By Susan Moody

What is a frequent request from our kids in the iRead pilot in Ghana?  A light.  Our students are already spending 50% more of their time reading now that they have an e-reader… now imagine!  They can read stories like Meshack Asare’s The Canoe’s Story when the sun sets.  A huge thank you to our friends at M-Edge , who generously donated the lights and cases… and to everyone who is helping us to make “Books for All” a reality.

By Susan Moody

Judging by recent news that e-book sales surpassed paperback books and the price of e-reader technology keeps dropping, it’s safe to say we’re witnessing a massive shift in the publishing world.  Worldeader wants to bring the developing world in on that change so that students (like Deborah and Gideon seen here in our latest video) have the tools to become whatever they dream of: in Deborah’s case, a doctor and in Gideon’s, a soccer player in Europe.  Gideon hopes that others in Ghana, with a literacy rate at just 65%, will be like him some day and have an e-reader.  Worldreader is just at the first stop of a long journey: we’re fine-tuning our methods with careful pilots in Ghana and developing know-how in Kenya that we’ll use to expand into all of the developing world.   We’re at the first stop, yes, but we’re already making a huge difference in the lives of hundreds of kids—and soon many more.

All this would not be possible without our partners.  M-Edge just shipped over hundreds of reading lights to our students in Ghana- joining the already generous donation of e-reader cases.  It’s a gesture that enables students to read more: now children can read after the sun goes down.  Thanks to our partners, every $200 e-reader has a value of almost $500, once you consider e-reader cases, lights, e-books etc.  And thanks to our partners, we’re making a pretty powerful equation a reality:  price per book decreases as number of books read rises. Continue Reading →

by Susan Moody

Worldreader is back from our iRead launch in Ghana and yesterday I shared the incredible events in Kade’s Purple Church.  Now it’s logical to wonder, “How did the kids react to the e-readers?”  On Monday and Tuesday, we were in classrooms delivering 440 e-readers holding tens of thousands of pre-downloaded books (with the capacity of 1,760,000 books).  That’s pretty impressive when you remember we are a team of just 7 people—something that only technology makes possible.

I can describe the students in just a single word: inspiring.  After playing around with the buttons a bit, they quickly understood the e-reader’s functionalities.  They were disciplined and eager to learn.  It was especially fascinating listening to the kids read local stories—which shows us how the publishing work we’ve done of local textbooks and story books is critical.  It was wonderful to witness the students personalize their e-reader cases, which were generously donated by our friends at M-Edge.  This was a huge deal: suddenly the e-reader moved from being “someone else’s” to “mine.”

The students understood that e-readers can change their life.  It wasn’t a shiny gadget that has market value and can be traded for other goods.  11 year-old Deborah, whose little brother also got an e-reader in Primary, took Elizabeth and me into her home after school where her mother told me: “Deborah dreams of becoming a doctor when she’s older, and now she can read all about how to do that.”  Deborah told me that she had a lot of time after school, and now she would read.  Suddenly her dream seemed wholly attainable.  Other students told us: “This is going to help me become a doctor / barrister / nurse/ lawyer/ journalist.”  One boy told me that he wants to be a football player in Europe and by improving his English, he might have a better chance.

Another quality I loved (and something that would like to better transmit to my own kids) was how the children collectively embrace a culture of sharing.  Actually it has me wondering about the effect on our impact evaluation studies: specifically the control group.  These are the kids without e-readers that we are testing to contrast changes in grammar and reading comprehension.  I wonder if it’s going to be hard to measure because these kids share with everyone in their community. I know I am not alone in saying that in one concentrated week, these children inspired me and stole a piece of my heart (once I get the video, I will share a song they wrote that gave the entire Worldreader team goose bumps).  Of course, without a crop of incredible teachers, this wouldn’t happen at all.

Next, David (who was voted best Professor at U. Washington MBA) will share his thoughts on the teachers.  Stay tuned!

Zev and Colin were in Ghana last week and here’s a quick update.  After an intense week, we are on track for the iRead pilot study to launch as planned during the second week of November.   You can’t imagine how complicated the logistics are!  The Kindle is a wonderful, life-changing device but it is made for a single user to unpack, set-up and begin uploading content.  The device in volume, however, is a whole different story.  Any day now the Kindles will arrive from abroad and we will need to unpack them, register each one per student for tracking purposes, upload content, outfit them with a M-Edge jacket and reading light–all before distributing them to different schools in Ghana.  Other details include getting connectivity, training teachers, preparing students, getting evaluators in place to test literacy rates, and thousands of other things.

Worldreader.org has made a significant decision after talking to our impact evaluators to increase our trial coverage by 50%.  That is to say, we will also cover younger Primary students as well as Junior and Senior Secondary students. Why?  Because we want to make this trial the most comprehensive it can possibly be before scaling up.  It makes perfect sense too- since reading habits are impacted by age.   Having access to books at a younger age might make a noticeable difference in increasing literacy rates.  While it means more work, we are really excited about this decision.  Joseph, our man on the ground,  has reacted immediately to this by quickly collecting all the necessary data we need from the field (not an easy task).

In his free moments, Colin has been tweeting his Top 5 Tips for NGOs…. I guess, once an educator, always an educator!

1. Learn how to ask for money and help from closest friends. Sounds easier than it is, but involve them.

2. Bring new ideas to development but read the history as well… In that order!

3. Decide if are you an NGO or a social enterprise. Big difference!

4. A well-selected Advisory Board can open doors you didn’t know existed.

5. Maybe a great idea but it’s still all about you and what YOU can deliver. Funders don’t give money to ideas, they fund people.

You can follow him on twitter for the second installment.

More news soon!