This map shows countries with government-funded and EDC-administered
uses of interactive radio instruction (IRI) broadcast in classrooms over
airwaves. Many other Latin American, Asian, and African nations
also use IRI or interactive audio instruction (IAI).
South
Haiti Honduras
Pakistan
India
Guyana
Guinea
Mali
Nigeria
Zambia
Tanzania
D.R. Congo
Sudan
Ethiopia
Somalia
South Africa
Madagascar
Indonesian primary-
In Zambia, where
Technologies
IRI and IAI involve the simplest
of mobile technologies: a battery-powered or foot-cranked portable
CD or audio player and a CD or cassette. Radio is the most widely used
communications technology in many
of the poorest countries of the world,
and the cost of a radio or audio player
is low enough to be affordable for
most schools. Battery-operated and
hand-cranked radios can operate
without grid-based electrical power,
and teachers need no additional training to use IRI and IAI. They simply
tune in for IRI programs broadcast
during the school day or push a button for IAI content via prerecorded
CDs, and the learning begins.
IRI and IAI employ research-based instructional techniques to
support active engagement of students and teachers. Radio programs
that the EDC creates for countries
such as India, Mali, Indonesia, and
Zambia, among others, contain content and activities that are based on
the country’s national curriculum,
and they use a series of structured
learning episodes in which the radio “teacher” instructs the in-class
teacher and students in a particular
curricular topic through songs,
games, group work, paired and
individual tasks, and multisensory
learning activities and projects. The
approach is interactive because the
