Mobile and policies

The first paper, Turning On Mobile Learning in Africa and the Middle East: Illustrative Initiatives and Policy Implications, describes a range of mobile learning programs and explores how these programs address educational needs in the region. It also surveys national and local policies related to mobile learning and analyzes their impact.

The number of mobile phone users in Africa and the Middle East has exploded in the past decade and a half.  Africa, the continent facing the most urgent educational challenges, is expected to have over 735 million active mobile phone subscriptions by the end of 2012.  In 1995 there were only 600,000 subscriptions.

For the first time in history, a majority of Africans have individual access to interactive information and communication technology. In the Middle East an even higher percentage of people own and use mobile technologies. And since the 2011 Arab Spring no one questions their potential to connect and empower average citizens.

According to the UNESCO published paper, Africa and the Middle East are “leapfrogging” the earlier PC revolution and enthusiastically embracing the more recent mobile revolution. Unlike countries in Latin America for example, African countries (and many in the Middle East as well) have not made substantial investments in filling schools with computers or providing laptops to students. At some level, Africa is (for lack of a better phrase) a “clean slate” when it comes to ICT use in education. Because so many Africans have mobile phones, many educators are eager to leverage these devices to improve and provide greater access to education.

One model of accomplishing this is called Bring Your Own Device (BYOD). The name is sufficiently descriptive: according to this model students simply use the mobile phones they already own for educative purposes, and sometimes for purposes recommended or required by schools and teachers. The approach has gained traction in many developed countries (most notably in the United States) due to its affordability and flexibility.  Other models require schools to purchase mobile devices for students which dramatically increases costs.

The obvious disadvantage of BYOD programs is that not every learner has the same device or even a device at all.  Also, managing different types and models of devices on a school network can be difficult, and incorporating mobile learning into curricular activities is much easier when the same devices are being used by all learners. Yet in Africa and the Middle East cost is paramount, as illustrated in the paper. Schools often have difficulty providing basic infrastructure for students let alone personal technology.

What do you think?

1. Could BYOD work in Africa and Middle East?
2. How would it look compared to, say, BYOD models being employed in North America?
3. How might countries maximize the cost and convenience benefits of this model while still ensuring equity?
4. Is BYOD the future of access to mobile learning in developing countries?

Mobiles and teacher development

The second paper Mobile Learning for Teachers in Africa and the Middle East: Exploring the Potential of Mobile Technologies to Support Teachers and Improve Practice looks closely at how a handful of programs have employed mobile devices to support teachers and enhance their professional development.

This paper describes several projects that use mobile technologies to support teaching and learning as well as educational administration.  The paper argues that basic mobile phones (often referred to as “feature” phones) are not especially conducive for tasks beyond rudimentary communication.  While a number of projects have assisted teachers and students by pushing educational materials to their phones via SMS, projects that attempt richer collaboration and greater interaction tend to rely on smartphones.

While most experts agree that smartphones will eventually become commonplace in Africa (and have already made serious inroads in the Middle East), today a majority of people in developing countries own basic mobile devices: the screens are small; resolution is mediocre; navigation can be cumbersome; and text and images often display only in black and white.  Therefore, in Africa as well as many places in the Middle East the immediate question is: How can basic mobile phones be used to improve teaching and learning?

The paper describes a number of innovative approaches, several of which have gained traction and benefit large numbers of students (for example, Momath and Yoza both in South Africa).  Yet despite these promising projects, there are not a huge number of models to choose from when it comes to improving or extending education with basic phones.  Although projects like SEMA! in Kenya aimed to impact teaching and learning and foster greater collaboration among educators, it has been most influential as a means of streamlining data collection about enrolment rates.

According to the paper, the project, despite lofty ambitions, seemed to revert to a sort of digital notice board and quantitative questionnaire.  This does not, of course, mean the project was a failure (if there is one area in which mobile technologies have proven themselves in education, it is as an cost and time efficient means of collecting administrative data).  Instead the SEMA! project signals the difficulty of developing mobile learning programs that rely on basic phones, as opposed to smartphones.

What do you think?

1. What are some of the ways basic mobile phones might be used to assist teachers and improve their practice?
2. How can educators in Africa and the Middle East leverage the phones that are already in their pockets (and often in the pockets of their students) to enhance learning?
3. Or, alternatively, has the educational potential of basic mobile phones been overstated?

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Mobile and policies

The first paper, Turning On Mobile Learning in Asia: Illustrative Initiatives and Policy Implications, describes a range of mobile learning programs and explores how these programs address educational needs in the region. It also surveys national and local policies related to mobile learning and analyzes their impact.

The paper explains that South Korea has made concerted efforts to improve education with technology.  Computers and mobile devices are common in classrooms and teachers and students are, by and large, eager to use them.  Recently, the government announced plans to transition from paper textbooks to digital textbooks by 2015.  The government wants textbook content to display on a variety of mobile devices including smartphones and larger-screen tablet computers. Leaders of the initiative have been piloting digital textbooks that can be tailored to a student’s individual abilities, interests, and pace of learning.

Within the past several weeks however, Korean officials, responding to widespread concerns, have promised to slow down and even reconsider the plan.  Perhaps surprisingly, the strongest opposition to digital textbooks is not related to doubts about their educational effectiveness or potential.  Instead parents and others are worried that young people are overly reliant on digital technologies.  A South Korean government survey suggested, for example, that one in 12 students between ages 5 and 9 are addicted to the internet.  Many Koreans are concerned that a full shift to digital textbooks could accelerate what is, in some instances, an already unhealthy relationship to information and communication technology.  A columnist for the Washington Post recently wrote about the controversy.

