Mobile Phone Family Literacy

I hold a doctorate in Education, and have taught kindergarten, junior and senior high school, and graduate school. I have developed educational software for over forty years, starting with the best-selling Bank Street Writer (over 1,000,000 copies sold). I have consulted with the Ministries of Education in Botswana and South Africa on curriculum and technology innovation. I have been involved in the EdTech industry for over forty years. I have authored more than twenty textbooks and hundreds of software titles, including numerous apps in the App Store. I am the designer of the Family Learning Company platform. I was the publisher of the original “Classroom Computer News” (Now “Technology and Learning”). I am (almost) fluent in Norwegian, having learned it as a high school exchange student in Tromsø, 200 miles north of the Arctic Circle (my memoir, I Was a Teenage Norwegian is available through Amazon).

The problem I am committed to solving is the high illiteracy rates among girls and women in sub-Saharan Africa. Of the 500,000,000 million world-wide who cannot read, a majority live in sub-Sharan Africa. Of the 52,000,000 girls in sub-Saharan Africa, 6,000,000 will never set foot in a classroom. 

My solution is to combine the powerful relationships in families with mobile phone technology to address illiteracy. The two most important factors predicting the outcomes of literacy programs are: (1) an effective reading instruction process and (2) interesting, culturally relevant, challenging material to read. Our content partners--African Storybook initiative and SouthWest (MN) ABE--provide the second component. The Family Learning Company, working with telecom companies, will provide the first.

My solution could positively change the lives of millions of African girls and women by helping them master their literacy skills. If would affect millions more if scaled globally.

Illiteracy is one of the world’s largest problems and among women and girls outside formal education is an increasingly critical issue. Of the 774,000,000 world-side illiterates, 493,000,000 are women. (The Guardian) Across sub-Saharan Africa, 9.5 million girls will never set foot in a classroom compared to 5 million boys, according to UIS data. Some will start at a later age, but many more will remain entirely excluded with girls facing the biggest barriers. (UNESCO) And there are many studies documenting the relationship between illiteracy and poverty.

There are a number of factors contributing to this problem that relate to my solution:

1. Girls are more likely to be excluded from school attendance than boys: Our solution provides literacy activities on mobile phones, accessible to girls even if they don’t attend school.
2. There are almost no literacy programs for adult women: Our solution provides literacy activities on mobile phones, accessible to women in their homes.
3. Class size often averages fifty learners: Our solution provides individualized attention by providing complete learner control.
4. Literacy pedagogy is hundreds of years old: Our solution provides interactive activities, appealing graphics, formative assessment, team learning, family learning and learner control.

In my solution, girls will use literacy activities associated with African Storybooks and women will use literacy activities associated with real-world readings to learn to read and to improve their vocabulary, fluency and comprehension. Girls and women will then be more able, and more inclined, to read printed and online books for fun and learning.

Each literacy skills package has a number of interactive features:

e-Book

Audio-supported e-books with fluency timer provided in local languages and local accented English.

e-Books for girls will be children’s picture books.

e-Books for women will be real-world reading selections.

Vocabulary Activities

Embedded vocabulary development activities prepare learners to understand the words in the story.

Each e-Book has an array of vocabulary learning games, including the Word Search activity shown above.

Comprehension Questions

Comprehension questions address all of the key comprehension elements:

1. Main idea,
2. Background knowledge,
3. Literal text meaning,
4. Inference, and
5. Emotional impact.

Story Writing

Embedded story-writing activities using words and pictures from the story.

By creating their own stories, learners develop their writing skills, gain a better understanding of the material they are writing about, and create the ultimate form of assessment to evaluate their comprehension.

I focus on sub-Saharan Africa because the problem of illiteracy is especially large and English is a lingua franca for many countries. This enables me to provide bilingual literacy programs for young girls and English literacy for women.

The target population is the millions of girls both in and out of school and the millions of adult women. For girls in schools we provide a rich supplement; for all others, we provide a complete and comprehensive literacy program.

In each country, for each language, I will work with local educators to create the literacy activities. I expect these educators to communicate with the target population, ensuring their content is consistent with the needs of the target population.

