DREAMY m-LEARNING PROJECT
According to Eurostat (2017) 35% of adults with at most lower secondary attainment were at risk of poverty or social exclusion in 2014. Low- educated women are more likely to live in poverty and social exclusion than men because the barriers that women face lead to their exclusion from full participation in all areas of life. Among other reasons, the fact that household and caring duties fall mostly upon women, most of them are unemployed or inactive either they work at very low-paid work, involuntary part-time work or low job security.
Many of these low- educated women whether employed or not, are dealing with handicrafts. Although today, handicraft products are becoming more valuable in the eyes of the customer most of the these women not aware of the real value of their products or how to make use of them in commercial perspective. Only a small proportion of these women find the opportunity to generate a regular income through their such a valuable talent. These handicrafts sometimes for the benefit of the family and sometimes for generating income are sold to the neighbors, local customers mostly at local bazaars. So already they have skills that are unused or underused economically and rationally.
Their current conditions can be improved with an extensive program that will guide them through adult education for the best evaluation of their handicrafts. In relation to this, in recent years, mobile learning has been coming to the agenda in the field of adult education. Mobile devices, have a great potential for widening access to adult learning and can support adults for formal and non-formal education opportunities.
Although mobile learning programs generally well suited for managing course descriptions, lesson plans, exams, messages, etc. designed for the developing the skills; but not for support the needs of low- educated people. This usually comes from the belief that mobile learning is not suitable for people with these conditions. But todays developments require changing this perspective. Nowadays, mobile phones are no longer the symbol of exclusive status, they are becoming a necessity for adults at all income levels. Also, smart phones aren’t special anymore, today we are witnessing a shift to basic phones in the smart phone market. For example, in Turkey, According to TURKSTAT 96.9% of households have mobile phone (incl. smart phones) in 2016. Also, as stated in Evaluation Report 2016 of the IAT, 9 out of every 10 mobile phones sold in Turkey are made up of smart phones. Therefore, today, basic approach should be development of appropriate educational arrangements to evaluate and propagate use of mobile phones in education.
Based on these facts, our target group are low- educated disadvantaged women who produce handicraft from their home. The aim is to help them to acquire digital and entrepreneurial skills for sell their handicrafts in digital markets by using smart phones efficiently. In accordance with aim, we derived simple software platform that is concentrated on smart phone application for the iOS and Android mobile Multi Language Platform to deliver the content to the users, but at the same time is available on web access( Web Interface )This mobile application is fully functional and tested thus downloadable from the open platforms.
Also, Dreamy m- Learning platform is developed by experienced team and included an innovative and easy use comprehensive program which is based on “learning while practicing” principle for the low educated women. Each module contained a straightforward, self-paced introduction to the topics. They can access information about any topic by pressing the keys on that topic’s name. They will “just follow the instructions”. While following step by step commands they will have a clear understanding of each basic step for their needed information. For example, “to create” and “send ” an email, a simple instruction is given (like Step 1, Step 2 etc.). The main pages and the marks are also in the program that woman will perform the required commands. During this learning, women will feel more confident and enthusiastic about what to do and they will learn by doing. According to Malcolm Knowles (1984), one of the pioneers of adult theories; adults learn by doing, effective instruction focuses on tasks that adults can perform, rather than on memorization of content.
This project’s training module is developed by sharing the experience of EU in the adult education field and contributed to the unused human capital of EU by developing digital skills. The same standpoint is reflected in the Council Resolution on Renewed European Agenda for Adult Learning where the exploitation of the potential of ICT in adult education is one of five priorities.