In the past several years, journalists and scholars have exposed a dark side to digital technologies.  Bestselling books like The Shallows written by Nicolas Carr, who has also moderated an EduTech Debate, and Sherry Turkle’s Alone Together argue that increasingly ubiquitous (and increasingly mobile) technology may not be good for our brains, our broader health, and perhaps even our productivity.

What do you think?

1. Should South Korea initiate a full transition from paper to digital textbooks by 2015?
2. Are arguments—such as the one Carr made famous in his Atlantic Monthly article Is Google Making Us Stupid—compelling enough to slow down well-intentioned efforts to integrate technologies in education? 
   

Mobiles and teacher development

The second paper Mobile Learning for Teachers in Asia: Exploring the Potential of Mobile Technologies to Support Teachers and Improve Practice looks closely at how a handful of programs have employed mobile devices to support teachers and enhance their professional development.

The most significant project described in the paper is Text2Teach (T2T) in the Philippines.  This project, unlike a majority of its peers, has aged well: begun in 2003, it has been implemented in 555 schools in nine provinces, trained 1,500 teachers, and impacted over a half a million 5^th and 6^th grade students.  Currently, the project is entering a third phase and planners are hoping to integrate it into broader and more permanent national education plans.

At first glance, T2T is simple: it relies on mobile phones to bring educational videos into classrooms.  Essentially, teachers download videos aligned with science, mathematics, and English language curriculums using school-purchased mobile phones and then play these videos by attaching the phones to televisions.

While T2T owes its success to many factors—from robust partnerships and community “buy-in” to regular modification—the paper emphasizes the salience of quality that is often overlooked: ease-of-use for teachers.  Too often efforts to integrate mobile technologies in education stall because they make life more difficult for already busy (and sometimes overwhelmed) teachers.  Mobile learning projects tend to reach schools as “yet-another-thing-to-do,” rather than something that will make teachers’ jobs easier.  The approach of T2T is different.  Teachers who participate in the project say that it makes lesson planning less time consuming.  Each video is accompanied by a suggested lesson plan and this, according to the paper, ensures that T2T “gives teachers more time to spend with their families.”

The project—from its inception to its on-the-ground implementation—has sought to make teachers more effective, yes, but also to ensure that they complete less work, not more.  Teachers report liking T2T precisely because it makes an already difficult job a bit less difficult.

What do you think?

1. How can projects best leverage mobile technologies to improve teachers’ day-to-day jobs?
2. What are your ideas for mobile learning projects that might give teachers less to do, instead of more to do?

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Mobile devices and policies

The first paper, Turning On Mobile Learning in Europe: Illustrative Initiatives and Policy Implications, describes a range of mobile learning programs in the European Union and explores how these programs address educational needs in the region. It also surveys national and local policies related to mobile learning and analyzes their impact.

As detailed in the paper, many European countries have adopted policies that restrict the use of mobile technologies in education, particularly at the lower grade levels. In this context, it is meaningful that the few countries which have lent serious government support to mobile learning saw explosions in innovation and levels of use. The paper describes a massive initiative in the United Kingdom (UK) called the Mobile Learning Network (MoLeNET) which spanned three years, involved 7,000 staff and 40,000 learners, and had a budget of 12 million British pounds.

The initiative spawned a panoply of smaller mobile learning projects and experiments, many of which were shown to improve student retention and lower drop-out rates, two goals of the overarching initiative. Although MoLeNET was shelved in 2010, its influence continues to reverberate not only in the UK but across Europe. The paper explains that the Netherlands and Denmark have also invested public money to improve education with mobile technology. Tellingly, both countries are considered to have some of the most advanced and impactful mobile learning projects in Europe.

Yet despite these examples, mobile learning projects are generally perceived as being less reliant on government funding than earlier efforts to integrate technology in education. They are commonly characterized as bottom-up, rather than top-down initiatives. As the UNESCO Working Paper Series makes clear, a large number of projects have grown up in the “peripheries” of education: many initiatives start small and aim to help learners outside the structures of formal education. 

This approach has had advantages: projects tend to be original and diverse, and they are able to respond quickly to the needs and challenges of particular contexts. However, by tracing the impact of major government-supported initiatives, the Turning on Mobile Learning in Europe paper suggests that public money may be crucial to efforts to move mobile learning from the margins of education to the mainstream.

What do you think?

• Are major government investments necessary to make mobile learning work?
• Are mobile learning projects really forged from the bottom-up?
• Can mobile learning initiatives directed from the top-down be successful?
• What are the risks of this approach? What has been your experience?
• Is government support necessary (or has it perhaps been an impediment)?

Mobile devices and teacher development

The second paper Mobile Learning for Teachers in Europe: Exploring the Potential of Mobile Technologies to Support Teachers and Improve Practice looks closely at how a handful of programs have employed mobile devices to support teachers and enhance their professional development.

This paper describes projects that are using mobile technologies for education in productive, yet decidedly “unsexy” ways.  To cite just one example, the Molly system designed by Oxford University seems to do little more than provide students a portal to information about their classes: they can access syllabi, calendars, schedules, and podcasts of lectures from a variety of mobile devices.

Other projects described in the paper are similar.  A project underway at Yorkshire Coast College in the UK allows teachers to set up texts timed to remind students of homework due dates.  Still other projects detail programs that allow teachers and school administrators to send text messages to students’ parents to notify them about student progress and disseminate information about events and school closures.  None of this is blow-your-socks-off exciting.  Indeed many of the initiatives use mobile phones in ways that they have been used for over two decades: to communicate short, simple, and concise bits of information.  Yet (and this is the important part) the programs work. 

They may not be using the GPS feature in the newest smart phone or high-end apps, but they do a job for teachers and schools and, as explained in the paper, more often than not, they do it well.  Parent attendance at back-to-school nights increased between 60% to 80% when schools in Norway decided to send parents text messages reminding them of the event.  This is a type of mobile project that while painfully simple, has helped teachers.

What do you think?

• When we talk about mobile learning we tend to focus on the “bleeding edge” of technology.  We think about how to use the best technology in the flashiest gadgets to do new and amazing things.  This is important surely, but it is hardly a license to ignore the “ordinary-but-still-effective” uses of mobile technologies.  What then are the “un-fancy,” “make-me-yawn,” “commonplace,” and “staggeringly mundane” ways that mobile technology can be used to improve education?  If the projects described in the paper are any indication, these uses are sometimes the most effective.

Forthcoming titles in the series will also be published on the UNESCO Working Paper Series on Mobile Learning site.

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Mobile devices and policies

The first of the North America papers Turning On Mobile Learning in North America: Illustrative Initiatives and Policy Implications describes a number of mobile learning initiatives in schools and universities, surveys existing policies, and explores the implication for revising or creating national, state, district and institutional policies related to mobile learning.

The paper reveals that of the policies that do exist, many are too broad or restrictive to enable mobile learning. An example is the Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA), which addresses concerns about access to offensive content over the internet on school and library computers. Since 2001, when rules for implementing CIPA were issued, many district administrators have remained confused about its proper implementation.

Liability and concern for student safety have led to extremely restrictive policies prohibiting mobile devices in many US and Canadian districts and schools. For example, almost every school district in the USA has a filtering system, and more than 55% of district policies are more restrictive than the federally mandated CIPA regulations.

For policies at the district and institutional level the paper urges a shift of focus from behaviour that is acceptable – encoded in Acceptable Use Policies (AUPs) – to that which is responsible, described in Responsible Use Policies (RUPs). The role of the school, and parents, shifts from policing mobile phone use and online behaviour, to developing responsible learners and children.

What do you think?

• Are most high-level and school policies too restrictive?
• How can we find the balance between being inclusive enough for learners to benefit from online access, and being restrictive enough to protect them?

Mobile devices and teacher development

The second paper Mobile Learning for Teachers in North America: Exploring the Potential of Mobile Technologies to Support Teachers and Improve Practice looks at the relatively nascent area of how mobiles are being used, or could be used, to support teachers and their professional development. Of particular interest is how mobile access increases opportunities for teachers to participate in online communities of practice, which is a proven way to support teachers. Mobiles also provide a way for teachers to enjoy professional development anytime and anywhere.

The paper found that many teachers are eager to engage in mobile learning for professional development because of the flexibility it provides. Without mobile technologies, participation in professional development necessitates attendance at an event or at least access to a computer; with a mobile device, teachers can access online professional development from any location that has wireless connectivity.

Mobile devices enable access to online courses and other types of professional development opportunities – such as communities of practice, social networking sites, and content repositories – at any time, so teachers can structure their professional growth according to their schedules and preferences.

What do you think?

• Professional development requires engagement, focus and usually some face-to-face instruction or discussion time with peers. Can mobiles really be used to support professional development, or do they only trivialise down to bite size chunks what should be a dedicated and time-intensive exercise?

Forthcoming titles in the series will also be published on the UNESCO Working Paper Series on Mobile Learning site.

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Over five weeks UNESCO, in partnership with Nokia, is launching its Working Paper Series on Mobile Learning with the release of a set of twelve papers reviewing mobile learning initiatives, implications for ICT in education policies and how mobile technologies support teacher development. The papers will be released according to regions of the world.

Information and communication technologies (ICT) can contribute to achieving the pillars of Education for All (EFA), which are universal access to education, equity in education and the delivery of quality education. Given the unprecedented uptake of mobile devices in the world – there are now almost 6 billion mobile phone subscriptions – these ICT present a new and exciting possibility for supporting EFA.

UNESCO is committed to fully exploring how mobile learning, using mobile devices alone or in combination with other ICT, can improve education. While mobile learning is certainly not new, only in very recent years is it receiving widespread attention and building serious momentum. The evidence base for how mobiles can improve grades, increase learner motivation, deliver content to hard-to-reach communities, support district and school administration, and enable adult education in areas such as literacy, is mounting.

However, many challenges still abound, including the lack of an enabling policy environment, inequity of access, negative social attitudes towards mobile devices as learning tools, lack of awareness of mobile learning, high cost of usage and concerns around online safety. It is essential that the ICT in education community engages with these issues in open dialogue with policy makers, principals, teachers and parents so that the potential benefits of mobile learning are realised, and the challenges are addressed. Two areas of particular interest to UNESCO are policies related to mobile learning, and how mobiles can be used to support teachers and their professional development.

Mobile learning initiatives and related policies

Many governments have adopted some form of national ICT in education policy. However, many of these policies were developed in the ‘pre-mobile’ era. The few policies that do refer to mobile devices either reference them obliquely or, in some cases, ban them. Overall, there is a dearth of considered and thorough mobile learning policies. To address this vacuum UNESCO will develop a set of guidelines for mobile learning policies to help national governments and educators create environments in which mobile learning can flourish. The papers released over the coming weeks are the initial research to inform the guidelines, which will be published in late 2012.

Mobile technologies for teacher support and professional development

There is a global shortage of trained and motivated teachers. In order to meet the EFA goal of achieving Universal Primary Education (UPE) by 2015, 5.4 million primary teachers are needed. How can mobile technologies play a role in meeting this need, in supporting teachers and their professional development, and in retaining existing teachers? Initial research has shown that this is a relatively unexplored area of mobile learning and that there is much more that can be done with mobile technologies. UNESCO’s forthcoming papers identify some of the existing mobile-based teacher development projects, and how this area can be further developed. The papers inform four projects that UNESCO will implement with teacher training organisations in Nigeria, Senegal, Pakistan and Mexico in 2012 to further explore and understand this area.

