The World Bank is embarking on a new study investigating issues related to the use of mobile phones in education in developing countries.

“The study is intended to help to raise awareness among key decision makers in the public, private and civil society sectors about the potential importance of the use of low cost mobile devices — especially mobile phones — to help benefit a variety of educational objectives. By documenting the existing landscape of initiatives in this area and emerging ‘good practice’, it is also hoped that this work will serve as a common base for further analytical work in this area, and inform the impending explosion of development of new hardware, software and business services occurring on mobile devices, to the benefit of these educational objectives.

This activity is one component of a larger ‘mobile flagship’ program at the World Bank consisting of studies and activities related to mobile services and applications in selected sectors, including “Mobile Banking Users and Non Users Behavior Study”; “Extending Mobile Applications in Africa through Social Networking”; and “Mobile Applications for Sectoral Development”.”

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