Shaping the Future Education through Mobile Phones

Nokia and UNESCO Pakistan are proud to launch a basic literacy application named eTaleem for Nokia phones. eTaleem allows people to easily access lessons for Urdu reading, phonetics, word synthesis, sentence making, and basic math. eTaleem app has been developed by Lakson Business Solutions for Nokia as a component to the UNESCO Project “Mobile Literacy training for Literacy Training of Rural Female Adults”. The application can be downloaded on most affordable Nokia S40 devices (list of devices available on link mentioned below).

According to the latest Pakistan Social and Living Standards Measurement (PSLM) Survey 2010-11, the literacy rate across the country is 58 percent, with lower rates in rural areas for women. Using mobile phone as a learning tool via UNESCO project can accelerate the literacy level country wide.

The learning content to Nokia’s eTaleem app is based on UNESCO’s learning DVDs designed and tested in community learning centers all over Pakistan. By enabling access to the high quality educational material via affordable mobile phones, Nokia broadens the reach of the UNESCO trainings to rural areas, supporting continued learning after the community classes’ attendance comes to an end.

“We are really appreciative of Nokia enabling access to our contents of basic literacy via a modern mobile phone application. It is a great opportunity for our post literate learners, as using this application on mobile phone and in Urdu language, will keep them intact with reading and writing skills and making literacy skills relevant to 21^st century life demands,” said Kozue Kay Nagata, Director and Representative of UNESCO Pakistan.

With the implementation of mobile learning component, the programme gained the Government Sectors’ support, with the Literacy Department of Punjab and the Education Department of Ministry of Capital Administration Development as new partners to the endeavor for higher literacy penetration in Pakistan. “To institutionalize our literacy project in the system, we must scale up our project to government sector, so that a larger number of users can benefit from the project in the future”, added the Director of UNESCO Pakistan.