Worldreader is a global non-profit organization, which is founded by McElwee and David Risher, headquartered in San Francisco, California. This organization is offering digital books to people in the developing counties on a mission to bring digital books to children and families in low-income countries. The organization provides readers e-readers, mobile phones and other digital technology. Till now, the organization reached in 69 countries, providing them over 28,500 book titles in 43 different languages ranging from Afrikaans to Swahili. It works with 180 publishers to acquire and digitize compelling and relevant content for readers. The organization also works with donors, organizations, communities and governments to develop and digitize …show more content…
local and international books as manage logistics and support. It has digitized more than 5000 titles from African and Indian publishers. The venture and its motivations for engaging in the innovation: David Risher, CEO of Worldreader grew up loving books so much, and he studies comparative literature at Princeton University.
He worked at Microsoft and Amazon over a decade. Rishe has two daughters and always reads to his daughters. In one family trip, he found that not all children around the world could access books and he felt that it would be wonderful if every child in the world could access to the books like his daughters, which could help them know more about the world, gain knowledge and skills, and realize their dreams. Based on his experience at work and private sector, he thought instead of distributing traditional books, distributing e-books to the people who need the most would be 100 better or more than that. So he came up with the idea that combining new technologies to provide immediate access to hundreds of local textbooks, storybooks and international literature.
Situation:
Today, illiteracy threatens over 785 million adults over the world and more than 250 million children of primary school age. Education remains an inaccessible right for them around the world and they don`t have the awareness of necessary to reach books, gain knowledge, improve their lives and realize their dreams. This would greatly impede the social and economic development of those countries where they live.
What does it do & how does it
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do: Worldreader` goal is creating literate world. They are providing convenient, immediate access to a wide range of culturally specific teaching and learning materials through e-reader technology. At the same time, they also teach them how to access and utilize the devices. As of May 2015, this non-profit organization claimed that they have shipped and delivered 1,383,682 digital books on 9,363 Kindle e-readers to children, families and communities in 12 counties, and also they distributed to 133 schools and libraries across Africa. As I mentioned before, their mission is to bring digital books to every child and family, so that they can improve their lives. In order to realize their mission, they are doing the following things: 1. Technology Worldreader builds on digital platforms and mobile connectivity in developing counties to allow children and families access and reach their books easily. And also they provide e-readers to school, which needs books through both sponsorships and sales. As the cell phones are increasingly ubiquity in developing countries, this organization also created a Worldreader Mobile, which allows everyone to access the Worldreader digital library from any connected mobile devices. It makes everyone in the world to access readings fast and easily at anytime they want. 2. Curation Worldreader curates books by African and Indian authors. They translate and digitize their titles and expand their audience. They have reached in 69 countries, proving them with 28,514 book titles in 43 languages. 3. Fieldwork They think monitoring and evaluation is one of the most important parts in their work, so they conduct monitoring and evaluation for impact assessment. They support technical and pedagogical training for local project managers and teachers and e-reader training for local business. And also they develop reading focused out-of-classroom activities and teacher workshops through fieldwork. Advantages: 1. Easy to distribute Compared with traditional books, e-readers make it easier to distribute works from African authors that can be hard to get in print. In general, the cost for printing materials is very expensive in those developing countries. With e-books, they can also save the cost on printing and distributing. 2. Access library quickly and easily Before Worldreader entered Africa, many children and families have never owned books and they were unable to get their hands on reading material. As kindle could hold more than a thousand books, and new books can be downloaded fast and quite easily, Kindle could be taken as an endless library. Now with Kindles, people are able to carry library in their hands, and read books they like. 3. Learning out-of-classroom Most of the people in developing counties, they think reading and learning is only confined to the walls of a classroom or library. Because they haven`t owned books, they face illiteracy people, and they have no awareness of learning and reading. Now with Kindle, they can read not only the books that are required in the classroom, but also have access to other books. And they can read anywhere at any time. Challenges and solutions: 1. Technology Problem Worldreader used Kindle 3 for their program, which was designed for a connected world. There are two simple clicks to delete a book. It is just removed from the device instead of deleted. So the readers could download again from the Archive under Wi-Fi or 3G connections. In terms of the cost of device, it is too difficult to distribute one Kindle per person. Especially in share programs and community programs, several people should share one device together. The problem is that after one remove the books accidently, it will delay the other period under slower GPRS in most of the developing countries. And also most the devices in the market are designed for individuals. They arrive in a virgin, bookless state, and the purchasing, downloading and licensing of books is handled on a per-user basis. In the developing counties, as group of people share one device; they need group marketing and administrative tools for large numbers of e-readers. Amazon offers help in the whole process. And also lots of manufactures recognize the necessary of group licensing and administrative tools for the market. So Worldreader will keep on cooperating with these partners to release this situation they are facing. 2.
