Education in Conflict Zones: a Web and Mobility Approach

Abstract: We propose a new framework for education in conflict zones, considering the explosive growth of social media, web services, and mobile Internet over the past decade. Moreover, we focus on one conflict zone, Afghanistan, as a case study, because of its alarmingly high illiteracy rate, lack of qualified teachers, rough terrain, and relatively high mobile penetration of over 50%. In several of Afghanistan's provinces, it is hard to currently sustain the traditional bricks-and-mortar school model, due to numerous incidents of schools, teachers, and students being attacked because of the ongoing insurgency and political instability. Our model improves the virtual school model, by addressing most of its disadvantages, to provide students in Afghanistan with an opportunity to achieve standardised education, even when the security situation does not allow them to attend traditional schools. One of the biggest advantages of this model is that it is sufficiently robust to deal with gender discrimination, imposed by culture or politics of the region.