Release schedule

For each region there is one paper on mobile learning initiatives and related policies, as well as one on mobile technologies for teacher support and professional development. The papers will be released as follows:

• 26 April: Latin America and North America papers
• 3 May: Europe papers
• 10 May: Asia papers
• 17 May: Africa and Middle East papers
• 22 May: Two global findings papers that synthesise information across the five regional papers in each series

Please note that the papers are not a comprehensive regional review, but a regional scan to identify and review illustrative cases of mobile learning initiatives, related policies and examples of teacher support and professional development projects via mobile technologies. UNESCO embraces a purposefully broad definition of mobile devices – including mobile phones, e-readers, tablet computers, MP3 players and handheld gaming consoles – in recognition that the list is dynamic. Of importance is not the exact definition of mobile devices but rather how they can be used to support education. However, while UNESCO supports a flexible definition, its current work in mobile learning will focus predominately on mobile phones because of their widespread pervasiveness. The papers thus look at mobile phones in particular when discussing mobile learning.

As a whole, the UNESCO Working Paper Series on Mobile Learning provides a valuable snapshot of what mobile learning looks like around the world.  Collectively and individually, the papers consolidate lessons learned in different regions to provide policy makers, educators, and other stakeholders a tool to help them now and in the future better leverage mobile technology for learning.

Please provide feedback on the papers. The input of the widest possible range of stakeholders, from national policy makers to rural teachers, is critical for helping develop and improve the field of mobile learning. Comments from practitioners in particular regions are especially valuable as the mobile learning landscape is highly uneven and nuanced. It will take a global view, but local conversations, to understand how mobile learning is best applied in particular contexts.

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We have often focused on Open Educational Resources (OER) in the Educational Technology Debates. We talked about the need for creating digital content and examples of existing Open Educational Resources. But this month we’re going to ask a controversial question:

Does OER actually expand the digital divide?

The proponents of Open Educational Resources are right to point out the need for digital content. There are few if any locally relevant resources for educators in the developing world – local language being a major issue. So is access – to the hardware required to view content and often the Internet access to reach it. In addition to content, and the access to reach it, teachers need the skills and training to convert good content into great lessons.

But let us say that all these prerequisites exist – content, access, training:

1. Does that mean teachers will actually use it?
2. And who will they use it with? Students already advantaged with socio-economic resources or the underprivileged learners that are the ostensible focus of many educational technology interventions?
3. Most importantly, regardless of the benefits for the privileged, how can we create better OER benefits for the poor?

Please join us this month for what we all expect to be a lively and informative conversation – your input can start right now in the comments below. You can also submit your extended thoughts as a longer independent Guest Post of at least 500 words. Please email Guest Posts to editors@edutechdebate.org. We will be publishing Guest Posts throughout the month to maintain the conversation.

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D is for desktop. L is for laptop. M is for mobile. E is for expensive!

For the time being, traditional technologies are too expensive and complicated to implement in scale, while also allowing sufficient funding for teacher training and learning materials development.

Desktops in school computer rooms require a dedicated, secure classroom that would otherwise serve as an instructional space in an often-overcrowded school. The opportunity cost associated with losing an instructional space alone, is incalculable.  Some initiatives adopt a “mobile lab” approach, where they introduce laptops – or increasingly, tablets – to provide students with 1:1 instruction, without losing instructional space. 

Another approach is mobile phone technology.  Nokia recently announced a Linux-based smartphone for $100, and there have been announcements about Google-powered Android smartphones, also priced in the $100 range.

Yet, the challenges with all three approaches remain more or less the same. First, there may never been enough computers and smartphones available (at least not in the foreseeable future) to adequately serve every student. Second, assuring the necessary maintenance of equipment, networks, and access to reliable electricity is a particularly expensive proposition when a nation considers equipping the majority of its schools.

And finally, the responsibility placed on the individual teacher to effectively integrate technology into instruction is immense. He must be trained to facilitate use of high-quality software, facilitate student use, troubleshoot technical issues during facilitation, and monitor individual and collective student progress in order to achieve measurable goals – in addition to his regular teaching responsibilities!

For technology that relies on the delivery of web-based content, there are even greater risks for abandoning use of computers altogether if the network is not fast or reliable enough, or if the cost is prohibitive over a longer period.

Providing a whole-class learning solution to reach more schools

In partnership with USAID/Senegal and Columbia University’s Earth Institute, CyberSmart Africa has introduced a whole-class learning solution that integrates the use of a specially adapted interactive whiteboard directly into classroom instruction. We started the program in 2010 and now operate in three primary schools and six middle schools. The objective is to focus on learning, as teachers facilitate an active, student-centered classroom that integrates the use of digital resources in support of all core academic subjects.

The whole class learns together as an interactive whiteboard moves between classrooms, impacting hundreds of students during a single school day. More than a dozen students will actually use the interactive whiteboard during a single class session, while all students become active learners as they benefit from the experience of observing and influencing their peers’ work at the board.

Implementation is simplified and the Total Cost of Ownership is low compared to laptop and school computer room initiatives because there is less equipment to be maintained and managed; and there are minimal installation costs because all of the equipment is portable. Resources are primarily directed toward ongoing teacher training, the single investment in education that is most closely associated with student success.

Many of the classrooms in our partner schools have rusted ceilings, and some lack electricity. Power is supplied with a solar-charged battery that moves between classrooms along with the equipment. The technology consists primarily of a lightweight screen manufactured in-country, a netbook, a low-power video projector, and an interactive “controller” that enables the touch-screen capability. Users interact with the computer – opening files, playing games, searching for content – by touching the screen with a special infrared pen that acts like a mouse.

All the necessary software to run the applications resides in the stand-alone netbook, and Internet connectivity is optional. The equipment is easily moved between classrooms, over sand and sometimes even through the village to an off-site space, and can be completely set up in under ten minutes.

In contrast to using a regular video projector, the teacher and students are not glued to a computer keyboard – which will most likely be controlled by the teacher – in order to manipulate desktop content on an interactive whiteboard. Lessons are purposely designed to be participatory, and viewable by the whole class so that students are more engaged in the learning process. Interactive whiteboard software also makes use of a suite of “blackboard-like” annotation tools – underlining, circling, coloring – among other capabilities.

Success requires a “toolbox” consisting of ongoing training, content, and support

As ICT has become central to the USAID Education Strategy (February 2011), it is essential to keep in mind that ICT use in schools will accomplish very little if not integrated within a toolbox full of supporting educational content, ongoing teacher training and support, and a context that nurtures evolving teaching and learning styles.

Our work at CyberSmart Africa has been motivated by the unfortunate reality of too many education initiatives who introduce ICT simply for ICT’s sake, and whose budget and program activities go to supporting only the use of the provided equipment. Our approach extends directly into the pedagogical implications of ICT; the bulk of our activities support the ongoing teacher training necessary to successfully integrate ICT to improve the quality of instruction, and thus impact student learning.

A Focus on Professional Development including use of SMS

Through our ongoing professional development activities, we support the teachers in a shift toward learner-centered strategies. The teachers gradually move away from the traditional lecture-style approach and become facilitators of the learning process.

As part of our teacher professional development activities, we nurture professional learning communities where teachers support one another and create their own technology-integrated lessons. With ongoing teacher-to-teacher support, the content shared in the classroom is guaranteed to align with the Senegalese national curriculum, as well as the teacher’s personal instructional objectives.

Relying again on simple, available, and affordable technology, CyberSmart Africa uses SMS to extend our professional development. Every Monday, teachers receive by SMS a  “Weekly Challenge” exercise, a follow-up on themes introduced during face-to-face meetings and classroom observations.

The challenge may simply require a response to a question, such as “What software did you use the previous week?”. Other challenges may be task-oriented, such as “Co-facilitate a technology-integrated lesson with a colleague this week.” The challenges are designed to both provide direction, and encourage teachers to put their learning into practice. We have found that the challenges are motivating and fun, while also providing CyberSmart Africa with valuable feedback concerning the level of teacher participation.

Teaching reading in support of the USAID Education Strategy

The USAID Education Strategy (2011) intends to leverage ICT to improve reading in primary grades; and we observe that the possibilities to use the interactive whiteboard for reading instruction are seemingly endless. It provides a way to accommodate for different learning styles, as students not only write on the interactive whiteboard, but also read, speak, listen, and even manipulate otherwise static content.

As part of CyberSmart Africa’s Senegal implementation, for example, we have created the framework for a word magnet exercise, where students form sentences by dragging disassociated words, and sometimes images, from one part of the screen to the other. This creative learning exercise sharpens students’ ability to think critically, as they learn sentence construction and vocabulary.

With an interactive whiteboard in their classrooms, teachers and their students are not limited to the static content of their textbooks – often in short supply – nor are they obligated to search very far for content presented in different formats – audio, visual, and text. In an effort to produce appropriate localized reading materials, CyberSmart Africa has collaborated with teachers to create various talking books that integrate different learning modalities.

With each talking book, students are able to listen to the story, read the text themselves, participate in discussions based on the pictures, annotate the story directly on the interactive whiteboard screen, and more. These stories can be shared among teachers, and enriched and shared again. They present a unique learning opportunity for students who otherwise have little, if any regular exposure to a variety of reading materials.

Learning to read does, of course, require practice and ongoing support beyond the classroom. Still, the classroom is, and will be for the foreseeable future, the place where students learn to read. When teachers facilitate technology-integrated lessons directly in the classroom, they can draw from engaging content originating from teachers, the community, packaged software, and other sources globally.

Conclusion

Although use of an interactive whiteboard by no means represents a complete solution for reading improvement, our experience in Senegal indicates that teachers and students enthusiastically embrace use of the interactive whiteboard for active, whole class learning. The approach impacts large numbers of students with minimal equipment, and has the potential to scale because the Total Cost of Ownership is low. Still, it is important to emphasize that teachers need ongoing professional development in order to prepare high quality technology-integrated lessons, and to facilitate an active, learner-centered classroom. With the appropriate support, use of an interactive whiteboard holds tremendous potential to shape the classroom learning environment in Sub Saharan Africa, and globally.

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I will explain the project design and implementation below. First, however, I want to pose three questions to readers:

1. What funding mechanisms are most secure for telecenter sustainability?
2. Are videoconferencing training programs effective when trainees have no prior experience with these technologies?
3. What pedagogical assumptions are instilled into videoconferencing trainings and what repercussions do these assumptions cause?

THE NEED

For the first time, local schoolteachers in rural Mexico could receive teacher training, many of whom had never received formal teacher training. The non-profit planned to put these teachers through a 50-hour training course via videoconferencing tools and a satellite broadband Internet connection.

In a Mexican government program, and with assistance from the IDB, villagers from underserved areas in Mexico can receive a financial scholarship for college and a modest stipend in exchange for teaching elementary or middle school for two years in other rural communities. The program, CONAFE (which stands for National Council for to Promote Education), is a great asset to these communities who are otherwise without teachers.

The problem, however, is that the CONAFE teachers have not gone to college or received much formal training. Though the teachers are required to attend monthly seminars and receive a few weeks of training before entering the classroom, they are otherwise without preparation and come with no more than a high school education.

THE PROJECT

To solve this problem, a technology-focused LLC who provides Internet connectivity via satellite to rural villages worldwide partnered with a local NGO to open an Internet café in the largest village (about 80 families) in the area. A local social entrepreneur was selected, who bought the technological equipment from the local NGO at low interest rates, and the Internet café quickly opened. Then, the local NGO partnered with the non-profit who trains undereducated teachers to put the CONAFE teachers through a 50-hour training course via videoconferencing tools.

Considering the unfamiliarity with computers that the CONAFE teachers have, it was apparent that they would have to rely heavily on the local Internet café owner to help them connect to a videoconferencing platform and to use the computers. Some of the teachers had never used a computer before, and even the most advanced had only used them a dozen times. The idea was that through this training, the CONAFE schoolteachers would not only become better teachers, but they would learn the basics of computer and Internet usage, invaluable skills without which they would be lost once entering college.

DIFFICULTIES AND QUESTIONS

Unfortunately, however, the Internet service was cut after just three months of service to the café. The cost of the service increased ten-fold in the contract with the satellite service provider after three months, a key detail in the contract that the local NGO had overlooked. Now, it has been over one hundred days that the Internet café has been without service. The social entrepreneur feels disgruntled and embarrassed in front of the other villagers, and wants nothing to do with the local NGOs efforts to reconnect the café with new service providers.

Without this connection, the videoconferencing training obviously stopped. Consequently, it is unclear whether the training would have been effective. The first training took place just one week before the Internet was cut off. I was at the training and afterwards I had a series of question regarding the program. How would the mentor relationship between the teacher trainer from the non-profit and the recipient CONAFE teachers affect their self-confidence and later self-development efforts? How would the training affect the teachers’ actual actions in the classroom? How much freedom would the CONAFE teachers have to modify the national curriculums that they were mandated to teach? Was a certification from the non-profit organization enough to motivate the CONAFE teachers to participate in the program? Would the certificate actually prove to be helpful in securing future employment?

It is impossible to find these answers from the short-lived project in Mexico. What experiences have you, reader, had that could shed light on the effectiveness of videoconferencing training over international boundaries? And can telecenters be financially sustainable in rural villages as they are in urban cities in developing countries? What increases the probability of financial success? If not funded through user fees, what are implications of government sponsorship or subsidies in telecenter projects?

I’d appreciate your comments and feedback from your own experiences.

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SchoolNet SA is a not-for-profit NGO, operating in South Africa since 1997. In the early days we attempted to cover all aspects of ICT in schools by sourcing and providing hardware and software as well as training teachers. Our mission has always been to create communities of teachers using ICT to enhance teaching and learning. These days we concentrate on teacher development with a particular emphasis on ICT integration and on underserved schools. These two areas often appear to be incompatible, as I will try to explain.

What we do

Our most supportive funders are Intel and Microsoft but we also have other partners such as Oracle, Vodacom, Commonwealth of Learning, SITA, Nokia, Multichoice, Peermont, Adobe, Uniforum, provincial departments of education, and a number of universities. We could claim that SchoolNet has trained vast volumes of teachers, which we have, but we do not like to fixate on numbers. We would prefer to consider how effective our initiatives have been. Hit-and-run interventions are not our style; we like to prolong our relationships with schools.

Sadly we often fall into the trap of chasing numbers to satisfy funding targets, sometimes losing contact with schools after training. This is the reason why we have recently embarked on a SchoolNet SA premium membership drive with the intention of engaging with individual teachers and encouraging them to stay in touch with each other. Our focus on social networking through our Facebook page, newsletter, blog and twitter (@SchoolNetSA) accounts all contribute to this aim.

The biggest challenge we face is in encouraging teachers to improve the way they teach. This applies to teachers across a range of schools. At the e-Learning Africa conference, Tom Power from the Open University UK said that the only way there could be any hope of changing existing pedagogies was to provide new classroom activities involving new technologies. This is a philosophy to which SchoolNet SA has always subscribed.

Our strategy for growing teachers into more advanced stages of ICT use is an incremental one. Teachers are often unable to make the leap from their own ICT literacy to its classroom application where they engage learners in the use of ICT in the curriculum. To combat this, we designed a range of courses to cover each stage of maturity with ICT, from basic literacy to project-based learning and the higher levels of innovation.

The 3 key pillars that uphold this strategy and that should be in place from the moment that technology is introduced to the school are leadership, technical support, and a culture of professional development. The Partners in Learning ICT Leadership for Education Managers course introduces school leaders and local ICT government officials to a range of crucial educational ICT issues.

The Partners in Learning Student Help Desk course is an effective course for computer clubs of learners. This is relevant to schools where there is no option for first-level trouble-shooting other than costly companies which are even more expensive if the school is remote.

Schools that work hard at staff development find that the most effective method of sustaining teachers’ motivation in ICT integration is through peer coaching; pairs or small groups of teachers planning lessons together and sparking off ideas has an instant and positive effect on the quality of teaching and learning.

SchoolNet SA is just beginning to venture into m-learning, training teachers to track students who are participating in the NOKIA MoMaths project using MXit and Moodle. We see a viral uptake of any new project using MXit – e.g. HIV 360 had 39 000 teenage users within a couple of months.

SchoolNet has always tried to contribute towards national ICT discourse and policy and we are grateful that South Africa does have in place the e-Education White Paper (2003) and the Guidelines for Teacher Training and Professional Development in ICT (2007). Implementation of these policies on the other hand has been slow.

