Math Power! Low-Tech Innovations for Reaching Learners Wherever They Are

• In Event: Emerging technologies in mathematics education

Proposal

Numeracy skills acquisition is a fundamental part of foundational learning and a key priority to ensure that children and youth gain skills that lead to future learning opportunities and professional success. This session will offer participants an engaging and practical exposure to four different tech-enabled and inclusive approaches to developing numeracy skills. The session will highlight leveraging the power of connection to ignite ideas, strengthen partnerships, and cultivate innovation and synergies at all education levels; examining and applying evidence to steer decision-making, inform program design and implementation, and impact education systems strengthening; and strategizing actions for inclusive and equitable practices, rooted in key global education priorities areas, and applicable to diverse contexts across the learning continuum.
The featured presenters – Educational Initiatives, Ubongo, Benetech, and the mEducation Alliance will highlight their evidence-backed and innovative approaches to delivering high-quality and low-tech enabled math content to learners in formal and non-formal educational settings.

Session Presenters:

Ritesh Agarwal, Vice President, Ei Shiksha, Educational Initiatives - Educational Initiatives (Ei) is a pioneer in assessment research and education technology, aiming to foster a paradigm shift from 'rote learning' to 'learning with understanding.' Ei Mindspark, a Personalised Adaptive Learning (PAL) tool, supports Teaching at the Right Level (TaRL) and uses data on student misconceptions in math to create individualised and adaptive learning paths that help each child learn at a level and pace best suited to them. Currently used by over 500,000 students worldwide, Mindspark helps children learn math both at school and at home. The program aims to facilitate each child’s entry into STEM fields and improve their life outcomes. A RCT of Mindspark conducted by J-PAL found that students using Mindspark showed 2.5 times more improvement in math scores compared to their peers. During the session, Ritesh will share insights on what has worked with the product and lessons learned from on-ground implementation. This will be followed by presenting actionable strategies to create a replicable model globally.

Annette Ngongi,User Research Manager, Ubongo – Ubongo’s video cartoons have reached 32 million households in 41 countries. Many of these are math-focused and leverage the power of entertainment, the reach of mass media, and the connectivity of mobile devices, to deliver effective, localized learning to African families at low cost and massive scale. During her presentation, Annette will also elaborate on key findings from several independent research studies which shows that Ubongo programs, such as Akili and Me, have improved young children’s school readiness, numeracy, literacy and language skills (Borzekowski 2016 & 2018) and boost older learners’ math, science, reading and life skills (Coffey International 2019, Watson 2020 pending publication). Ubongo was a USAID DIV grantee for their work in Tanzania for Educartoons and using SMS for engaged STEM learning.

Anthony Bloome, Executive Director, mEducation Alliance – The mEducation Alliance is the largest convening platform of development and donor agencies focused on edtech in low-resource context. One of their Math Power! initiatives, Math Power Explorer (MPE), has benefited from three years of Cisco-funding support and is exploring the utilization of low-end feature phones and interactive voice response (IVR) technologies to reach parents and primary-aged learners in households in Rwanda with math game activities. MPE 2.0, launched in 2024, has been co-developed with Save the Children, Viamo, Wilfrid Laurier University, and Peripheral Vision International and with input from Rwanda’s Education Board (REB) combined IVR with branching story narrative games based on specific math skills drawn from the Global Proficiency Framework in Mathematics. Tony will elaborate on key findings from MPE deployment in 2022 and 2024 and what they hope to accomplish with additional partners in 2025 and beyond for expanding IVR use for math, but also its utilization in a variety of education content areas.

Ayan Kishore, CEO, Benetech - Benetech’s Bookshare platform is the world’s largest library of ebooks and learning supports for people that read differently. The collection has over 1.2 million titles in over 70 languages and has been used by over 1.5 million learners, particularly those who cannot read traditional books due to disabilities like blindness, low vision, and dyslexia. Images of math equations, graphs and diagrams are the norm for textbooks and most of them have no alt-text descriptions in ebooks. Bookshare rectifies this by using AI (Artificial Intelligence) to detect images containing math and adding a description of the equation to the image initially and ultimately replacing the image with MathML. This allows for an audio based and simple interactive experience to learn math, using basic Android phones, low-cost mp3 players, and other devices. In a randomized controlled trial in 2023, use of Bookshare in class during reading time in middle schools for 5 weeks increased comprehension by half a grade level. Benetech was a previous awardee of the USAID-supported All Children Reading Grand Challenge and recognized by the Clinton Global Initiative as a Commitment to Action Maker for its work in India. In his presentation, Ayan will elaborate on Benetech's work to date for supporting math instruction, and future plans and aspirations for supporting learners with disabilities in this and other content areas.

Authors

• Ritesh Agarwal, Educational Initiatives

• Anett Charles Ngongi, Ubongo Learning

• Anthony Bloome, Mobiles for Education Alliance

• Roel de Haas, de Haas Associates