InfoInternet for Education in the Global South: A Study of Applications Enabled by Free Information-only Internet Access in Technologically Disadvantaged Areas (authors' version)

TL;DR

This study explores how InfoInternet, a new information layer, enables affordable internet access and educational applications in underserved communities of the Global South, providing guidelines for application development in such environments.

Contribution

It introduces a framework for developing and adopting educational applications tailored to communities with limited connectivity and resources in the Global South.

Findings

Characteristics of educational applications in InfoInternet environments

User and learning environment profiles in disadvantaged areas

Guidelines for application development in constrained settings

Abstract

This paper summarises our work on studying educational applications enabled by the introduction of a new information layer called InfoInternet. This is an initiative to facilitate affordable access to internet based information in communities with network scarcity or economic problems from the Global South. InfoInternet develops both networking solutions as well as business and social models, together with actors like mobile operators and government organisations. In this paper we identify and describe characteristics of educational applications, their specific users, and learning environment. We are interested in applications that make the adoption of Internet faster, cheaper, and wider in such communities. When developing new applications (or adopting existing ones) for such constrained environments, this work acts as initial guidelines prior to field studies.