Amir Jahangir, President AGAHI at the launch of Mobile Learning for Education Development

Amir Jahangir, President AGAHI and the Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum launches the collaborative initiative of  Nokia, UNESCO and AGAHI on Mobile Learning for Teacher’s in Pakistan using the Nokia Education Delivery App to facilitate teacher training via mobile phones.

AGAHI, Nokia Pakistan and UNESCO launched the project “Mobile Learning Project for Teacher’s Professional Development” today as formal collaboration in the presence of senior government officials, Nokia representatives and UNESCO representatives. As part of this program, UNESCO and Nokia are joining hands, where Nokia is providing its mobile phones and its application “Nokia Education Delivery (NED) for UNESCO’s project on ‘use of ICT for professional development of public school teachers’ in remote areas.

Since 2011 NED has turned into an open source solution to improve livelihoods, and in order to support such mobile learning innovations to be filled with life in Pakistan, The project will be implemented by AGAHI, a UNESCO partner and a non-profit foundation working in the area of communication and media policy design.

NOKIA

Nokia developed NED to allow using a mobile phone to access and download videos and other educational materials from a constantly updated education library. Operating in hundreds of schools and having reached millions of students in the Philippines, Tanzania, Chile and Colombia, Nokia Education Delivery has been shown to improve study results and increase retention among students.

This collaboration is part of the agreement signed last year between UNESCO and Nokia at international level to promote the use of mobile technologies to further the objectives of “Education for All”. As part of this agreement Nokia is developing applications and new Mobile technologies offering access to information and enrich learning environments at global level.

United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)

In Pakistan, through the project “Mobile Learning for Teachers” Nokia’s Education Delivery application will help UNESCO to enable the delivery of high- quality educational materials to teachers who lack training and resources though mobile phones giving an opportunity to teachers to train themselves on the same level as professionally competent teachers.

UNESCO Director, Kozue Kay Nagata

Speaking about the project, UNESCO Director, Kozue Kai Nagata said, “In 21st century Public- private partnerships are enjoying growing attention and support as a new and sustainable modality for development. We are confident to collaborate with Nokia to provide us with the best platform to train public school teachers. Nokia Education Delivery is fit to match our need of delivering quality training to a large number of public school teachers across Pakistan through the project named “Mobile Learning for Teachers”.

Nokia Education Delivery Information Flow

Speaking about the launch of NED program, Ulrike Vott Nokia Sustainability Manager for Middle East said, “Nokia Education Delivery facilitates education in a fun and interactive way. In addition to the NED software, Nokia offers program implementation support for the benefit of Pakistan’s education landscape.” The Nokia Education Delivery software system has two modules. The first module is installed on a Nokia mobile phone and contains a browse able catalog of educational videos. The second module is installed on the computer of the education administrator. It manages the organization’s mobile video library, so that videos can be added, deleted and updated. It also provides information on the usage of different videos.”

Amir Jahangir, President AGAHI & Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum

Amir Jahangir, President AGAHI and a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum, shared his views on the launch that “Pakistan is a knowledge starved country, where universal education has its own challenges. To meet the target of the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) on education, Pakistan needs to address its education challenges through innovation and technology which can reach to a larger population with cost effective solutions”.

This unique pilot project for Pakistan has been initiated by UNESCO and AGAHI aims at using Mobile phones as medium for training teachers, where the teachers in remote areas will be equipped with devices, SIMs, a software solution and high quality educational content. The course for training and capacity building will be developed into video files and will be transmitted step by step according to curriculum on the phones provided to teachers. Over the course of the training period, teachers will be tested via SMS on regular basis and as an incentive, those who will score highest in tests will receive free mobile top ups. At the end of the course, test scores of all teachers will be aggregated and the passing teachers will be awarded certificate in the final workshop.

AGAHI, a not for profit, is UNESCO implementing partner in Pakistan. AGAHI specializes in creating communication, information and media policy design tools, that enables the stakeholders to engage in information collaboration on knowledge-based platforms. AGAHI works in building the capacity of knowledge workers in creating content based on best practices to disseminate information in building a more integrated knowledge ecosystem.

Nokia is a global leader in mobile communications whose products have become an integral part of the lives of people around the world. Every day, more than 1.3 billion people use their Nokia to capture and share experiences, access information, find their way or simply to speak to one another. Nokia’s technological and design innovations have made its brand one of the most recognized in the world. For more information.

UNESCO is the United Nations agency with a mandate to defend freedom of expression and press freedom. Article 1 of its Constitution requires the Organization to “ further universal respect for justice, for the rule of law and for the human rights and fundamental freedoms which are affirmed for the peoples of the world, without distinction of race, sex, language or religion, by the Charter of the United Nations.” To realize this the Organization is requested to “ collaborate in the work of advancing the mutual knowledge and understanding of peoples, through all means of mass communication and to that end recommend such international agreements as may be necessary to promote the free flow of ideas by word and image”.

Innovation Journalism (InJo) is journalism covering innovation. It covers innovation processes and innovation ecosystems. Traditional newsbeats – like business, technology, science and political journalism — look only at certain aspects of innovation processes and ecosystems. But in Innovation Journalism (InJo) innovation is treated as a topic within each beat, and the bigger picture is chopped up to fit into a specific news slot, usually technology or business journalism. Amir Jahangir from Pakistan is not only on Stanford University InJo advisory board, where Innovation Journalism first started a few years ago, but he is also the recipient of World Global Leader Award that is given each year by World Economic Forum to those who are leading the way in either media, technology or business and positively impacting the common man in their own respective countries. Jahangir is working on introducing InJo in Pakistan.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=UyTIZO0RdrI

Amir Jahangir Interviews for IAMCR

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rj9d2zjj0Tg

Amir Jahangir at the YGL Annual Summit 2010

YGL Amir Jahangir’s impressions of the YGL Annual Summit 2010 in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

The Story of Samaa TV Presented by Amir Jahangir at

4th Regional Conference on Innovation Journalism Stanford after Stanford 2009

Story of SamaaTV

Amir Jahangir, Violeta Bulc

SAMAA TV Salutes the Defenders of Pakistan, including the Pakistan Army, Navy & the Air Force, national guards, firemen, doctors, nurses and the rescue professionals of 15 and 1122. The video shows the contributions of all these brave men and women serving Pakistan.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbfXLVjqeVg

The song is written by the famous poet of Pakistan Mr. Tahir Parwaz for SAMAA TV

www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUaQO2h10Bs

SAMAA TV Pakistan’s Constructive Innovation Journalism Initiatives

www.youtube.com/watch?v=aj1BkuX6AwE

Fatima Akhar, Senior Manager Interactive Platforms of SAMAA TV made a special presentation at the 6th International Conference on Innovation Journalism at the Stanford University, CA. The IJ6 conference was held between 18-20 May 2009. The conference was organized by the VINNOVA-Stanford Research Center for Innovation Journalism, Stanford University, CA

www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNYT90HqmuI