Trends in Distance Education and Open Learning: Policy ... - ADEA

11. Broadening Access to rural areasIt is known that inaccessibility to information and the Internet is a major hindrance topromote m-learning in rural areas in countries like China and in Africa. The tragedy is thatin some countries access to electricity is very limited, for instance in Uganda almost 80% ofthe population is covered by mobile communications but around 7% has access todomestic electricity supply. Given that the short life cycle of the mobile battery is a bigtechnical constraint, therefore, it’s essential to provide offline and online mode of m-learning content.The future trend about m-learning is about real time collaborative learning through thecloud, here bandwidth and access to Internet matter. The coupling of the mobile terminalswith radio transmission can solve the issue of reaching remote populations. It can be seenin various national ICT strategic plans in developing countries that policies regarding accessto computers and the Internet are laudable.Research and advancement in mobile technology like the one described earlier for CSIRO isa solution to broaden access. Innovative ideas such as using 1.5 v batteries to charge themobile phone battery or again the boda phone on motorbikes to charge mobile phones inUganda may be sufficient for telephony or SMS applications, but when it is aboutmultimedia apps which are very resource intensive, the battery power is consumed at anexponential rate.Any advancement in the distribution and provision of electrical energy will surelycontribute to advancement of mobile learning in rural areas.53