GLOBAL – Remote schools in Latin America will be the ones to benefit from a new strategic partnership between Nokia and Telefonica, announced today. The partnership will see Nokia Education Delivery Software used to bring educational content to remote schools in Latin America, kicking off with Chile. Digital inclusion and social development are the key drivers behind the partnership, which aims to bridge the digital gap for rural and isolated areas.
Telefonica Foundation is already involved in this area with its “Proniño” and “Educared” social programs. Both of these are seen as the most important private initiatives, utilising information and communications technologies to improve the quality of education in the region. These complement Nokia’s ongoing work to get the most out of mobile technology for the benefit of social development.
The announcement was made during the annual Telefonica Leadership Conference, which is taking place this week in Miami.
Nokia’s CEO, Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, who was a guest speaker at the conference, said
“This partnership demonstrates the significant social benefits that mobile technology can deliver, reaching communities and children who previously had very limited educational opportunity in an inspiring and accessible way.”
The service will first roll out in Chile with expansion to other Latin American countries planned later. The combination of Telefonica’s mobile broadband and Nokia’s Education Delivery software will give isolated schools access to high quality educational content, made up of innovative resources, tools and services. The software is designed to help students, fathers and teachers via Educared, which is a program designed to promote the use of technology in education. During 2008, the Educared portal received more than 60 million visits from the educational community.
Nokia’s Data Gathering software, which recently became a full-blown product will also be incorporated into the Proniño program.
Check out our videos of both below.