Every afternoon, a group of children in Kannar village, about 30 km from Lucknow, gather in a school to learn English — through cellphones. In a village where even teachers cannot speak the language fluently, each of these 25 children can be heard repeating English words — with an American accent — after hearing the voice coming from MotoRazr V3m mobile handsets, which they get to operate for an hour or two every day, with facilitators monitoring their progress.

The handsets are loaded with e-learning games — designed by students of the Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information and Communication Technology (DAIICT), Gandhinagar — with many levels. A student can reach the next level only after learning the educational content taught in the previous level.

A brainchild of Matthew Kam, a PhD candidate from the Berkeley Institute of Design at the University of California, the novel project is called MILLEE (Mobile and Immersive Learning for Literacy in Emerging Economies). Far from the limelight, MILLEE, which aims to complement formal schooling in rural areas by English language training through mobile games, has been on for about a year, run by a group of students from Lucknow colleges.

Kam coordinates it along with an Indian student, Anuj Tewari, who graduated from DAIICT and is pursuing a degree in computer science from the University of California.

Aman Anand, a student of commerce in Lucknow, develops content for the games, and Shirley Jain, a researcher, develops the course material to be incorporated in them.

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