My solution will address these needs of the target population:

• Low cost: no uniforms, no fees, no books; just pay for data minutes used
• Availability: activities accessed on mobile phone
• Accessibility: activities accessed anytime
• Can’t travel: no need to travel; activities can be played anywhere
• Different learning styles: graphical, interactive activities that reflect a variety of learning styles; complete learner control
• Maintain importance of family: activities designed to be done with other family members

My solution is aligned to the Learning for Girls and Women challenge in that it will:

• Increase the number of girls and young women participating in informal learning by making it easy for them to learn using their family mobile phones;
• Strengthen practical skills and competencies by mastering literacy skills they need to effectively transition from education to employment; 
• Reduce the barriers that prevent girls and young women from reaching key learning milestones by providing them the basic skills needed for further learning; and
• Promote gender-responsive education by having e-Books and readings “starring” girls and women.

I had finished creating a Kiswahili-English product for the Global Education X-prize. The literacy component of that product was based on over 100 children’s picture books from the Africa Storybook Initiative. I contacted the project manager, Tessa Welch, in South Africa and asked her if there were a way we could collaborate to disseminate the product. She was more interested in another way we could collaborate.

She was more interested in how we might collaborate to take their non-interactive storybooks to the next level. They were good stories, but Tessa was interested in making them more interactive and making them a part of a more comprehensive approach to early literacy. She was impressed by how we had “wrapped” other literacy activities around the stories:  comprehension questions, writing children-created stories, and vocabulary activities.

I suggested we modify our authoring app to import their storybook assets (pages and pictures) and then create literacy activities based on them. We then decided the only way to make them easily accessible to large numbers of families was through mobile phones. That led us to our unique business model with the telecom companies. Great ideas often come from conversations headed in a different direction.

Illiteracy is important to me because it is one of the biggest problems facing the world today. As I have gotten older, I notice that I have become more interested in larger problems and less satisfied with solving smaller problems.

But my motivation comes from more than just solving one of the world’s largest problems. In addition, I am motivated by the potential of having impact. One of my first digital products was the Bank Street Writer, which sold over 1,000,000 copies and impacted millions of children and adults. As I have gotten older, the ability to have impact on millions of people motivates me, and this project has the potential for even greater impact than the Bank Street Writer.

Finally, I am by my personal experiences in Africa. I lived with a number of families in Ghana when I was writing a textbook. I lived with Norwegian friends in Swaziland. I worked in Botswana to develop a technology integration plan for their junior secondary schools. I worked in South Africa once to develop a new curriculum and once to wrote a children’s book. This personal connection to Africa motivates me to solve a big problem and impact millions.

I am well-positioned to deliver this project for three reasons. First, I have already implemented a literacy product with just the characteristics this project requires:

• Family Learning: People are social beings and learn best with others, not on their own. The family needs to be seen as part of the solution, not part of the problem.
• Comprehensive Approach: We have thousands of learning activities in reading fluency, reading comprehension, vocabulary and writing.
• Learner Control: We give learners complete control over their learning, rather than allowing the computer to tell learners what to do.
• Formative Assessment: To help learners decide what to do next, we provide them with feedback on everything they do.

Second, the new project has access to the resources of two existing products. One the one hand, I have access to the hundreds of Africa StoryBook Initiative stories and their thousands of African language translations. One the other hand, I have access to an authoring platform that requires only a few changes to make creating the thousands of envisioned activities easy and inexpensive.

Third, I have already envisioned an innovative delivery model that relies on mobile phones and data minutes:

• Mobile phone companies will license our content to distribute to their customers.
• The only charge for the content will be the data minutes used to play it.
• We will require the companies to provide free minutes to every family.
• Foundations can purchase minutes to provide families free access.

The Covid-19 pandemic has created just such a difficult situation. I had been developing our first family learning product for the past eighteen months and were ready to launch in March. Our customers were to be organizations that served or employed members of families with functionally-illiterate adults or literacy-challenged children (in the U.S): Head Start programs, ABE centers, public schools, corporations, etc. Almost immediately our customers disappeared, either literally or behind other priorities.

The two obvious strategies were: (1) give up or (2) figure out how to survive. I opted for a third strategy: come out of the pandemic stronger than we were at its beginning. To do this, I asked the question: During this crisis, who care most about families? The answer was obvious: parents. The consequence was to put all existing customer types on (long) hold and to re-oriented all marketing and sales efforts to parents. We contracted with an employee discount company, instead of employer HR departments, to sell directly to parents. We are creating affiliates to market directly to parents instead of approaching school and Head Start administrators. By the time we sell to organizations, we’ll have an installed base of family customers.

When I first started my company I wanted a participatory and collaborative decision-making process. We designed products collaboratively. I always asked everyone for advice and input in what I saw as a collective decision-making process. I was the founder, owner, boss but I wanted everyone to see me as the leader of the team and that it was the team that mattered. As an intentional decision-make, I assumed everyone else wanted to be involved in all decisions just as I did; I never made decisions alone.

Much to my surprise (shock, even) most people didn’t want to make decisions. They wanted to be told what to do and then given what they needed (including the ability to decide HOW to do the task) to do it. They didn’t want to be responsible for decisions, just for implementation. I thought I had exhibited leadership ability by allowing everyone to decide. It turns out that I didn’t start exhibiting leadership ability until I started making decisions on my own…and having the self-confidence to do that. I thought leadership would be easy: involve everyone. It turns out, leadership was much more difficult: make decisions on my own.

The project is a partnership between two existing organizations: The Family Learning Company (FLC) and the Africa Storybook Initiative (Asb). Asb will create a script that will extract from any of its storybooks pages (for e-Books and images (for writing activities). Their script will extract assets from all existing and future Africa Storybooks. The Family Learning Company will modify its existing authoring app to import these assets and enable local authors to create all the activities required for the project (and in the future). The two organizations will work together to sell the project to the telecom customers.

My solution includes three areas of innovation. First, it is a family learning product.

• The solution includes a literacy product for young girls and a second literacy product for women over the age of fifteen.
• The solution encourages family members to work together, for girls to help the women in their family and for women to help the girls.

Second, we rely on a pedagogy with a unique set of characteristics.

• Team Learning: People are social beings and learn best with others, not on their own.
• Comprehensive Approach: The project has thousands of learning activities in reading fluency, reading comprehension, vocabulary and writing.
• Bilingual Literacy: For girls, I include a comprehensive approach to literacy in a native language and in English.
• Learner control: I give learners complete control over their learning, rather than allowing the computer to tell learners what to do.
• Formative Assessment: To help learners decide what to do next, I provide them with feedback on everything they do, from whether they answer a single question correctly to how many questions they answered correctly in an activity to how many activities they mastered for each e-Book. 

Finally, there is an innovative in our delivery model: mobile phones and data minutes.

• Mobile phone companies will license our content to distribute to their customers.
• The only charge for the content will be the data minutes used to play it.
• I will require the companies to provide free minutes to every family.
• Foundations can purchase minutes to provide families free access.

Our theory of change has two components: (1) that our solution can increase literacy skills and (2) that an increase in short-term literacy skills will have an impact on long-term poverty. All of our activities are linked to immediate literacy outputs and all our activities are based on research-based methods. For example, research is clear that people do not become more literate simply by exposing them to books, or even by having them read books. The research (Report of National reading Panel, 2000) argues that students should be explicitly taught skills in reading fluency, reading comprehension, vocabulary and writing…all of which our solutions does. According to John Hattie (Influences on Student Learning, 1999), “the most powerful single moderator that enhances achievement is feedback,” which is why our solution incorporates formative, not summative, assessment. Our solution does not rely on computer algorithms to guide learners; rather it relies on learner control because large amount of research on the subject of student agency shows that “the degree to which students learn how to control their own learning … is highly related to outcomes (Visible Learning, 2009). Why is peer learning more effective?  Because at their core, human beings are social learners. The National Mathematics Advisory Panel sites 31 studies in its 2008 report indicating that various forms of peer learning accelerate the learning of mathematics. Even our solutions limited use of animations is based on research. Research by Michelle Donnelly in 2006 found that students who heard stories read out loud were 2.5 times more likely to remember their content than students who experienced them in animated interactive applications.

 The second component of our theory of change is universally accepted, but it also has a research base. According to the World Literacy Foundation, illiteracy costs the global economy $1.5 trillion annually. A briefing paper from the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID) looks at how literacy and poverty are connected. Emmanuelle Suso has analyzed 56 Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs) from different countries and continents and concluded there is an undisputed that there is a connection between literacy and poverty

The existing technology Is currently operating in the United States. It is currently serving hundreds of families in a number of pilots. I am just releasing a number of literacy solutions for this market and expect to be serving thousands of families by the end of 2020. Over the next five years, I expect to be serving hundreds of thousands of families in the United States.

The solution I propose will be ready for a pilot during 2020 in Kenya and I expect to be serving thousands of families through that pilot. I expect to be in four other countries by the end of eighteen months, serving tens of thousands of families. Over the next five years, I expect to be in 10-15 countries throughout Africa (adding Nigeria, Ethiopia, DR Congo, Angola, Ghana Mozambique, Madagascar, Cameroon, Ivory Coats and Niger) serving millions of families.

My goals within the next year are to implement the first version of our solution and to create a paid pilot with our first telecom company customer. We already have a relationship with our development partner, the Africa Storybook Initiative (Asb). Asb will develop a way for its web site to automate the process of creating files that our authoring app can use to create interactive e-books and their surrounding comprehension, writing, and vocabulary activities. The Family Learning Company will finalize the authoring program to make it easy to create hundreds of “learning packets” based on African Storybook assets. We will work with local East African educators to create the Kiswahili content. 

Finally, I will contract with a telecom company in Kenya for a paid pilot distribution of the content to the telecom company’s subscribers. My distribution goal within the next year is to serve thousands of families.

The innovative business model enables dramatic growth paid for by the income the project derives from the telecom companies. Each telecom company for each country pays an advance against future royalties to cover the cost of creating the content for one or two languages. This approach permits the project to expand in a sustainable fashion. Additional languages are paid for from royalties from each telecom company. In this way it is possible to scale the project throughout Africa and realistically serve millions of families within the next five years.

There are a number of small barriers. Content needs to be created by local educators and educators need to be located in each country the project serves, often for multiple languages. Asb has already located a group of Kiswahili-speaking educators for the first version of the solution and we expect Asb will be able (with its extensive contacts throughout Africa) to provide most, if not, all of the educators needed for the first 5-10 countries/languages. From that point on, Asb and word-of-mouth should eliminate that barrier.

The second small barrier is contacts with telecom companies. Asb has some contacts, but not as many as with educators. The Family Learning Company founder has worked with many MIT start-ups, some of which are in Africa and have indicated a willingness to provide warm introductions. Once I have a solution to demonstrate, I am confident that even cold contacts at these telecom companies will take our call.

By far, the major barrier is financial. I do not expect any telecom company will be willing to pay for technology development, however low. The solution is based on adapting existing technology and assets, so its cost is extremely low, but we do not expect any telecom company is willing to take that risk. In addition, the first sale is always the most difficult, so having both a finished technology and a finished solution is essential. The project needs an initial infusion of money, and can then be entirely self-sufficient.

The ways in which I plan to overcome the small barriers has already been described in the previous section. The lack of financial resources is the bigger barrier and needs the most explanation. There are two financial barriers; (1) short term and (2) long term. Both barriers have to do with risk. The innovative business model is to leverage the distribution strengths of private-sector telecom companies. I do not seek donations; rather, I offer (modest) profit. The key to this business model is to reduce telecom company risk.

The short-term financial barrier has to do with reducing risk by providing the first telecom customer a finished product. That is why I am looking to this competition to raise the $125,000 needed to create the finished product and market it to a telecom company doing business in Kenya. The money will be used to enable : (1) Asb to create an automated way to extract from its online books the files needed to create the literacy activities, (2) The Family Learning Company to modify its authoring app for the purpose of creating learning packets, (3) a local group of educators to create the first product, and (4) Asb and The Family Learning Company to market the product to its first customer.

The long-term financial barrier is to reduce risk so that telecom companies will pay advances for content development. My strategy here is to get donor organizations to help offset the data costs to families, reducing risk to telecom companies.

The organization I currently partner with is the African Storybook Initiative (Asb) in South Africa. I have been partnering with Asb for the past four years. I began our partnership when I used over 100 of their storybooks as the reading component of our Kiswahili Family Literacy product.

A year ago, I began conversations about partnering for the solution we are currently proposing. Asb controls the African Storybook website and its thousands of online storybooks created by African authors in over 100 African languages. Asb will be responsible for creating a utility that extracts the pages from their existing storybooks and stores them in a way that the Family Learning Company Make app can access and import them as interactive e-books. Asb will also create a utility that extracts the images from their existing storybooks and stores them in a way that the Make app can access and import them as writing activities. Asb will also be responsible for finding local authoring groups. An example of the type of person that would manage an authoring process in a country is Dr. Cornelius Gulere at the Uganda Christian University, a Lusoga specialist working with lecturers and students to translate and author African Storybooks in a range of Ugandan languages. Dr. Gulere has already agreed to partner with us in this way on this project.

The beneficiaries are the millions of families in Africa with illiterate women out of school, illiterate girls out of school, or girls in school struggling to acquire literacy skills. There are two conventional business models I do not use. First, beneficiaries are customers and pay us to access pour product. I discard this business model because it is too expensive for the beneficiaries and does not create a sustainable business model. Second, organizations are the customers and give the solution to the beneficiaries. I discard this business model because it has a poor track record and also not sustainable.

My business model leverages the profit motive and existing distribution channels of private corporations. In this business model, telecom companies are our customers and beneficiaries are paying users. Telecom companies can generate a modest profit and a significant amount of good will offering low-cost access to our solution through data minutes.

I charge each country-specific telecom company a percentage of revenue they generate from our solution and an advance against this revenue to cover content development costs. For this, the company gets exclusivity to the solution in that country. Beneficiaries pay only for the data minutes they use accessing the solution. This keeps the cost low to beneficiaries, yet makes it possible for the telecom company to make a modest profit (since their only cost is a revenue share with us). This business model also makes it possible for foundations and governments to subsidize the cost of the data minutes.

Because of the innovative business model, funding my work and my path to financial sustainability are not exactly the same. My path to financial sustainability involves one direct source of funding and two indirect sources. First, the direct source of funding is telecom companies. My business model provides an exclusive license to one telecom company in each African country. The telecom companies pay the project a percentage of the revenue it generates from our solution in the form of data minutes attributable to the use of our solution by its customers. Each telecom company also pays the project an advance against future payments to cover the up-front costs of creating content for that country. This direct source of funding makes the project financial sustainable. The two indirect sources of funding—beneficiaries paying for data minutes and foundations and governments subsidizing the cost of those data minutes—make the project financially sustainable for the telecom companies (which is necessary for the project to be financially sustainable).

How I bring money to fund the project (that is, to start the project) is different, because I need to reduce the risk to the telecom companies by offering them a finished solution. This is a one-time cost. I will look to foundations and the Solve Competition for this funding.

The Family Learning Company has been in business for forty-four years. It is the successor company to Intentional Educations, Maestro Learning and Flink Learning. For forty-two of those years, the company (under its various names) created learning products (starting with print materials and then electronic materials) for publishing companies. It was a profitable business, generating millions of dollars in revenues from over 100 companies (over forty-two years).

For the past two years (operating as The Family Learning Company), it has become a start-up publisher itself. As such, it has had no revenue, but has been funded by its founders. The company has created other solutions (that is, other applications of its technology) for the American market and will market and sell those solutions at the same time it hopes to create the solution proposed for Africa.

I are seeking $109,000 in funding to cover all anticipated up-front expenses that will enable me to sign our first distribution contract with a telecom company in Kenya. The anticipated expenses are enumerated in the next section.

I am able to take the funding as a grant, as our collaborating partner—African Storybook Initiative—is a non-profit organization able to accept grant and foundation funding. We are able to take the funding as debt or equity, as The Family Learning Company is a for-profit company.

