Cellphones Level the Field

TUTORING I

SOUTH AFRICA-About half of Kumaras Pillay's high school students in Durban, South Africa, live in shacks with no electricity. Yet they are perhaps more likely to access math and science information from home via the Internet than rich kids with PCs in their bedrooms.

Pillay made this possible by creating a tutoring website specifically designed to be accessed on cellular phones. A math and science teacher who earned a mechanical engineering degree before finding his calling in education, Pillay is not just helping his own students. In the first 8 weeks after he launched www.mlearner.co.za in September, the site received 180,000 hits from 11th and 12th grade pupils all around South Africa. "We were starting to believe we had a product that is really going to revolutionize education," says Pillay.

Others have also become believers. In October, Microsoft awarded Pillay and MLearner first prize ahead of more than 100,000 other applicants at their Innovative Teachers' Forum Awards in Helsinki, Finland. The honor has emboldened Pillay to go international. He is meeting with top math and science teachers from around the globe who will contribute tests and other materials to MLearner.

Pillay's innovation stems from what he saw around him when he arrived at Durban's Burnwood secondary School. Burnwood was Exhibit A in what Pillay calls "a national crisis in math and science." Fewer than a third of all graduates in the KwaZulu-Natal province pass the national exams in mathematics. Many at Burnwood had gone long periods without a math teacher at all.The nation's elite, says Pillay," have private tuition, tutors and study guides, but the majority are shortchanged."

Pillay noticed, however, that most of his students carried a cell phone, which are inexpensive and widely used in South Africa. He realized that this device could bridge the divide, and enlisted his principal, Vanesh Gokal, to write the software. Students can now download a few pages of information for about a penny in phone charges. They can even discuss their work with fellow pupils and teachers in chat rooms. "It's an attempt to level the playing field," says Pillay, "quality education should not be a privilege; it should be a right for all." -DON BOROUGHS

Copyright AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR ENGINEERING EDUCATION Feb 2008
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved