Towards better UIs for mobile learning: experiences in using mobile phones as multimedia tools at schools in rural Panama

Mobile phones have become pervasive in the developing world and are much more affordable and accessible than computers. For many children and teenagers, phones have become a familiar tool for communication as well as for multimedia creation and consumption. We run a two-week field study with 78 students and 6 teachers, where the use of mobile phones was integrated to the regular school days in the rural Panama. Based on our findings, we present recommendations how the applications and the general phone user interface design could be improved to better support teaching and learning tasks. The results show that there is potential for a tighter integration of applications to improve the learning experience.