I am hoping to raise the money by fall, 2020 so that I can complete the first phase of the project (which means we have our first telecom customer) by the end of 2020.

The estimates expenses for 2020 are based on: (1) creating the conversions utilities on the African Storybook web site, (2) revising the existing Make app to make it easy and inexpensive to create the learning activities envisioned in our solution, (3) create the first set (Kiswahili) of learning packets, (4) acquire our first customer.

Creating the conversion utilities involves these tasks:

Converting storybook pages into JPGs: $10,000

Converting storybook images into JPGs: $10,000

Revising the existing Make app has involves these tasks:

Limit Make app to just what this solution needs: $4,000

Create ability for girls to record their own version of the e-book: $2,000

Navigate to list of African Storybooks and select one: $1,000

Import all images in a folder to e-Book activity template: $4,000

Import all images in a folder to Story Studio activity template: $4,000

Prevent same book from being used twice: $2,000

Create Enter Words Dialog for vocabulary activities: $8,000

Create translation utility for on-screen text: $4,000

Implement publishing tasks: $12,000

Creating the first set of learning packets (each learning packet contains an e-book, a comprehension question activity, a writing activity, and six vocabulary activities) involves these tasks:

Local coordinator: $10,000

Distance training and supervisions: $15,000

160 learning packets (@$100): $16,000

Acquiring the first customer involves these tasks:

Marketing: $5,000

Legal: $2,000

I am applying for The Elevate Prize to dramatically accelerate the impact of our project. I will use the prize money to cover all the 2020 expenses listed previously and to address one of the biggest barriers the project faces:  customer risk. The main risk the telecom companies face is the up-front money they pay for specific-language content development. A second risk the telecom companies face is getting their first families to use the content they license. I will use the prize money to reduce both those risks.

The cost of content development for each language (that is, for each telecom company country/language license) is $41,000. For each license, I will allocate $30 for each of the first 1,000 customers and require the telecom company to match that $30 with additional free data minutes (the telecom company will receive $30,000 when it demonstrates that at least 1,000 of its customers have used at least $60 each in data minutes). This approach dramatically reduces the risk to the telecom companies and, I believe, insures the project’s wide-spread initial adoption and actual use.

The prize money needed is: (1) $109,000 for previous 2020 expenses, (2) $30,000 in reimbursement to the first telecom company, and (4) $284,000 for four additional telecom company licenses. This approach will serve 2,000 families with an average of four family members each for each of five telecom companies…or a total of 40,000 people served within the first eighteen months of the project.

I have an excellent content partner in the African Storybook Initiative. Another area for which a partner might be useful is the business model. I have designed an innovative business model and it would be useful partnering with someone who has experience with business models somewhat similar to ours. This could be someone with more experience with telecom companies, specifically, or Africa generally. It could be someone experienced with a variety of business models.

In addition, my hope is that the Solve community will have a number of peers, other organizations working in literacy, in Africa or both. It would be ideal if some of the experts within the Solve community had experience with, or contacts at, telecom companies. It would also be useful to get strategic advice on my plan to seek foundation and government funding to offset some of the beneficiaries’ data minute cost.

The business model is based upon telecom companies becoming our distribution partners. I see these partnerships being based on national markets, even though many telecom companies in Africa serve multiple national markets. As a result, the business model incorporates exclusive country-wide licenses for telecom partners.

I would like to partner with telecom companies in two ways. First, I want to partner with them financially. I want them to support our short-term content development efforts by providing an advance against future payments to pay for their initial content. In addition, each telecom company will provide a revenue share of all money they receive for data minutes associated with using our solution. Financially, I partner by our helping them make a profit and by them helping us become sustainable.

Second, I want to partner with them impactfully. I want to help them appreciate that this is a socially impactful solution and that should partner with us in part for the social benefit we both provide. I want to explore with them, for example, providing the solution for free for a certain amount of time. I want to explore with them providing the solution at a slightly lower data rate than regular phone services. I want to explore with them having their foundations (many telecom companies have an associated foundation) or corporate giving arms offset some of the data costs for beneficiary families. In this way, our partnership is both about money and social impact.