OUR EVENTS

The Center for Technology and Social Behavior hosts a monthly speaker series that brings internationally renowned speakers to Northwestern University to meet with our researchers and present on a topic relevant to technology and social behavior. This year's lineup includes a brilliant collection of guests from around the world. You can also visit our CTSB Speaker Series Google Calendar for a complete listing of times and locations.

CTSB Lecture Series

Oct 27, 2009, 12pm
Barbara Rogoff, UC Santa Cruz
Cultural Aspects of Learning: Observation, Collaboration, and Multimodal Conversation
Frances Searle 1-483

Oct 29, 2009, 4pm
Dan Jurafsky, Stanford University
It's Not You, it's Me: Automatically Extracting Social Meaning from Speed Dates
Frances Searle 1-421

Nov 12, 2009, 4pm
Shinobu Kitayama, University of Michigan
The Social Self and the Social Brain: A Perspective of Cultural Neuroscience
Frances Searle 1-421

Dec 10, 2009, 4pm
Cynthia Breazeal, MIT Media Lab
Robots as Social Learners
Ford 1.350 (ITW)

Jan 21, 2010, 4pm
Pamela Hinds, Stanford University
Situated Knowing Who: Why Site Visits Matter in Global Work

Feb 18, 2010, 4pm
Fernanda Viégas, IBM Research
Visualizing the Inner Lives of Texts

Mar 11, 2010, 4pm
Elizabeth Churchill, Yahoo! Research
TBD

Apr 29, 2010, 4pm
Matthew Kam, Carnegie Mellon University
MILLEE: Mobile and Immersive Learning for Literacy in Emerging Economies

May 13, 2010, 4pm
Jenna Burrell, UC Berkeley
Evaluating Shared Access: Social Equality and the Circulation of Mobile Phones in Rural Uganda

Matthew Kam
Carnegie Mellon University

MILLEE: Mobile and Immersive Learning for Literacy in Emerging Economies

Abstract:
Literacy levels in most poor countries remain shockingly low and formal education is making little progress. MILLEE improves literacy through language learning games on cellphones – the “Personal Computers of the developing world” – which are a perfect vehicle for new kinds of out-of-school language learning. The project focuses on developing scalable, localizable design principles and tools for language learning. The challenges are (i) to integrate sound learning principles, (ii) to provide concrete design patterns that integrate entertainment and learning, and (iii) to understand cultural and learning differences in children in developing regions.

I will describe a framework called PACE which addresses these challenges and nine rounds of fieldwork that contributed to its development. I will discuss the complex adoption ecology in developing regions, and how MILLEE preserves learning principles while supporting rich localization and customization at multiple stages in the adoption hierarchy. I will discuss our work which patterns learning games after local children’s traditional village games and the benefits this approach offers. Finally, I will describe the implications for design that arose from our after-school program deployment and out-of-school ethnographic studies.

The MILLEE project is in its 6th year. It has received major sponsorship from the MacArthur Foundation, Microsoft, National Science Foundation, Nokia, Qualcomm and Verizon. MILLEE has been featured in the press in India (where previous pilots were based), a Canadian public television documentary, and ABC News. With a generous donation of 450 cellphones from Nokia, we are commencing a controlled experiment with 800 rural children in 40 villages in India. The upcoming study will target an academic year of English curriculum, and will benchmark MILLEE learning outcomes against a major credentialing exam in India. Early replications are underway in rural Kenya and elsewhere.