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Literacy Bridge shares locally-relevant knowledge through the Talking Book with people who lack literacy skills and access to electricity. Their focus is empowering people to improve their literacy skills as well as the health and income of their families.
- Electricity: No access
- Adult educational level: 77% had never attended school
- Child Education: ~450 children of primary school age with ~200 actually attending school
- Occupation: 100% subsistence farmers
- Main crops: maize, beans, groundnuts, millet, guinea corn, and rice
- Extension visits: once per year
- Access to technology: 10% own radios, 1.5% own mobile phones. Weak reception of a single GSM network was available in portions of the village; no data service.
The Talking Book allows users to play, record, and categorize audio recordings and to copy those recordings directly to any other Talking Book. When powered on, spoken instructions lead users through the audio user interface. The instructions are easy to localize and each device can include multiple system languages. To access recordings, users are guided by audio prompts, to which they respond with key presses. For instance, pressing the right and left arrows navigate through categories (e.g. “health”, “agriculture”, “stories”) and once in a category, the up and down arrows rotate through individual messages. The device also supports programmable interactive applications such as multiple-choice quizzes and messages with embedded hyperlinks.
The current version of the Talking Book is 12 cm x 12 cm x 6.5 cm deep and weighs 225 grams without batteries. Devices are typically powered by two, zinc-carbon, size-D batteries, which we have found in rural markets throughout Ghana for $0.35-0.40. These batteries supply 12-15 hours of typical use; and ongoing engineering improvements are expected to double energy efficiency. A built-in speaker enables group listening, but power can be conserved using earphones. Recordings are stored on an internal microSD memory card, providing between 35 and 140 hours of capacity. To improve robustness and affordability, the device has no display.
Pilot program devices were $105. The goal price point for larger projects is between $1 and $5 per Talking Book.
Usage varied greatly, but users typically checked out the devices in one-week increments and reported listening to the device a few times during the week, often in groups. Women commonly reported listening to the devices after dinner with their children.
91% of residents using Talking Books in their homes (32 of 35) said they had applied a new health or agriculture practice. Some farmers said they did not apply portions of the guidance because they could not afford to; for example, one recommended practice required purchasing fertilizer.
In some cases, agriculture guidance was not completely new to a farmer; but behavior change appeared to result when the farmer learned why particular techniques were more effective than others and how to apply these techniques most efficiently. Even then, 71% of people applying the guidance chose to test it on only a portion of their land; this reduced their risk and allowed them to compare the recommended practice with their traditional practice. Fig. 2 and Fig. 3 show the side-by-side difference of one farmer who applied the Talking Book guidance to a portion of his land.
One Media Player per Teacher 
