Within the education sector, ICTs are used to access information from many different mediums. This can be accessed from computers, laptops, mobile phones, e-readers, radio, etcetera. In East Africa, a recent list of universities has been announced, ranking the best “ICT Savvy” institutions in the region. Five Kenyan universities were among those top 100 establishments. Universities in Burundi, Uganda, Rwanda, and Tanzania were highly ranked as well.
The Top Universities:
Makerere University of Uganda
Strathmore
Busitema University of Uganda
School of Finance and Banking of Rwanda
African Virtual University of Kenya
Makerere University
University of Nairobi
Mount Kenya University
Kenyatta University
The various universities were measured based on “how universities have complied with ICT in terms of embracing technology for both students and lecturers.” Between April and October 2012, a survey was created in determining which higher education institutions made the cut regarding ICT use in teaching and enhancing education. Face-to-face questionnaires were conducted in determining these factors. The universities that best met the practices of management, development, and sustenance of university education worldwide made the list.
What is interesting to note is that these universities in East Africa are keeping up with international universities in embracing ICT facilities. Kenya, in particular, has heavily invested in ICT compared to other African universities. Hopefully this spreads to include many more universities in time to come. This is exciting news within the education sector for ICTs.
In his article, Matthew Shaer notes the difficulties many countries in Africa have with brain drain. An estimated 20,000 professionals leave Africa each year to look for jobs in countries that are more economically successful. In an attempt to combat this brain drain, e-learning initiatives are being started to help connect students with the rest of the world while keeping their feet on the ground in Africa. “Since 1997, the Nairobi, Kenya–based African Virtual University has worked to improve access to web-based learning in sub-Saharan Africa,” and this will provide students all across that region with the type of resources the wish to find in the countries they are emigrating to. The courses provide a model called the “webinar,” which connects students and teachers through video and audio. These classes are intimate closely overseen so the teaching provided is as effective as possible.
There are some, like Conrad Coyanda-Parkzes, CEO of a telecom company called AccessPoint, who argue against these initiatives claiming that they are a band-aid solution to a very deeply rooted problem. Coyanda-Parkzes claims, “I don’t see enough lobbying for the basic stuff—electricity, the roads.” This is a great point, but at the end of the day, these students are experiencing and learning, which is something they have never done before – and that is what matters.
I read about a project from the WorldReader e-Reader Pilot in Ghana. As part of the Millennium Development Goals to achieve universal education, the project distributed e-reader technology to Ghanaian primary, junior and senior school students. After extensive evaluation of the iREAD (Impact on Reading of E-readers and Digital content) Ghana Pilot Study showed much of the projects initial success as well as challenges to address in the future. The e-reader allowed students to gain immediate access to academic and personal reading material including books, textbooks, magazines and various articles. Access to these materials allowed students to a have greater number of texts, which were previously limited to the resources available in their local library. On average, students had 107 books on their e-reader over the course of the project. The initiative also put a large emphasis on Ghanaian books, allowing students to gain access to culturally relevant information as well as outside resources. In addition to the immediate impact on students, teachers also reaped benefits by accessing current textbooks and carry out research to prepare lessons rather than relying on outdated and limited textbooks.
The outcome of the pilot study revealed the project increased student’s enthusiasm about reading and simultaneously allowed students to develop useful ICT skills. Students in primary school exhibited improved standardized tests scores, while older students did not display significant gains as a result of the technology. Unexpected challenges in the project included technical problems with the e-reader (about 40% of the e-readers broke), which hindered the long-term success of the project. In addition, the article also suggests that a lack of ICT knowledge and low literacy rates led to the accidental deletion of material and an increased distraction from its entertainment functions.
While the project has initially revealed some promising results, several common challenges (breakages, literacy, electricity, Internet) stand in the way of the e-readers practicality and sustainability to increase literacy rates and improve educational opportunities in the developing world.
For a more thorough analysis of the iREAD project in Ghana, please check out this link.