Structural & resource problem
Some problems Worldreader facing are not what they can solve. Decaying classroom conditions such as inadequate space, poor lighting, peeling paint and inoperative heating and cooling system are affecting the learning. Apart from that, educators and other resources are limited and stretched to the max.
3. Cost problem
E-readers have some advantages over other electric devices in terms of cost. But Kindles are still relatively expensive. So it is impossible to provide one child one device. Some of the devices are locked overnight for safekeeping. In this way, the devices are not used at its most. And as most of the people there are not quite familiar with high-tech products, due to incorrect usage, the percentage of breakage is quite high. The cost for replacement is also pretty challenging for this organization.
Conclusion:
After none-profit Worldreder gives Kindles to children and families, many of findings are promising: The students with access to Kindles showed significant improvement in reading time spending, comprehension other reading skills. Students and teachers had access to reading materials, which accelerated the learning process. It has potential to improve reading skills and reading performance, and more importantly it can increase enthusiasm for reading as a
habit. Worldreader continues to work towards a world in which every child and family could read books. Through the efforts of Worlreader and other organizations, illiteracy will be a thing of the past.
As the world advances through the modern age of information and connectivity, having a literate society is crucial to being able to work effectively with the outside world. Jonathan Kozol’s book, The Human Cost of an Illiterate Society, portrays the life of illiterates in the modern world and argues that society has an ethical obligation to fix the problem of illiteracy. Kozol believes that illiteracy has the greatest effect on the education of current and future generations, the way food is consumed and wasted, and various economic costs to both illiterates and those around them. Kozol’s main point throughout his book is that society as a whole needs to face the problem of illiteracy, as not one single group or person can do it on their own.
Illiteracy is defined as, the inability to read or write. After reading Jonathan Kozol’s “The Human Cost of an Illiterate Society,” I have never felt so sympathetic towards any group of individuals. The essay has several examples of the challenging problems illiterate individuals experience, and the effects illiteracy has on society. Illiterate individuals experience shame and humility, while being used for others’ personal gain. Furthermore, many illiterates have trouble communicating and making a living. I have to agree with Kozol’s main point; Illiteracy is an issue that should be treated as a main threat by democracy in today’s society.
To be literate is to have “the ability to read, write and speak English proficiently, to compute and solve problems, and to use technology in order to become a life-long learner and to be effective in the family, in the workplace and in the community” (Roman 81). Literacy is a foundation to almost everything in daily life, from the most basic information on food labels to the most important notice on bank accounts. Reading and writing is crucial to know and useful to have. It is surprising how illiteracy can be so common even though we are living far away from the period which the alphabetical order was first invented. There are many factors that cause illiteracy to keep in mind, for example; poverty, population growth, government corruption, and even gender-based has a part just to name a few. To place the blame solely on one party is not appropriate because each of these factors plays a role in illiteracy in society today.
Learning disabilities are very common among students in today’s society. Some students have specific needs that must be met in order for them to learn, while other students are not getting the help that they need to succeed in the classroom. Reading disabilities, related to the disability of dyslexia (National Center for Learning Disabilities, 2014), can be met with certain assistive technology that can make learning to read easier for the students. A type of assistive technology that helps reading disabilities is an audio book that allows students to hear the book read to them with the option of following along (Raskind & Stanberry, 2010). Audio books allow the students to focus on the purpose of the book; rather than struggling to read the book and focus on what the book is trying to explain. Since this type of assistive technology reads out loud to the students, it can guide them to learn how to read certain words correctly and how to grasp the concepts of the book easier. A specific type of an audio book source is Audible (Raskind & Stanberry, 2010), which allows the user to download and auto book on to a “smartphone, tablet, or desktop” (Audible Inc., 2014, p. 1). This source benefits students because they can listen to book in a classroom setting or they can listen to the book at home, especially when writing a book report.
McClanahan , B., Williams, K., & Tate , S. (2012). A breakthrough for josh: How use of an ipad facilitated reading improvement. TechTrends, 56(3), 20-28. doi: 10.1007/s11528-012-0572-6
test whatever it's a bad effect or not. So when it used on humans, we
I chose this topic because education is all around me. I am literally surrounded by illiteracy. From the moment I leave my door, to the moment I return, I am able to witness illiteracy in my society. Therefore, I could connect well to this particular topic in detail. So many children younger than me, of my age and also people elder to me do not have access to education. Even though 86.1% of the world is illiterate (CIA World Factbook), the other 14.9% have absolutely no access to education!
