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mEducation Alliance eNews - Vol. #90
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USAID Global Education Conference
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Dear mEd Alliance Community,
A glorious May to you all!
In this eNews issue, we wanted to highlight some of our favorite edtech presentations from USAID's recently concluded Global Education Conference (GEC).
We presented on two panels at this event, which fell within the general conference theme of "Collective Action for Education: Partnering for an Inclusive, Sustainable Future". We joined approximately 400 attendees, which included many USAID Education officers, and provided an excelllent platform to convene, connect, and collaborate.
In this same spirit of convening, we are also sharing in this eNews information about today's webinar with RobotsMali and other upcoming EdTech related events.
Enjoy!
- Your friendly neighborhood mEducation Alliance Team
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EdTech Presentations from USAID GEC
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Arizona State University's SunSPOT
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Revolutionizing Education in Remote Areas through Offline-First Technology and Capacity Building
ASU's presentation explored the transformative SunSPOT, an offline-first educational technology and capacity-building model designed by Arizona State University (ASU) and powered by Beekee. SunSPOT equips ASU partners and ASU units with the open-source tools and expertise needed to complement existing online programs with interactive offline teaching and learning environments - no electricity or internet required.
The presentation highlighted how SunSPOT has the potential to bridge the digital divide through innovative, open-source technology and capacity-building strategies, enabling seamless online and offline education in resource-limited settings. Learn more about its successful applications, from enhancing higher education access in Malawi to adapting for refugee education, including the potential for expansions into other educational sectors in their presentation here.
For more information about SunSPOT, contact Marc Alan Sperber, Assistant Director, Education for Humanity, Arizona State University, msperbe1@asu.edu.
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World Education's Saint Lucia ConnectEd
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Saint Lucia ConnectEd: Digital Literacy and Youth Engagement through Innovative Pedagogy
As part of World Learning's Saint Lucia ConnectEd initiative, youths, higher education institutions, and the national chamber of commerce led the customization of a global digital skills framework. This enabled the pinpointing of in-demand skills; enhanced teacher professional development on using technology in schools; improved educator and student credentialing; and boosted youth digital literacy and resilience through hands-on experience at internships with local employers and through youth-led research.
World Education’s GEC presentation covered: tailoring global best practices to local context for sustainability and local ownership; effectively incorporating technology into instruction, including when and how; and determining the most cost-effective interventions using captured cost data. See the full presentation here.
The mEducation Alliance has also recognized three STEM leaders who supported ConnectEd as Youth Digital Champions: AnnaKay Boodho, Keeghan Patrick, and Shergaun Roserie.
For more information, contact Ben Vorspan, Technical Advisor, World Education, Ben_Vorspan@worlded.org.
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The following presentations were part of the Math Power! Session delivered by Benetech, mEducation Alliance, Ubongo and Youth Impact. Please see the session summary below:
Session Summary
Foundational math skills attainment is key to academic and professional success and an essential building block for national development, particularly for occupations and industries needing a skilled STEM workforce. Yet many learners, particularly in low-resource contexts, are unable to benefit from timely and accessible foundational math content and instructional support. This session, organized as a gallery walk, will allow attendees to hear from and interact with presenters from four leading organizations, Ubongo, Youth Impact, Benetech, and the mEducation Alliance, highlighting their evidence-backed and innovative approaches to delivering high-quality and low-tech enabled math content to learners in formal and non-formal educational settings.
A special shout out to all four presenters, and thank you to the session moderator: Autumn Thomas, Education Officer, USAID Rwanda.
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Technology for realizing inclusive education for students with disabilities
Benetech’s presentation highlighted their Bookshare platform, the world’s largest library of ebooks and learning supports for people that read differently. The collection has over 1.2 million titles in over 70 languages and has been used by over 1.5 million learners, particularly those who cannot read traditional books due to disabilities like blindness, low vision, and dyslexia. Images of math equations, graphs and diagrams are the norm for textbooks and most of them have no alt-text descriptions in ebooks.