Lessons learned

1. Educational Technology interventions often forget about the “educational” part and consider it to be completed once they have installed the technology. This results in teachers not being trained and consequently hardware remaining unused.
2. We must split training sessions and revisit schools to allow for a period of practice and self study before the trainer returns to the school to consolidate.
3. Teachers complain that training sessions are too short and that they do not have enough time for training or for practice.
4. Cascaded training, where multiple training of trainers takes place, does not work; it dilutes learning and quality is jeopardised. If a project requires a high degree of scale, trainers should be trained by a national master trainer and thereafter train directly in schools themselves.
5. We are not reaching the knowledge deepening level of the UNESCO Framework. Intel Teach project based courses are at this level, where the emphasis is on higher order thinking skills. Insufficient teachers are completing Intel courses; only two provinces have invested seriously in Intel Teach. If we study the TPACK theory (Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge) it becomes clear that teachers in many of our schools have challenges in each of the 3 separate knowledge areas let alone in the 4 sections where these areas intersect.
6. Teachers are unaware of what is available. From the Gauteng Department of Education evaluation we conducted with SAIDE, it became evident that not only do teachers have little knowledge of what resources are available to them online, but they are unaware of the array of educational software provided on their own school networks. This is directly due to insufficient teacher professional development in initiatives that are technology driven.
7. Access for learners in high schools is reduced when schools decide to offer external exam subjects such as IT and CAT because these monopolise the computer rooms. Only schools with alternative access such as two computer rooms or a mobile lab should consider offering these subjects.
8. High school teachers often argue that they cannot integrate ICT because they have to complete their syllabus, instead of realising that ICT can greatly assist to achieve this.
9. The disconnect between teachers and learners is growing. Schools need to be connected and pedagogy has to adapt. Children are online and becoming more connected, living in an exciting world of communication and “instant” everything. Then in classrooms, teachers say, “open your books and turn to page …. “ A high dropout rate should not be a surprise. As the saying goes, “If children do not learn the way we teach then we must teach the way they learn.”
10. Beware of Interactive Whiteboards (IAW). IAW have proliferated in schools despite the expense and yet in many instances this has resulted in teaching methodology reverting back to being teacher-centred.
11. Sugata Mitra’s TED Talk, Child-driven Education, illustrates through the cognitive studies that he has conducted. that children learn more effectively through discourse in groups. Mitra takes “child-centred” one step further to become “child-driven”.
12. At SchoolNet we are sceptical of educational software that does not require 21st Century learning skills and wary that some m-learning projects use merely drill and kill content.
13. It is important to commence ICT initiatives with the school leadership because they have great influence over the future take-up of technology by teaching staff.

What we recommend

We recommend sustainable plans for staff development in schools; ICT planning that is focused on the teaching and learning needs of educators. Teachers require lifelong learning opportunities.
Connectivity in schools has to be provided and at a reduced, or no cost, to the school.

We are seeing the value of android handheld and mobile devices with charging trolleys because these satisfy the need for learners to be involved, hands on and not just one learner at a time; they have to share the technology and share ideas, just as Mitra advocates.

Mobile phone use in schools has to be accepted. Teachers can collect second hand phones and allow working in groups to ensure that learners without phones are not excluded.

Obviously the one recommendation that SchoolNet is going to make time and time again is that there has to be greater investment in teacher development. The business community has to be strategically involved; they must specify the skills they require school leavers to have so that teaching is forced to adapt to developing those skills.

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Computer labs were established throughout the University to expand access to computers for students. There are just over 5,000 computers available for students in more than 100 computer labs, and this number is increasing annually. The ratio of computers to students is approximately 6:1.

Infrastructure was put in place, and training courses have been introduced to enable academics to optimise the opportunities that web-based learning can bring and to further enrich the learning environment. Infrastructure was also put in place for lecturers to communicate with their students via SMS technology.

The University also uses Blackboard as its learning management system (LMS). This system was specifically adapted to suit the needs of the University of Pretoria and is called ClickUP. All students receive an e-mail address by default when they enrol at the University, and can access the University’s online environment via their student number, not just on campus, but from wherever they are. All contact students must successfully complete a compulsory semester course in computer literacy in their first year of study.

The growth in the number of modules with online (Click UP) support has grown substantially in all faculties/schools since 2005. The total percentage of modules with web support grew from 37.7% in 2005 to more than 75% in 2010.

The table below provides an overview of the growth in e-teaching and learning at the University of Pretoria since 2002. In 2009, all academic departments at the University made use of online teaching and learning to a greater or lesser extent.

E-assessment has also developed momentum since 2002. More and more academics started to introduce e-assessment, with the result that more than 380,000 e-tests were conducted in 2009 and 405,877 in 2010.

The profile of the University of Pretoria, as described above, mirrors that of any good university in any developed context. The reason why the University embarked on this e-learning strategy is because the technology is available, affordable, and appropriate to use. Any university that ignores the enrichment that online programmes can bring is irresponsible. It is, however, also true that, universities that embark on IT-enabled learning that cannot be supported by the bandwidth, financial resources, adequate hardware and a target market that can access the technology can be described as irresponsible.

The problem in all developing contexts is that the distribution of ICT is limited to “developed” pockets in these countries. This is also true for South Africa, and is clearly evident in the distance programmes of the University of Pretoria.

In 2002, the Faculty of Education at the University of Pretoria established a Unit for Distance Education to manage the distance education initiative of the Faculty. The Faculty of Education is the only faculty at the University that also presents dedicated distance education programmes over and above the contact programmes. Thousands of teachers (specifically black teachers) were seriously disadvantaged in the apartheid era by inadequate and low-quality teacher training programmes at inferior teacher training colleges established specifically for black teachers.

These teachers teach predominantly in rural areas throughout South Africa. The only way that these teachers can improve their qualifications is through the mode of distance education. In order to play a constructive and significant role in the upgrading of teacher qualifications in South Africa, the Faculty developed distance education programmes in specific subject areas.

