Exploring mobile technology as a sustainable education option for underserved illiterate children

XRI is collaborating with domain experts from multiple organizations, including Stanford University and UNESCO in order to conduct the preliminary analyses.

Migrant indigenous children in Latin America are the children of indigenous parents who travel thousands of miles to find agricultural jobs. Not all indigenous populations are migratory, but more and more, many are leaving their homes in remote rural areas to find a better life elsewhere.

There are approximately 50 to 60 million extremely underserved indigenous people in Latin America, and they reside mostly in Mexico, Peru, Bolivia, Guatemala, and Ecuador. The differences in literacy and access to formal education between indigenous and non-indigenous populations are significant. Despite the fact that there is multidimensional complexity over literacy inequality, among other issues with identity, culture, or politics, providing the children with access to literacy education is the utmost concern of this project.  Recent developments of mobile learning technologies and their increasing affordability seem to create new opportunities for educators to address the learning needs of indigenous children living in extreme poverty. This study is currently going through needs analyses at different villages with migrant indigenous children. The children at each village are being given a chance to play with mobile learning devices that are loaded with learning materials to find if those children would be able to benefit from such devices.