MILLEE: Mobile and Immersive Learning for Literacy in Emerging Economies

Poor literacy remains a barrier to economic empowerment in the developing world. Of particular importance is literacy in a “global language” such as English, which is typically a second language for these speakers. For complex reasons, public schools are often not effective for second language learning. Our solution is a suite of language-learning games on cellphones that target skills in conversation, listening comprehension, phonetic decoding and sight reading. Their design is informed by second language acquisition theories, as well as design patterns from successful games and highly rated commercial language learning software. We argue that cellphones are an excellent technology platform in the typical ecologies of underdeveloped regions. We employ a framework called PACE which is intended to support the rapid, scalable development of language learning software localized for a particular community of learners. They are usually skeptical of formal education and cultural biases encountered in “remote” languages. Content localization is indispensable to make the language relevant to them and to encourage them to adopt it. Author