In 2002, the University recognised that the student population for distance education differs in many ways from that of contact students. It was therefore decided that the presentation of the distance programmes should predominantly be paper-based, with structured opportunities for face-to-face sessions and other student support services. It was decided that, once students enrolled, an analysis of the student profile would be done to direct the introduction of appropriate ICT to support and enhance learning. The LMS and necessary ICT infrastructure for contact students was available to deliver the distance education programmes online.

Since 2002, just over 39,000 students have enrolled in the distance education programme. Since then, almost 17,000 have graduated. At present, there are approximately 20,000 students in the programme. The distance education students at the University of Pretoria are all teachers with a minimum three-year qualification. Almost 80% of these students are women and more than 85% are older than 35. Just over 50% of the student population are graduate students. The majority, by far, lives and teaches in rural communities throughout South Africa. This profile differs fundamentally from the profile of the University’s contact students.

The technology profile of the distance education students in 2002 and 2003 showed that almost all students had access to or owned a mobile phone. Very few students indicated that they had an e-mail address. Fewer than 5% of the students indicated that they had access to a computer at home or at work. Only 1% indicated that they had access to the Internet.

Profile of students who enrolled for the first time: 2002 to 2003

The above statistics directed the University’s decision about whether or not to introduce the web based/online delivery mode for distance students. This profile also prompted the University to start exploring ways of using mobile phones in its distance programmes. A decision was taken to load all the programme material, with the exception of the textbooks, on the University’s LMS (ClickUP). It was, however, decided that this would not be an interactive site, but only a depository where distance students could access their learning material, as well as the latest tutorial letters and administrative information. Information on the availability of learning material on the website and how to access the site is continuously communicated to existing and new students. Almost no students have ever accessed the site over the years.

Profile of students who enrolled for the first time: 2004 to 2006

For the period 2004 to 2006, the mobile phone profile stayed the same. The number of students who have an e-mail address remained very low. This is also the case for Internet access.

For the period 2007 to 2009, a growth started to be observed in the percentage of students with both e-mail addresses and Internet access. The growth in Internet access rose annually from 2% in 2007 to 7% in 2009, while growth in e-mail use grew from 20% in 2007 to 35% in 2008. However, it declined again in 2009 to less than 20%.

Profile of students who enrolled for the first time: 2007 to 2009

There is, however, a noticeable growth in ownership or availability of computers for distance education students from 2002 to 2010. The figures below give a clear indication of this trend.

The technology profile of the distance education students at the University of Pretoria mirrors the reality of the broader technology profile in South Africa and also in Africa. There are those communities – especially in urban areas – that have comprehensive and adequate ICT connectivity, while the majority of the population living in rural areas have limited or no ICT connectivity.

It was mentioned earlier that, as early as 2003, the University accepted that the technology profile of distance education students differs significantly from that of students on campus and that the delivery of distance education programmes should reflect this reality. It was, therefore, decided that the University should continue to improve the quality of its paper-based learning material and expand and strengthen its student support services within the limitations of the technology profile of the students.

Over the years, the University carefully monitored the technology profile of its students and introduced – in a carefully planned manner – technologies that were accessible, dependable, and affordable to students. This included extensive use of SMSs and, because of the growth in ownership/access to computers, the inclusion of CDs in the learning material. However, because not all students have access to a computer, the information on the CDs is not compulsory content, but information that will enrich their studies, for example, an e-library with recommended readings.

Because a greater number of students have access to computers, more students are typing their assignments and the University has even experienced a rise in the number of students who submit their assignments via e-mail.

The University will continue to monitor the technology profile of its distance education students and introduce appropriate use of technologies to suit this profile. The University foresees a time when the distance education programmes will migrate from being predominantly paper-based to being predominantly delivered online. This is, however, not likely to happen in the near future.

In 2002, a decision was taken to develop a comprehensive and integrated SMS support service for distance students.

The table below provides an overview of the number of SMSs students receive in the course of a year.

In the first two years, students received a limited number of SMSs. These were mainly to remind them about due dates of assignments. From 2004, the student database was adjusted so that, when a parcel is sent to students, they receive an SMS with the tracking number of the parcel by default. The University also moved away from ad hoc SMSs to a structured SMS communication plan that was carefully designed to enhance and support learning.

It was clear from the start of the study that SMSs could not be used for in-depth academic conversations or to convey complex academic content. It is more about students’ perceptions and how they react when they receive an SMS from the University. In a study among 3,121 students conducted by the Unit for Distance Education (Hendrikz, Viljoen and Adams, 2006), students indicated that they like receiving SMSs from the University. They reported that the SMSs made them feel closer to the University, supported them in structuring their studies, and increased their level of motivation.

The University also embarked on a pilot project to use academic SMSs to support learning. The purpose of this was to try and mimic what a lecturer does in a classroom situation and to translate that into an SMS to support distance students academically.

Conclusion

The Internet and mobile phone penetration rate, as well as South Africa’s ICT development index (IDI), is reflected in the ICT profile of the University of Pretoria as a micro reflection of the reality of South Africa. The University is capable of delivering online distance education programmes, but that would have excluded thousands of students from continuing their studies.

Africa needs to guard against ignorance about the realities of the availability and use of ICT. It must not pretend that it is on par with the developed world and should avoid introducing strategies that are not in line with the realities and context of Africa. Millions of dollars have been wasted on poor ICT decisions in Africa because strategies are not aligned with the realities and context of this continent.

Africa can learn a very important lesson from the experience of the University of Pretoria. One could argue that, if the most advanced sub-Saharan country in Africa reflects this reality in its student population, this student population should be very similar to that of other African countries. We are challenged by the ICT realities in Africa to carefully plan and contextualise our e-learning strategies before introducing them.

In education, it should not be about technology, but rather about how we can expand access to study and how we can improve support to our students in a way that will at least give them a fair opportunity at success.

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