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Episode Description

During their SLL talk, Tony and Scott will elaborate on the rationale for, background to, and ambitions of the mEducation Alliance and share some of the general lessons they have learned from their two decades of experience working on edtech initiatives for developing countries. In addition to the Alliance’s convening role, they will also highlight three of the mEducation Alliance’s signature activities — Math Power!, Youth Digital Champions (YDC), and the EdTech Academy. Math Power! is focused on using no- and low-tech interventions to extend the joy of math, particularly through use of math games. YDC is advancing linkages between youth digital literacy skills training and their engagement in community development. Finally, the EdTech Academy is serving as a multi-media training platform to support the sharing of edtech good practices among researchers, policymakers, and implementing organizations.

 

Episode Guests

Anthony Bloome

CEO and Founder of the Mobiles for Education Alliance

Anthony Bloome is the Founder and Executive Director of the Mobiles for Education (mEducation) Alliance. From 2009 to 2020, he was USAID’s Senior Education Technology Specialist where he provided technical advice to HQ, Missions and counterpart agencies regarding the appropriate uses of technology to support quality educational outcomes in developing countries. In addition to founding the mEducation Alliance while at USAID, he also was the founder and campaign director for the All Children Reading: A Grand Challenge for Development, a global competition to catalyze tech-based innovations to advance early grade reading.

Prior to joining USAID, he was Peace Corps’ technology for development specialist for three years and a distance education specialist for the World Bank in Washington, D.C. and Zimbabwe for eleven years where he focused on technology for health, education, and youth and workforce development among other topic areas. He has a M.A. in Telecommunications from George Mason University and a B.A. in English Literature from UCLA.

Scott Isbrandt

Director of Strategic Initiatives, Mobiles for Education Alliance

Scott is an edtech entrepreneur and advocate for innovation with technology to promote education, entrepreneurship and economic empowerment. Scott has worked extensively with local experts and local organizations to enhance edtech ecosystems by collaborating and co-creating, supporting the startup and development of thousands of small businesses across sub-Saharan Africa.

Over the past two decades, Scott has developed edtech solutions to bring affordable educational multimedia to developing communities across rural Africa, focusing on those with limited access.

Scott previously led Project ABC (Alphabétisation de Base par Cellulaire) in Niger, delivering basic education services to rural learners via mobile phones and improving the livelihoods of agricultural producers by creating systems to access agricultural market data. Scott also designed, prototyped, and produced interactive multimedia, building the initial architecture for the Pearson Education Interactive Textbook digital platform in partnership with Macromedia and the WGBH National Center for Accessible Media. He is also the creator of an edtech learning platform called Stepping Stone, a content creation tool and delivery system for low-cost mobile phones, delivering learning and training content to hundreds of thousands across Africa (early grade learners, teachers and entrepreneurs).

Scott has a Master’s in Sustainable International Development from the Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University and also holds a B.S. in Cinema and Photography from the Roy H. Park School of Communications at Ithaca College.

Background to the Mobiles for Education Alliance

The mEducation Alliance is a non-governmental organization focused on the evidence-driven and sustainable role of technology in education to advance quality educational outcomes, particularly in lower-resource, developing country contexts. Initially formed within USAID in 2010 — and then rolled out from that Agency in 2020 as an independent non-profit, the mEducation Alliance is a unique, multi-stakeholder convening, catalyzing and communications platform for governments, donors, other policymakers, investors, researchers, and practitioners to work together.

The mEducation Alliance works to increase the impact of EdTech stakeholders globally by strengthening formal and non-formal  educational systems, especially in low-resource and developing country contexts, with  relevant and inclusive events, products and initiatives that are collaborative, not competitive in  nature, developed in partnership with its member network and strategic partners. The emphasis is on sharing good  practices, relevant  research and  highlighting  innovations with the  global EdTech  community, by accelerating EdTech  investments,  reinforcing EdTech  ecosystems and  promoting promising  interventions and  initiatives.