The ‘old school’ education system will not deliver literacy to this generation. Period.
OPINION: If there is any hope to rescue a largely illiterate nation, it lies in the hands of every individual with a device. 'Gamified’ literacy apps could help fill this literacy instruction void.
Written by Alison Scott, Executive Principal of Bellavista School
The revolution of our education system is a noble aspiration and, while it is critical, we may only see the impact of any literacy programme implemented today in 13 years time.
If there is any hope to rescue a largely illiterate nation, it lies in the hands of every individual with a device.
Technology, while never a substitute for a holistic education, could just fill the literacy instruction void. Upwards of 90% of people in emerging economies, like South Africa, report owning a mobile phone, the majority of which are smartphones.
Approximately 73% of the population of these countries use the internet.
In South Korea, 93% of 3–9-year-olds average 8-9 hours a week online; 25% of American 3-year-olds, 50% of 5-year-olds, and 70% of 8-year-olds are online every day. In Australia, 79% of children aged between 5-8 years of age are online at home. However, it not only internet access that facilitates the opportunity for young children to access literacy education.
Fifty percent of Swedish children aged 3-4 years old use tablet computers and 25% use smartphones, 23% of 0–6-year-old children in Norway access touchscreens in their homes. In Germany, 17% of families with children aged 3-7 and 18% of families with children aged 6-11 have access to tablets with touchscreen features. In 2011- 2012, in the United Kingdom, the figures are similarly recorded.
Children with internet access and devices are likely to access games and social media networks, and become interested in playing games online by the age of four.
There are spinoffs from the use of technology and the internet beyond the attainment of reading literacy. Building vocabulary, the basis of reasoning, and multilingual proficiency become a viable option.
Literacy apps may have positive potential in language preservation and so might secure or revive languages headed for extinction. Elevating a language’s status by developing and promoting an instructional literacy app in a community can revitalise the language. Perhaps technology has the potential to bring young people and elders together to hold cultural knowledge, honour traditional stories and document histories by reclaiming local literacies and preserving these.
Technology may even begin to support data collection for linguists and educators interested in the rate, nature, and extent of literacy development across the world; South Africa is not alone in its crisis. Solutions for one might just be answers for another.
The opportunity for mobile-assisted literacy instruction is open and ripe for business. Researchers are convinced that gaming (suffer the thought!) could provide the key to literacy and save us from our educational apocalypse. Apps for literacy development deliver instruction as a game. Children are motivated to play games digitally and so, if literacy apps are gamified, there may be greater engagement and commitment to mastery of the literacy skills presented.
Accepting that these statistics come from countries with internet technology and means to access it, they do provide evidence that the opportunity for literacy instruction to be pushed or promoted to a younger population, and so develop literacy skills, is a viable one.
By way of a case study, literacy apps like Feed the Monster developed out of a crisis in world history.
Since 2011 approximately 5.82 million Syrian children were displaced and forced to be out of school following political unrest and violence in their country. Living in transit camps across the middle east and Europe, these children faced and continue to face, the real risk of not experiencing formal literacy instruction. They needed educational assistance.
The Norwegian government funded the EduApp4Syria competition and challenged developers and linguists to develop an open-source application that would effectively develop literacy skills in Arabic at a foundational level. Feed the Monster is the ‘gamified’ application that won that competition. Since then, this app addressing early grade reading has been made available in more than 45 languages, most recently in the Ukraine, as a rapid response to children displaced from schools there. The open source software can be localised to any language.
Feed the Monster is available on the Google Play store at no charge, in all official languages of South Africa.
It joins Duolingo and Babbel as examples of apps developed to teach literacy, specifically reading, pronunciation and vocabulary development, and so preserve and honour indigenous languages as well as facilitate multilingualism.
Whilst crises of climate, poverty, economy and crime contest for a place on the front cover of most South African media outlets, literacy education must take priority of place. Only an educated, literate electorate can effect positive change in the socio-economic conundrum ahead. We are living through a ‘digital wildfire’ and it is one to fan into flame.
The time is now. It’s do, or die.
To find out more about Bellavista School or the Feed the Monster reading App, visit www.bellavista.org.za
About Bellavista SHARE and Bellavista School
Bellavista S.H.A.R.E. is the Education Resource Centre of Bellavista School, an independent school in Johannesburg that is widely regarded as a centre of excellence in the field of remedial education. With the Bellavista S.H.A.R.E initiative, the school harnesses the collective capacity it holds within its own staff to improve the quality of educational delivery in Southern Africa by sharing its wealth of professional knowledge, experience and collective expertise with the community of educators and health professionals working with children in the region.