Illiteracy is detrimental to any society. First people must know what it is before the problem can be fixed. Illiteracy can be defined as the inability to read or write. Lately illiteracy has been moved up to the ability to comprehend what one reads or writes. There are 40 to 44 million adults alone in the United States that do not have the ability to comprehend words that they are reading. This is an enormous problem that can lead to even more devastating effects.
(“Why Books?” page 1) Last year, Books for Africa sent 10 sea containers to Africa. (“Got books” page 1) Each container can hold up to 22,000 books and each costs $9,800. (“Books from America” page 1) Books are like video games in Africa, kids love them. So, that is why this organization sends books. They don’t only send books to kids in Africa they send E books, which are electronic devices that allow you to download books to them and you read them off of there. (“E-books for Africa” page 1”) Which is great since they don't have many books and the books they have are usually...
Finally, parents are encouraged to read with their children at home which not only promotes literacy development with the children getting the adequate encouragement and support they need to read and learn from their parents, but also help in the children’s social and emotional development and achieve “more resilience to stress, greater life satisfaction, greater self-direction and self-control, greater social adjustment, greater mental health, more supportive relationships, greater social competence, more positive peer relations, more tolerance, more successful marriages, and fewer delinquent behaviors” (Desforges and Abouchaar, 2003).
However, iIn spite of the current pre-eminence of e-books, it may be argued that they are not likely to replace print books anytime soon or possibly at all. Both formats have their advantages and drawbacks, which makes for one of them difficult to replace the other. Moreover, they serve differents needs and purposes. E-books are famous for their portability. Hundreds of e-books can be stored on a single device. Thus e-books don’t take shelving space and are convenient to take on travel, while even a few paper books are bulky and quite heavy to carry around. Numerous e-books are in open access, while paper books are not routinely available free of charge. E-books may be acquired and accessed immediately online, a feature I enjoy especially and treasure most: many a time I was able to buy and read an e-book at home within minutes of learning of its existence. Needless to say, e-books are considerably easier to cite and quote than print books, since the copy-paste feature spares us the trouble of retyping the quoted text. Another important advantage of digital books is their specialized software, which makes reading much easier: search and reference tools, changeable font size and day/night mode, dictionaries. Last but not least, e-books conserv...
As more people began to access the Internet through smart phones and tablets rather than laptops and computers, it is not a surprise that they would also want to transform the American education system by bringing tablets into classrooms. In fact, a few schools around the country have already replaced textbooks with tablets and have seen improvements in students’ standardized test scores. Using tablets instead of textbooks is not only convenient and helpful, but it can also reduce the amount of paper wastes in school. However, it is not a good idea to completely transform textbooks with tablets with the current technology, for it can not only be damaging to the environment and costly to set up, but also might not be effective in improving K-12 education in the long run.
Getting educated is one of the most important things in life when it comes to getting a good future. By developing good knowledge of schooling, it helps establish and maintain new information as needed throughout the real world. As books are one the essential tools in learning, eBooks are being used in a everyday lifestyle. Traveling to get away places from city life, helps give reading a comforting feel. Students that use print books are eventually going to use ebooks in the future. By educating students with ebooks, it is more efficient than carrying textbooks; ebooks is more convenient and reliable to read, write and store notes. Print books are being replaced by eBooks, it helps on keeping files together and it makes notes
This can be done by constructing buildings, for instance, schools which are going to decrease the percentage of illiteracy and this is the best solution. There is only one limitation for the solution which is the financial source, as if it was not huge amount there can be projects which will end, but it can be overcome by the satisfactory and trustworthy reputation and this can make people to trust the organization and donate more money. There are numerous pros for this solution that otherwise its cons. Education is one of the very powerful weapons that if used wisely is going to have a great influence not only for the educated person but even for the society. Firstly, education gives happiness as the child will be expecting a fruitful future because they are going to be self-dependent due to fixed salary which will raise the standard of living. According to an article called “Why is education important in life” they mentioned that because it gives the skills and tools for any person so they can explore the world, as without education it is difficult to communicate, read or even write. Furthermore, it will make the child more aware of the diseases which they may encounter due to bad nutrition or if they touch the blood of others or undergo sex with multiples, according to an article called “We
According to the most recent statistics in the World Education Report, a study released last year by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, almost one-quarter of the world’s population, or 905 million individuals between 15 years of age and adulthood cannot read. Women account for 65 percent of the globe’s illiterate population. That’s more than half! Many women become and are dependent because of this problem. Illiteracy rates among females in some South Asian and African countries reach 80 percent because of culture. In Nepal, 93 percent of women over 30 live without being able to read. The majority of women that have this problem are due to: