highs of friendship, school Pop Idols auditions, and the breath-stopping sensations of first love. Confessions of a Virgin Loser by talented, thoughtful novelist EdythBulbring is the story of a Joburg boy steering his way through the complicated world of peer pressure, teenage sex and HIV/AIDS, while just trying to be a cool kid at school. 51% of homes in South Africa do not own a single leisure book. 90% of urban youth have their own cellphone.

29. Cn I txt u my novl?PinkiVirani - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Author PinkiVirani is reinventing her novel for the cellphone. “Deaf Heaven” is a 300 page novel published by HarperCollins of India. Virani has condensed it into 90 text messages.

30. SoftwareandSustainability

31. Senegalhttp://www.jokkoinitiative.org/ "While more research needs to be done to identify how best to harness cell phones in promoting literacy--the results from the pilot study are promising as they show that teaching people how to read and write messages on a cell phone can be a positive addition to a successful literacy program," says Theresa Beltramo, Economist and Evaluation Coordinator for CEGA.

32. goknow: mobile learning solutions source A company founder, Dr. Soloway’s career in education and information technology spans 29 years, the last 10 as a faculty member at the University of Michigan, where he holds appointments within three university colleges/schools (Engineering, Education and Information. He holds M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Computer and Information Science from the University of Massachusetts. YouTube - University of Michigan--Cells as Classroom Computers with an example of story written about water cycle.

33. Software used for mobile literacy projects FrontlineSMS is award-winning free, open source software that turns a laptop and a mobile phone into a central communications hub. Once installed, the program enables users to send and receive text messages with groups of people through mobile phones.