Smartphone schools could help Syria's child refugees

It’s impossible to stay in school if your family has been pushed hundreds of miles across a continent by conflict or climate change. Unicef estimates there are 30 million children worldwide who are out of school in countries affected by emergencies or conflict. Save the Children has called on the technology industry to find solutions to child poverty and the refugee crisis – and that could mean using smartphones as an emergency learning tool.

You can already find more than 80,000 education apps in Apple’s App Store, ranging from phonics to physics. “A simple Android smartphone can become the refugee child’s classroom. Wherever they happen to be, they can be in class,” says Janae Bushman, founder of non-profit Aliim, which is currently developing a specialised education app to be launched in August. She believes smartphone-based learning can overcome problems such as a lack of classroom space, transport to schools and available teachers. According to Aliim’s research in the field, some 68% of Syrian refugees in Lebanon have at least one smartphone in their family, many of which come from developed urban centres like Beirut or Amman, where devices are widely available. For those who don’t, Aliim will accept smartphone donations. With 80% of Aliim’s app designed to work offline, intermittent Internet connectivity is not expected to be a significant problem. Moreover, it hopes inexpensive solar panels – again donated or subsidised by solar panel manufacturers – can be provided in areas where power supply is an issue.