Mobile & Immersive Learning for Literacy in Emerging Economies project to gauge the effectiveness of mobile phone-based games for teaching English lessons to students in rural India.

Carnegie Mellon University has announced the expansion of its Mobile & Immersive Learning for Literacy in Emerging Economies (MILLEE) project, which will gauge the effectiveness of mobile phone-based games for teaching English lessons to students in rural India. This new phase of the research project is made possible, in part, by a grant and a supply of 450 mobile phones provided by Nokia Research Center in Palo Alto, California.

Even today's low-end mobile phones exceed the capabilities of the original IBM personal computer and thus could become important learning tools as wireless carriers extend their services into previously underdeveloped regions, according to Carnegie Mellon's Matthew Kam, assistant professor in the School of Computer Science's Human-Computer Interaction Institute. He and his colleagues in the MILLEE project have spent six years designing educational games for mobile phones that are relevant to the culture of rural India. During the next two years, MILLEE will conduct a controlled study involving 800 children in 40 villages in the state of Andhra Pradesh.

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