After doing our sector presentation on education this week, I thought it might be interesting to further investigate some of the things we had been talking. I found this article about the Worldreader program.
Worldreader is currently two years old, and has distributed 1,100 kindle e-readers. Along with this, they have also distributed 180,000 e-books. This program currently runs at about $5 a book, in comparison with Room to Read, which can print and deliver one of their books to a school in Africa for about $1 per book. So Worldreader is still significantly more expensive. Having said that, these readers have huge potential. They can last for weeks on a single charger, and allow many books to be transported without the burden of carrying them.
Worldreader has also undergone it’s first study by the U.S. Agency for International Development, which found that standardized test scores for children with e-readers typically improved 13%-16%.
I’ll be interested to see if this project scales well, because at this point the results seem very positive.
There are many ways that ICTs can play a role in making education more effective and efficient. However, as our examination of One Laptop Per Child policies a few weeks ago demonstrated, simply distributing technology to classrooms or children in the developing country is not sufficient. Instead, a more nuanced and holistic approach is necessary. In India, the IT@School program addresses some of these concerns.
The IT@School program was begun in 2001 by the government of Kerala, India. It is intended to foster ICT-enabled education in the state. The program is multifaceted and includes a focus on: e-governance, content development, field level mechanisms, capacity building, FOSS initiatives, and impact studies as a means of evaluation. Some of the specific projects of IT@School include: a centralized textbook indent system, e-textbooks, a centralized resource website for students, an animation movie making initiative called Animation Training Program for Students (ANTS), ICT training for teachers, and online registration forms.
This project addresses many of the topics we have discussed in class– like open source and open content (e.g. FOSS) and training needs (via ICT teacher training). It also has a strong monitoring and evaluation component, which is key to any successful development initiative. It focuses on sustainability of its technology through “Hardware Clinics” where the computers and other equipment are repaired right in the schools. IT@School also addresses infrastructure needs by creating a unique scheme for electrification of classrooms and providing broadband internet connectivity for teachers and students. It incorporates an evolving constructionist vision of education– with school wikis for collaborative learning and student driven learning via projects like ANTS. This is a large-scale project– reaching over 12,000 schools– and seems to have thought through many of the common pitfalls of ICT-based education projects in the developing world.This unique and holistic approach to ICT-based education focuses on using ICTs to enable learning, not just the learning of ICT skills but learning as a whole, and may serve as a model for other ICT4education projects.
Bridgeit is an ICT initiative (specifically mEducation), which aims to, increase the quality of education specifically mathematics, science, and life skills in primary school though the use of mobile phones and television. Teachers are provided with access to a digital catalogue of short educational videos. They are also provided with a Nokia mobile phone, which they use to download these videos (via a server). The mobile phone is connected to a television in the classroom, so that the videos can be broadcasted for the class to view. Additionally, the videos come with interactive lesson plans for the teachers to follow, which address key concepts/ideas that the video introduces (erumi). Some of the schools were focused on just mathematics and science, while others were focused on mathematics, science, and life skills.
What is interesting to note about this project is that the education aspect of it does not focus on the mobile phone like those in the past; the mobile phone is just the medium in which the educational video is downloaded through. The main aspect of technology here is the television where the students watch the educational video.
Another interesting part of this program is that its implementers worked in collaboration with the Tanzanian government, as well as community organizations. By involving respected community members in the research process of the initiative, this project adhered to the human centered design toolkit’s phase “hear.” Additionally, because of government involvement this is a more dynamic approach to the legitimate implementation and sustainability ICT’s in Tanzania’s education sector, which was a main goal of their ICT policy.
An Evaluation was done for the first year. Overall, test scores of students in BridgeIT and BridgeIT + Life Skills in both math and science increased. Some other results that came back from the attitude questionnaires indicated that teachers received a lot of support from various outlets. Although the above results came back positive, there also were negative results: the teachers had decreased satisfaction with their jobs, and the students initially thought the video content was boring. But when students became more accustomed to the video learning, they found that the videos increased their understanding of math and science (Enge &Kjell).
