An interesting recent illustration of this comes in a road test carried out by the educational charity Computer Aid on five different makes of low-power PC for use in education in Africa.  The aim of the tests, carried out at three locations in Africa as well as in labs in the UK, was to test what solution is most appropriate for Africa, where electricity provision is frequently patchy, expensive and unreliable. The tests looked at different solutions, including netbooks, networked PCs and refurbished PCs. The results are available here.  The performance results obtained in the lab are quite different from those obtained in the field.

In launching this debate on educational technology, one of our aims is to encourage those actually using the technology in schools and universities (both teachers and students) to engage in debate with those involved in designing it, supplying it or funding it. In particular, we hope to tease out differences in outcomes between theory and reality. So, please do join the conversation!

Are rural teachers equipped to utilize ICT in the classroom? How will school administers adapt to unforeseen challenges arising from student-technology interaction? Are local and national governments committed to the necessary technology upgrades? 

These questions will be solved by objective research, collaborative experimentation and, most of all, a commitment to improving access and quality of education for all. In the coming months, Educational Technology Debate will provide a forum for stakeholders around the world to join in the necessary discussion about ICT4E. We hope you join us!

Educational leaders need to commit not to specific technologies or mediums, but to policies that will imbue students with critical thinking, inquiry and analysis. ICT will play an essential role in this, but policy-makers would do well to avoid becoming enamored with a technology itself. For example, the ubiquity and importance of mobile phones in the developing world was hardly predicted ten years ago; now they represent an important platform for economic empowerment. They very well might also be an essential part of distance education initiatives, but their unforeseen meteoric rise should caution against wedding a school (or nation) to specific technologies.

ICT for education (ICT4E) is incredibly dynamic right now with new announcements occurring daily. My vision is one of constant experimentation and innovation. We are entering a brave new world of challenges and opportunities; with the goal of creating life-long learners and productive members of a knowledge society, new and innovative methods of utilizing ICT for education should be encouraged and shared. This is not to say “anything goes” – the costs of failure are too high – but this is to promote new systems for a new millennium. These experiments in ICT4E should have specific, measurable goals and be frequently reviewed and fine-tuned. To avoid duplication and promote best practices, results should be shared widely and collaboration required.

A vision for the future of education in the developing world requires peering through clouds of uncertainty – a task far beyond one individual. But a sector-wide commitment to collaborative experimentation and innovation will make sense out of an uncertain future, and in doing so, equip the next generation with the skills and approaches it needs for that future.

For instance, the government of India has launched a programme to roll out basic ICT infrastructure in all secondary schools by 2012 and at least 2-3 computers in every primary school with electricity. But doubts remain as to the priority that should be afforded to technology relative to other educational needs; for teachers, for textbooks, for premises etc.

For the development community, these issues raise a number of dilemmas with regard to elaborating coherent strategies:

• Does the one-to-one model, as espoused for instance by the one laptop per child initiative, represent the best strategy for developing countries, or is this an unattainable goal in a world where scarce resources should be focused on shared facilities?
• What are the real costs of ownership of computers in schools (e.g., taking into account also teacher training, software, maintenance etc) and is the hardware component being oversold?
• How can the impact of computers in schools be measured, in terms of educational attainment?
• What role should ICT skills play in the core curriculum and what skills taught now will still be relevant in ten year’s time?

Clearly, it is a question of balance and the priorities afforded to ICT in schools will vary from country to country, given the different starting points and the level of resources available. Such a vision also needs to be flexible and responsive enough to reflect the changes in the underlying technology as well as society’s evolving needs for ICT skills. Nevertheless, is it possible to make a few generalizations that will hold true for many cases:

• The technology may be getting cheaper, but not the total costs of ownership. Headlines tend to go to the announcement of new low-cost devices, such as the US$100 laptop, the eee PC or new generation Netbooks. But these headlines underestimate the true costs of ownership of ICTs in schools, which are not necessarily falling in price.
• Connectivity remains the weak point. The great promise of wider use of computers in schools is that they open up a huge library of digital resources via the Web that can be accessed whenever and from wherever it is needed. But, many developing schools lack connectivity, either because of the high prices and slow speeds available from local ISPs, or because of the difficulties of establishing reliable, tamperd-proof, networks in environments where technical expertise is in short supply.
• Begin with the teacher.ICT4E schools initiatives too often neglect the central role of the teacher as the primary conduit for imparting education. Investment in providing technology and training to teachers – even at a very basic level such as overhead projectors, email or web access – can be more cost-effective that simply equipping classrooms with PCs or providing laptops to students.
• Don’t shirk on screen size. Learning in schools is a shared experience and that requires a large screen size. While it may seem to make sense to promote learning applications via mobile phones, which are far more common than PCs or fixed internet connections in most developing countries, nevertheless teaching applications that work best will be those that lend themselves to projection on large screens that the whole class can see.
• You see computers everywhere, except in the exam results. To paraphrase the famous Solow paradox (“You can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics”), the intuitive expectation that computers in schools promote learning is much harder to prove statistically in terms of educational attainment. If anything, the evidence seems to suggest that computers can be a distraction in the classroom and in the homework room, and can sometimes lead to unhealthy addiction to online games.

For these reasons, a national strategy for promoting greater ICT use in education needs to be carefully thought through and customized to national circumstances. Unfortunately, this does not come cheap.

Development experts in education estimate that across Africa alone, 64 million additional teachers are needed just to maintain a 45 student per teacher ratio. This outstrips the financial and human resources of almost every government in Africa.   Consequently, African policymakers are desperately searching for alternate ways to educate the next generation of African society.

So what might be the needed simple, effective, and affordable educational resources for students, teachers, and parents? Resources that can become tools that radically changes the concept of both “teacher” and “classroom” to accommodate a learning environment where neither is restricted by the formal constructs we have today.

What is your vision for an African learning environment that transcends the formal educational system to offer multiple learning opportunities to youth via multiple facilitators? And how can the full breadth of information and communication technologies – from the humble radio or newspaper to advanced computers and the Internet – be utilized in that vision in a cost-effective and practical manner?