m4Lit Project

The Shuttleworth Foundation's m4Lit (mobiles for literacy) pilot project ran in 2009, exploring whether South African teens are interested in reading stories on their mobile phones. The project concluded that there is real potential for engaging teens in reading via their mobile phones. Key points include:

• 63 000 subscribers signed up to read the story, including 28 000 teens aged 11-18 years old.
• Estimated that 7 200 teens read the whole story – a substantial figure.
• Overall, the project showed potential for m-novels and cellphones to support teen reading and writing in South Africa.
• But there is still much that is not known about mobile literacies, cellphone usage amongst youth, and its impact on overall literacy.
• The Shuttleworth Foundation will continue with the m4Lit project to explore the potential of mobiles for literacy.

Is there a possibility that cellphones might be part of the solution to South Africa’s literacy problem?

Are South African teens interested in reading stories on their cellphones?

And will they interact with the story and comment on it?

To answer these questions, Kontax – an interactive m-novel (lingo for mobile/cellphone novel) about the entertaining adventures of a teenage graffiti crew – launched in South Africa at the end of September 2009. At the helm was Steve Vosloo, 21st Century Learning Fellow for the Shuttleworth Foundation and leader of the ‘mobiles for literacy’ (m4Lit) project. A research component of the project sought to explore the potential for reading and writing for 21st century South African teens through their cellphones and their response to a more interactive style of story writing and publishing geared to tap into the participatory culture of young people. In South Africa teens don’t read and write enough, due in part to the fact that 51% of South African households don’t have a single leisure book, and only 7% of public schools in South Africa have functional libraries of any kind. In this context the hope behind the m4Lit project was that research around South African teen response to Kontax would provide insight into the potential for cellphones, the most popular communication device used by teens today, to make an impact on their literacy practices.

Kontax, with both an English version (written by Sam Wilson) and an isiXhosa version (translated by Nkululeko Mabandla) comprised of 21 chapters of approximately 400 words each, and was accessible on a mobisite and on the popular cellphone instant messaging platform, MXit. A mobisite, in this case www.kontax.mobi, is really just a website that has been formatted to be viewed from a GPRS-enabled phone, but is also accessible from any web browser. Teens could read Kontax on their cellphones, and airtime prizes were offered for their best comments and their ideas for a sequel story.

The response

In two months, 63 000 people had signed up to read Kontax on their cellphones, 28 000 of them teens aged 11-18 years old. Hundreds of comments were posted and over 2 000 entries were submitted in response to the sequel ideas competition. Not all subscribers read the whole story, however, with an estimated 7 200 teens completing it.

Comments posted by teen readers give some insight into the individual response that the experience evoked:

• ‘It’s great…for me it’s really hard to pick up a book to start readin but I don’t mind readin on my phone. (dotty1)
• ‘Awsum... Im realy nt much of a reader bt reading of my phone jst seems a lot easier…and co0ler! (Gucci)
• Am not a person who reads books, so I only dd this to check hw a book on da web will b like. So its not bad, and am lookin 4ward 2 chapter 2.’ (Slize)

The m-novel also received industry recognition when it won a bronze (the only medal awarded in the Mobile Publishing category in 2009) at the Bookmarks Awards, South Africa's premier annual digital awards.

Steve Vosloo comments on teen response to Kontax

“It was a revelation that – in this instance anyway – teens will read longer-form stories like Kontax on their cellphones. Furthermore, they’ll engage with the story, the characters and share their ideas for what should happen next. In Japan teens have been reading and writing on their cellphones in this way for a number of years, but the uptake of Kontax illustrates that teen response to m-novels is not only a developed world phenomenon – it’s happening here in Africa too. I firmly believe that there is enormous potential here, and if we tap into it we’ll find that for the foreseeable future the cellphone – not the Kindle – is the ereader of Africa.”

Research of the pilot project

The team at the Shuttleworth Foundation worked with two researchers from the University of Cape Town on the m4Lit project: Associate Professor Ana Deumert specialises in multilingualism and indigenous literacies, while Dr. Marion Walton specialises in media, digital literacies and mobile literacies. The research aspect of the m4Lit project ran from August 2009 to November 2009 and consisted of teen surveys that took place in Gugulethu and Langa, two socio-economically underprivileged areas of Cape Town with a predominantly isiXhosa-speaking population. Data from the usage of the mobisite and MXit story were also included in the project research.

