At Nokia we believe everyone deserves access to education. Yet millions of people around the world are excluded from learning opportunities for a variety of reasons – from their geographical location to their gender or their financial circumstances. Nokia believes mobile technology has the power to change this situation.
A global challenge
Around the world, 759 million adults – some 16 percent of the global population aged 15 and over – lack the basic reading, writing and numeracy skills needed in everyday life. Of these, two thirds are women mostly living in remote rural areas. Added to this, we face a global shortage of 10.3 million teachers. Clearly, action needs to be taken to address this critical issue, and mobile products and applications can play a key role.
How Nokia can help
The beauty of mobile technology is that it frees knowledge, information and education from the constraints of classrooms, libraries, and expensive urban areas. What’s more, it adds new dimensions to learning, making it a more engaging, interactive experience.
By developing mobile educational products such as Nokia Education Delivery, Nokia Life Tools and Nokia mobile mathematics, Nokia is enabling millions of people to access a world that was previously closed to them.
Our education approach is aligned to UNESCO’s Education for All goals, and we aim to use our products, services and technology to support those objectives.
Nokia Education Delivery
Nokia Education Delivery uses mobile technology to deliver quality education materials to remote, hard-to-reach areas. Using a mobile phone, teachers and trainers can access and download videos and other educational resources from a constantly updated catalogue. Already operating in hundreds of schools and having reached millions of students in the Philippines, Tanzania, Chile and Colombia, Nokia Education Delivery has been shown to improve study results and increase retention among students, especially girls.
Nokia Mobile Mathematics
In 2008, Nokia launched a pilot scheme for mobile mathematics in South Africa. Using a popular social networking channel to get kids interested, the service delivers interactive study packages to students' mobile phones.
Today, the service content includes theory, exercises, tutoring, peer-to-peer support, as well as competitions, tests and self-assessment. The scheme has led to highly motivated grade 10 pupils chatting with friends and doing maths on their mobiles, even out of school – in the evenings, weekends and holidays – testing themselves to continually improve their scores and competing with their friends.
The results have been so impressive, we’re now piloting the scheme in Finnish secondary schools.
See what South African pupils and teachers think of mobile mathematics.
Nokia Mobile Mathematics in South Africa