Although I believe a proper evaluation was conducted, it did not mention anything about infrastructure in terms of electricity with this program (main problem in Tanzania), which was a main component of it. Additionally, it did not mention anything about what happened when the mobile phones were broken, or if there was a problem with theft.
The World Bank has recently recognized the value in crowdsourcing for development. Last year the World Bank Disaster Management used crowdsourcing in Latin America and the Caribbean, partnering with Yahoo, Google, and NASA, among others. Recently they have applied crowdsourcing to the educational field, in response to systemic problems at the local and regional levels. Crowdsourcing could be used to raise low scores by sending out requests for instructional success stories, or to connect teachers to share educational strategies and solutions. One program that has already been implemented is the Open Innovation Portal, started by the US Department of Education. Open Innovation uses crowdsourcing to bring teachers together to share their knowledge on problems plaguing school systems such as dropout rates and difficult children. The program has seen instant results. Just four months after the start of the program, over 4,000 people signed up and shared many innovative ideas that may receive donor funds in order to be more successfully implemented or merely used as effective methods by other participants in the program. This is just one example of crowdsourcing being used here in the U.S. to promote educational solutions. This demonstrates one of the nearly endless ways that crowdsourcing may be utilized as it becomes a more popular strategy in ICT4D.
UNESCO has created two CD-ROMs to be used as e-learning tools. One of the CD ROMS is directed to younger children from ages 3-13 and focuses on more basic language skills, mathematics, arts and graphics, computer literacy and Geography/astronomy. The second CD-ROM, which targets high school students, university students, educators and teacher trainers, concentrates on similar topics but on a more detailed level.
While this article doesn’t talk explicitly about the planned projection of this project, it could be easily implemented in any developing country that has access to computers. These tools could easily help facilitate learning, in places where other resources may be scarce. They could also be used to assist in teaching the students. Another benefit is that the CD-ROMs can be directly installed to a computer, therefore don’t require internet access and can be easily transferred to other computers.
I found a working paper about the relationship between ICT and education by the World Bank. One of the interesting points the makes is the way perceived this relationship between technology and education. Usually the technology is conceived first and then we try to find educational applications for it. However, it would be more productive to develop technology for the critical areas of education in which it is needed. The paper discusses some of the pitfalls in this relationship, but proposes some general principles in order to resolve those pitfalls. One of the more interesting obstacles the article addressed was the use of ICTs to help students teach themselves and thus eliminating the role of the teacher. We’ve all seen this form of technology through programs such as the Kahn Academy and the vast information found on the Internet in general. However, according to the paper there has been not strong evidence to support this idea of replacing teachers and promoting self-teaching. Finally, the paper ends with some general principles. Some these general principles are familiar to other areas of development as well such as emphasizing monitoring and evaluation and finding holistic approaches to the use of ICTs. One of the general principles is the idea of not putting your eggs in one basket. Technology is very costly and it is constantly changing. I like the idea that ” Educational priorities should drive technology choices — and not the reverse.”
Intel, an American multinational technology corporation, has shown its sustained commitment to improving education, teaching, and learning through the implementation of a project known as Intel Teach Program, through the Intel Education Initiative. Focused on empowering students of all ages and providing them with the necessary skills to succeed, this project strives to improve “teacher effectiveness through professional development, [help] teachers integrate technology into their lessons and [promote] students’ problem-solving, critical thinking, and collaboration skills”. Intel Teach Worldwide has been the most successful program of its kind and is evidence of the positive educational outcomes efficient use of technology can have.
Since the launch of the pilot program in Pakistan in 2001, Intel has partnered with private and public international organizations, governments, and educators in over 70 countries and has trained over 10 million teachers, in 35 different languages. Intel spends roughly 100 million dollars in education programs annually, and volunteers hundreds of thousands of hours of invaluable work, to promote its cause on local, national, and international levels.