Detailed research findings around the m4Lit project by each researcher respectively, as well as by Shuttleworth Fellow Steve Vosloo are online at http://m4lit.wordpress.com. The highlights are described below.

Digital literacies of teens

According to Walton, Kontax’s success shows that teens have mastered a whole range of cellphone literacies and the research shows how wide-ranging these new skills are. Still, teens need better support if they are to make the most of the opportunities of ‘Web 2.0’, and benefit from the new phase of social media where people do not only browse the web, but contribute to creating knowledge and sharing their creative ideas with the world.

• While teens in the US and Europe learn to use the internet at home or at school, South African teens are primarily learning to use the internet on their phones, from their peers, as part of the adolescent broadening of horizons beyond the immediate family. MXit use is central to this process.
• Teens value the ability to communicate well, and are motivated to learn the rules of interactive online communication since their status in the eyes of their peers is at stake.
• Outside of school, South African teens are more likely to write on phones than on paper or computers, and even at school their computer access is still very limited.
• Many teens use the web on their phones every day, with Google and Facebook especially popular.
• Since Internet use focuses on MXit, some teens have difficulties using websites, and the majority of teens preferred to access Kontax via MXit.
• Schools could be making better use of teens’ Internet access on their phones to encourage educational uses of the web.
• While Kontax shows that cellphones can be used to support literacy development, subscriber data – which indicates most readers coming from Gauteng – suggests that many rural teens may currently be excluded from such initiatives.

Multilingualism and indigenous literacies

The majority of South African teenagers are multilingual and use more than one language in their daily lives. This was also reflected in the Kontax research: participating teenagers reported that only around 5% of their personal interactions took place just in English . Their home language (in this case isiXhosa) was an important part of their lives and identities, not only with regard to spoken language but also when SMSing or chatting on MXit.

However, the teenagers’ multilingual skills are rarely catered for in the South African school environment (which is dominated by English). Because of limited exposure to the written form of their own language, teenagers often struggle to read and write isiXhosa. Kontax broke new ground by giving bilingual teenagers a choice of languages for the first time, and a substantial number of teenagers – despite having grown up in an almost exclusively English literacy environment – proudly selected to read Kontax in isiXhosa.

The isiXhosa version of Kontax showed young readers that the world of reading – novels rather than informal MXit chats or SMSes – can accommodate more than one language, and that they can find enjoyment in reading in their home language on cellphones. As one participant remarked when seeing Kontax in isiXhosa: “I was amazed that there was also isiXhosa! I didn't know that a story on a cellphone could be written in isiXhosa. I was surprised and interested”. Mobile technology – which tends to carry lower cost implications than print for the reader – can provide important opportunities for the development of sustainable indigenous literacy practices.

Steve Vosloo's response to research findings

While Vosloo was pleased with the uptake of the of the story, there is certainly room for improvement given that millions of teens have access to cellphones. Furthermore: “We have only scratched the surface of mobile publishing. We still need to explore many issues in this space, such as the affordability of publishing in this way versus print publishing, issues of access to cellphones and who is excluded from being able to read the stories, as well as supporting business models and sustainability.”

What’s next?

Based on the promising results of the pilot, the m4Lit project will continue in 2010 and:

• Release additional Kontax sequels over the course of the year. Kontax 2: The Big Win launched on 17 March 2010 on www.kontax.mobi and on MXit (in Tradepost > MXit Mix > Education). The next Kontax story was launched in English only, with an invitation to the public to translate the story into other languages to be published on cellphones.
• Further explore the use of cellphones to support teen reading and writing.
• Release the mobisite content management system created to platform the Kontax series as open-source software.

Press images

For a range of press images and related captions please go to www.flickr.com/photos/41661758@N08

Crediting of images

All story images and Kontax story content are released under a Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike 2.5 South Africa licence http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/za/
Credit should read: “Shuttleworth Foundation, Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike 2.5 South Africa”

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Contact person

Steve Vosloo | m4Lit Project Leader
Shuttleworth Foundation
Call | 083 208 9891
Email |
Blog | http://m4lit.wordpress.com (for project updates)

Press release

Renee Conradie | Emerging Media
Call | 011 792 4706
Email |