The potential of the mobile industry to improve and extend education for millions of people around the world is high. Mobile connectivity in learning offers the opportunity to tailor content to a student?s ability and deliver it in a more ?digestible? format than traditional educational approaches. The reach of mobile broadband offers opportunities to extend and improve education in remote areas of developing countries or in the aftermath of natural disasters.
In Kenya the mobile operator Safaricom is enabling many of the country?s 7,000 state secondary schools to access online educational content recorded at the Starehe Boys Centre School (one of Kenya?s prestigious institutes, which receives over 50,000 applications
for admissions every year);
After the 2011 Japanese earthquake, a partnership between an educational services provider, a mobile learning platform provider and a global Information and Communications Technology (ICT) solutions firm allowed school children in Ishinomaki - one of the most affected parts of Japan, where many students had lost both their home and their school ? to study via mobile tablet for their high school entry examinations. The students were able to work at their own pace, connecting via WiFi or 3G and almost all of the 120 students involved passed their entrance examinations despite the challenges they had faced.
