eBooks on mobile devices boost education in Ghana

It was just last week that I asked if it wasn’t time for authors and writers to ditch paperback for mobile as a means of seeing their works read more in today’s world. This morning, I stumbled upon an interesting but of news about how this is already happening in Ghana next door, with interesting results.

Here is an excerpt from a news report by The Guardian:

“The e-readers are really motivating the students to read,” says Kofi Sem Michael, 27, who was inspired to teach by his own experience at school. “It has made the classroom exciting. Everyone has their own book, we can give them reading assignments and they are able to do them.” Early results from the project at Suhum show concrete results. At this and other schools in Ghana, Worldreader has found faster reading speeds of an average of five words a minute in the students that have the e-readers than in control schools, as well as 30% faster rates of listening comprehension.

And another:

“The Kindles have changed the way we teach,” said Patrick Kyere-Koranteng, 30, an English teacher at the school. “And in class, if the children don’t know a word, now they take the initiative to look it up on the dictionary in the Kindle. The attitude to learning they are developing is going to make a difference through their whole education.”

You can read up some more on this interesting development: Kindles makes up for lack of books in Ghana’s reading revolution