Bookshare rectifies this by using AI (Artificial Intelligence) to detect images containing math and adding a description of the equation to the image initially and ultimately replacing the image with MathML. This allows for an audio based and simple interactive experience to learn math, using basic Android phones, low-cost mp3 players, and other devices. In a randomized controlled trial in 2023, use of Bookshare in class during reading time in middle schools for 5 weeks increased comprehension by half a grade level. Benetech was a previous awardee of the USAID-supported All Children Reading Grand Challenge for their work in India. See the full presentation here.
For more information please contact: Ayan Kishore, CEO, Benetech, ayank@benetech.org.
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mEducation Alliance's Math Power! Explorer
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Math Power! Explorer: Interactive Voice Response
The mEducation Alliance's GEC presentation introduced their Math Power! initiative, and one of their initiatives, Math Power Explorer (MPE) MPE has benefited from two years of Cisco-funding support and is exploring the utilization of low-end feature phones and interactive voice response (IVR) technologies to reach parents and primary-aged learners in households in Rwanda with math game activities.
MPE 2.0, which will be live in a few months, has been co-developed with Save the Children, Viamo, Wilfrid Laurier University, and Peripheral Vision International and with input from Rwanda’s Education Board (REB). The initiative combines IVR with branching story narrative games based on specific math skills drawn from the Global Proficiency Framework in Mathematics and aligned with REB's national math curriculum. See the full presentation here.
For more information about MPE, contact Anthony Bloome, Executive Director, mEducation Alliance, abloome@meducationalliance.org.
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Co-Creating Impact: Using African edutainment to improve math learning for primary age kids
Ubongo’s video cartoons have reached 32 million households in 41 countries. Many of these are math-focused, and leverage the power of entertainment, the reach of mass media, and the connectivity of mobile devices, to deliver effective, localized learning to African families at low cost and massive scale.
The Ubongo GEC presentation highlighted key findings from several independent research studies showing that Ubongo programs, such as Akili and Me, have improved young children’s school readiness, numeracy, literacy and language skills (Borzekowski 2016 & 2018) and boost older learners’ math, science, reading and life skills (Coffey International 2019, Watson 2020 pending publication). Ubongo was a USAID DIV grantee for their work in Tanzania for Educartoons and using SMS for engaged STEM learning. See the full presentation here.
For more information please contact: Cliodhna Ryan, Director of Education and Research, Ubungo, cliodhna@ubongo.org.
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Phone Tutoring as a Cheap, Scalable Option for Improving Education During Disruptions
Youth Impact’s GEC presentation highlighted their connectEd initiative, a phone-based tutoring program shown to significantly improve basic numeracy skills in varied contexts. Over a period of eight weeks, 59 percent of students in six countries learned at least one mathematical operation at low cost. Using simple targeted tutoring phone calls and one-way SMS messages, they are able to reach households with impactful tutorials with targeted content to improve learning.
ConnectEd's evidence base of 6 RCTs showed positive impact of simple mobile phone interventions to provide essential tutoring support in Botswana, Kenya, Nepal, India, the Philippines and Uganda. Youth Impact (as Young 1ove) received a Stage 2 DIV award from USAID to test variations of Teaching at the Right Level (TaRL) in Botswana and informed some of their future ConnectEd work. See the full presentation here.
For more information, please contact: Colin Crossley, connectED Program Manager, ccrossley@youth-impact.org,
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Submit your Presentation Proposals by 31st May!
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We are accepting presentation proposal submissions for this year's Symposium until Friday, May 31st. We encourage those interested to send us their applications as soon as possible as we make decisions on a rolling basis -- and our event is quite popular. The theme of this year's event is STEMtastic Adventures! and we are seeking presenters to highlight both technology and non-technology supported STEM education interventions. Visit the Symposium webpage to see the full list of track themes as well as additional information about the event.
General Attendees
You can apply to join us as a general participant for the Symposium. Fill out the General Symposium Attendee Invitation Request form to let us know if you are interested in attending.
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Join us for a Literacy League CoP Meeting Today with RobotsMali
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Thursday 2nd May 10am - 11am EDT
Join Zoom Meeting - Link
Meeting ID: 825 7632 8572
Passcode: 951251
The meeting will feature a presentation from Michael Leventhal, President of the Board of Directors, RobotsMali: Using AI to Create Children’s Books in Bambara and other Local Languages
Presentation Blurb:
RobotsMali’s GAIFE project has created 148 books, in Bambara and other Malian languages, completely original material constituting 1690 pages of stories, 777 illustrations, 1579 comprehension questions and 193 pages of Teaching Guides over a 5 month period using AI tools in a human-centered approach. The project aimed to create books, in the first place, so enticing to children that they would be excited to learn to read them, and in the second place to have textual and visual content that would be a true representation of Malian culture and the physical environment familiar to Malian children. Mali suffers, at 65%, one of the highest rates of illiteracy in the world, partly attributable to the fact that French is used exclusively in the schools, a language that few Malians use in the home. In pilot studies, we achieved a 67% reduction in the illiteracy rate using magical books in the languages that Malian children understand.
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eLearning Africa 2024: May 29-31, Kigali, Rwanda
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The countdown to the exceptional eLearning Africa Conference & Exhibition has begun, with just 4 weeks left until the event kicks off in Kigali, Rwanda from May 29 – 31. We look forward to seeing you there!
With renowned organisations and industry pioneers already onboard, anticipation is building for this exciting gathering.
The eLearning Africa organizers have once again assembled an impressive list of attending organisations and are providing space for attendees to connect with the over 1000 fellow learning experts and professionals from across the education, government and private sectors. See the conference website for more information.
Both Effie and Tony will be attending the eLearning conference so look us up if you are also in town!
Tony will assist in moderating a pre-workshop on the morning of May 29th (9:30 - 13:00) on Foundational Learning: EdTech's Role in Setting the Foundations for Learning for All organized by GPE. He'll also present about mEA's Math Power! Explorer activities on May 31st (9:45 - 10:45 a.m.) in a a session themed,Young Minds: Elevating Children's Reading and Numeracy Proficiency, along with presentations from friends from NABU and Worldreader.
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ISTE Live 24: June 23 - 26, Denver
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This Edtech Industry-focused event features engaging speakers, panel discussions on key education issues and valuable networking opportunities. Attendees will connect with executives, product developers, entrepreneurs, and education leaders, to learn, share, and workshop ways to improve the edtech ecosystem to better support teaching and learning by leverage technology.
Learn more about the event and register on the event webpage.
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UNESCO Digital Learning Week 2024: Sept 2-5, Paris
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Registration and calls for proposals:
The second edition of Digital Learning Week will take place on 2-5 September 2024 at UNESCO Headquarters in Paris.
Digital Learning Week was launched in 2023, building on the foundation of UNESCO’s Mobile Learning Week. The annual event is recognized as one of the “UN Intergovernmental and Multi-Stakeholder Digital Cooperation Bodies and Forums” to convene the community of digital education leaders, policy-makers, researchers and practitioners from various organizations, including UN agencies, governments, NGOs and the private sector.
In its 2024 edition, Digital Learning Week will cover the following themes:
- AI competencies for school students and teachers
- Regulations for the ethical use of AI in education
- AI and learning assessment
- Education at the intersection of the digital and greening transitions
Learn more about the event including how to register as a general participant, and how to submit a presentation proposal on the dedicated event webage.
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We welcome your feedback about this issue of the mEducation Alliance eNews and/or your suggestion of other topics, activities, and/or events to feature in future issues. Please email these with the subject heading: "mEducation eNews Suggestion: XXX".
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Thanks for your interest in the mEducation Alliance!
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