Enhancing Primary Education with Mobile Phone Applications for Teachers and Pupils: Findings and Results from Senegal UNESCO, Mobile Learning Week 2014

1. Enhancing Primary Education with Mobile
Phone Applications for Teachers and
Pupils: Findings and Results from Senegal
UNESCO Mobile
Week #mlw2014
@UNESCOICTs
Agbessi Constant Tchona,
Childfund Senegal
Landry Ahouansou, SenMobile,
Senegal
Chun Hei Cheung, USA

8. Problems Addressed
Problems Addressed
 Little individual attention for each student
 Different learning styles are not accounted for
 Few active learning activities
 Lack of libraries and hard to get access to books
 Late introduction to ICT
 Teacher training to increase and improve
 Lack of local content (in French and local
languages)

11. Java ME

12. Java ME

13. Pilot
Pilot
 1 school in the suburbs of Dakar
 80 pupils
 2 teachers + principal
 2 inspectors of the Ministry of Education in
Senegal

14. Involvement of Teachers
Involvement of Teachers
Content

15. Observing Class Activities
Observing Class Activities

16. Meetings with Parents
Meetings with Parents
Distribut
e apps

17. Training for Teachers
Training for Teachers

18. Introduction of the Apps
Introduction of the Apps

19. Use of Apps in the Classroom
Use of Apps in the Classroom

20. Evaluation
Evaluation
Are the children
learning?
• Pre-test
• Use of the apps
• Post-test (conducted
on the same day)
Perception of the
tool
• Interviews with
directors, supervisors,
teachers, and parents
Observations

21. Evaluation
Evaluation
• Reading improved by 40%*
• Writing improved by 45%*
• Different styles to use the apps:
• Some students work on paper and enter the results
• Some students just use the apps
• Pupils finished a large number of exercises without
pausing
* Between the pre-and post-test. Further study is needed to
verify these results

22. Results
Results
 Positive points
 Good start
 Completed many things in 2 ½ months
 To improve
 Emphasize teachers’ training and coaching
 Find ways to have teachers contribute content
 Add more content
 Build an ecosystem