MONTREAL - The centuries-old game of Snakes and Ladders and the modern technology tool, the cellphone, will team up to teach literacy in rural India.
More than half of women in India are illiterate, said Claire Cunningham, who's part of a mobile literacy project that begins this month in northern India.
The game, which is very popular in India, has been adapted to the mobile phone, usually the first contact these women will have with technology, she said.
"Being illiterate denies you all sorts of, not rights exactly, but opportunities to be empowered," Cunningham said.
It means being able to know if you're getting paid and how much and to know if you're taking the right medicines, she said of the advantages for women who become literate.
Cunningham is part of a group of students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston who have developed a variety of applications for cellphones in the developing world.
Some of the other projects involving mobile phones include getting health-care information, details of crop prices and growing practices, updates on water and power shutdowns, and banking services.
Cunningham and classmate Alex Shih developed the Celedu project, which stands for cellular and education, and uses the Snakes and Ladders game in the Hindi language.
Snakes and Ladders is believed to have originated in India as a morality game to teach children about doing good deeds and the consequences of bad ones. The snakes represent vices and poor choices while getting up the ladders represents virtue and sound decisions.
The game made its way to England near the end of the 19th century.
"The educational content comes in each turn that a player takes," said Cunningham, a 29-year-old MBA graduate who will be travelling to northern India to get the project running with her classmate.
A player has to answer a question, for example, that shows a Hindi character and several objects. The player would have to choose which object starts with the character.
"It's similar to how we learn English in how we say `A' is for apple," she said.
Prof. Sudershan Batra said Snakes and Ladders is extremely popular in India and is taken seriously because it's considered to be about "the real game of life."
Batra said it's a rather "sophisticated method" to teach reading in rural India instead of the traditional method of one person teaching another. He also noted that cellphone use in rural India is less widespread than in cities.
But as long as the game is in the local language, he says it could work.
"It's worth a shot," said Batra, director of a management institute in India's Delhi region.
"Whatever applies to India will also eventually apply to Africa and poor developing countries."
Batra said he believes in the value of the mobile phone.
"It's almost a tool of God," said Batra, who teaches ethics and spirituality in management. "It empowers women. It empowers weak people. It empowers children."
Non-governmental organizations are using phones in the developing world.
Care Canada has used cellphones in southern Africa to help small businesses owners selling fruits and vegetables get their produce to market with a fair price and help increase their standard of living.
They would get text messages to tell them how much their products were worth on a particular day or week, said spokeswoman Andrea Lanthier-Seymour.
"Information is power for sure and it really did empower them," she said.
UNICEF Canada has used cellphones to send text messages to parents in Zambia about free polio vaccinations for their children under the age of five.
"It's hugely important in a lot of developing countries," spokesman Christopher Tidey said of the cellphone.
"Really, that's our only means of communicating with different villages that are remote from city centres."
Cunningham said she believes the cellphone's mobility will work in northern India.
"The cellphone is a good medium for this sort of game. It's an exciting technology to people who haven't had access to much technology before."
The project is partnered with a non-profit organization in India called ReadingWise and is modelled on a computer-based literacy program.
Mobile phone supplier Nokia has donated 100 phones to the program, Cunningham said.
