M-masomo, a collaboration between Nation Media Group and ICT Kenya has just been launched is being billed as “your smart tutor in your hand, bringing you a new way to revise for your exams from your phone”

Update: download url for the application comes from Wandflower Education, which points to adaptation or licensing of the same and not in-house dev…not that it matters.

For Ksh20, you recieve a set of questions fro all subjects with answers and explanations. For KCPE questions you have 5 sets of question papers – english, kiswahili, mathematics, social sciences and science. Three times a week (Mon,Wed and Fri) one would receive 10 questions per subject . For KCPE there will be four sets of question papers – math, chemistry, biology, and physics sent on Tue,Thur and Saturday.

How it works is that one sends the word KCPE or KCSE to the shortcode 4556 and a java application is sent to the phone.The questions then start coming in with the review answers and explanation being received later.It costs 20 shillings per download.

The billing still needs to be made clear though, because the advert says 20ksh per download. The end user, who is going to be a student on a limited budget needs to know the absolute costs of using the service. If it costs 20sh for every download (where the application pulls the content, and an MT  – mobile terminated billing message is sent ) that would add up to ksh 60 per week or ksh 240 per month. Is that pricy? I dont’ know , depends on how much you value learning on your cell I have sent a request for the application (10:18 am )but am yet to get the download link …knowing consumers in kenya, they may feel ripped off if they don’t get the content they have paid for in at most 5 minutes.

During last year M4D Workshop in Kampala Uganda, we looked at a number of initiatives that were headed in the way of mobile education. It is good to see that a large media house such as Nation sees the future and opportunities that are afforded by better handset capability, i shall not even being with the “doom and gloom” analogies that many corporates and  have towards richer mobile experiences as they are still focused on the masses…masses here defined as the rural and urban poor who number in the millions.

That begs the question as to whether the development of richer mobile experiences and content should be put on the back burner due to “small markets”. We forget that while regular sms and low handset capability may be the norm now, that will not alway be the case and organizations need to be forward thinking lest they miss the bus when it arrives, and it has arrived.

There are a number of other initiatives round the world that we could look at to measure the success and market readiness of  product such as M-masomo. Of note is the Mxit execution where government pay the learning channel costs.

Other links – http://bit.ly/19AZDP

Mxit to be used for education – Published: 4/22/2009 07:25:28

JOHANNESBURG – Controversial cellphone chat application MXit is to be used as an educational aide.
http://bit.ly/ES4Th

Two hundred and sixty Grade 10 pupils from selected schools in Gauteng, North West and Western Cape are guinea-pigging the first trial run.

The MXit/maths project Imfundo Yethu Imfundo Yami (Our Education My Education) is a joint venture between the department of education, Nokia South Africa and Safipa, a funding portal managed by the Finnish Embassy in South Africa.

It will see users receiving maths information for problem solving and allow them to share thoughts to better understand the Grade 10 maths module.

The project will carry data delivery costs and, via the technology, government will pay the learning channel costs.

MXit chief executive Herman Heunis said a special channel had been created for the tutorials.
Access to it is free for those in the pilot project.

http://bit.ly/11JQ7s
CellBook Launches World’s First Book About HIV AIDS On Mobile Phones
One of the largest social initiatives to fight HIV and AIDS ever seen in Africa, potentially reaching over 30 million mobile phone users.

http://bit.ly/2jWwr3
Mobile e-learning via phone achieves real success with the young

http://bit.ly/OmGT7
What do we know about using mobile phones in education?

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Updates

A  confirmation on the M-masomo math

One set of 50 questions equals one download. The math therefore works out this way.

• 10 questions per subject, 3 times a week
• there are 5 subjects
• 10 questions x 5 subjects x 3times a week = 150 questions per week
• at 20 shillings for a set of 50 questions
• that comes to 60 shillings per week
• 240 bob per month

I finally got the wap push to download the m-masomo at 12:35 pm http://wandflower.com/ICT/dap.jsp?id=1152&c=KCPE

It’s a remote installation file which means one cannot download it and sambaza it to their friends.Let me check it out