McGraw-Hill is building a mobile-phone platform to teach English and college test preparation to people in India, which the publisher hopes will help it tap into rapidly expanding cellphone use in emerging markets.

The platform, mConnect, comes as textbook publishers are jockeying to supply learning materials on digital devices. If the software is successful in India, McGraw-Hill plans to offer it in other developing countries in Asia and Africa.

The service will initially teach subscribers through text messaging and automated voice response, said Bruce D. Marcus, McGraw-Hill’s executive vice president. For instance, automated software will give Indians feedback on their English-speaking abilities, and a text-message service will offer test-preparation questions and grade the responses.

A bit late to posting this or, well, anything lately.

What’s smart about this is the simplicity. Since SMS is the lowest common denominator, all students will be able to use the system regardless of device or carrier, and it can be ported to many other educational settings, schools, networks and so forth.

Of course, since it is not an “app,” is not called iConnect and doesn’t appear to have a little green robot mascot, it hasn’t garnered much attention here in the States.