With the intention to endorse its motto of ‘Education anywhere and anytime’, the Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) has decided to impart students capsule courses on dance, music, art, public health and other subjects via mobile phones.

Mr. V.S. Rajasekharan Pillai, vice chancellor IGNOU, stated, “Looking at the mobile phone penetration in our country, we thought of using the medium to impart education. Its called M-education.”

“Education and technology cannot be seen separately. Taking education, especially vocational education, to rural India will soon become easier through mobile handsets,” Mr. Pillai said.

IGNOU has joined hands with the Communication and Manufacturing Association of India (CMAI) in order to deliver educational content to far-flung regions of the country.

IGNOU and CMAI will jointly devise strategies, which will help take open and distance learning to a new level.

The vice chancellor said, “The courses will be offered through text, video and graphics mode. We will start by imparting education on music, dance, art and crafts. We are sure people will latch on to it.”

He also said that the Central government has to provide the wireless and broadband connection to all colleges across India.

“And here our programmes will become more popular and easy to access.”

“The 3G mobile is becoming popular in India and we will soon have mobile TV. These courses and this mode of education then will become a huge hit.

“What we are going to start is a revolution in the Indian educational scenario,” he added.

Mr. Pillai said IGNOU would offer up public health course capsules on nutrition, public health, AIDS awareness, and many other educational contents.

While talking to mediapersons, CMAI chief N K Goyal told, “The mobile phone is a great leveller in society as far as dissemination of education is concerned. This will prove a new paradigm in imparting knowledge to far-flung areas in the country and assist in bridging the divide using wireless and mobile technology.”

Mr. Bharat Bhatia, Digital Director of Asia of Motorola Mobile, said, “We in Motorola believe in taking meaningful technology to the grassroots at an affordable price. In this endeavour with IGNOU we shall try to make our phones more interactive so that it helps our customers get more benefits.”

Moreover, the students need not to pay anything extra for the new service.

If the project goes through, India would become one of the first countries after South Korea to use the mobile phones for education.

IGNOU will convene a round-table meeting on November 4 to make strategies on the use of mobile phones in education delivery.