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Professor Asha Kanwar Commonwealth of Learning

learning for development. Digital Divide or Digital Dividend? POSTCARDS FROM THE SOUTH. Professor Asha Kanwar Commonwealth of Learning. This Presentation. The Digital Divide ICTs in Education policy Open Education Resources The‘new learner’: new teacher? Towards a ‘dividend’ for all?.

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Professor Asha Kanwar Commonwealth of Learning

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  1. learning for development Digital Divide or Digital Dividend? POSTCARDS FROM THE SOUTH Professor Asha Kanwar Commonwealth of Learning

  2. This Presentation • The Digital Divide • ICTs in Education policy • Open Education Resources • The‘new learner’: new teacher? • Towards a ‘dividend’ for all?

  3. The Digital Divide

  4. outdoor class (Africa) house (Malawi) MIT Medialab (USA) computer class (Europe) divides 4

  5. Access to Internet

  6. Internet Use From www.internetworldstats.com

  7. Access to phones

  8. Knowledge Prosperity Inclusion Geography Race Gender Economic Disability Digital Divide Divides

  9. The development divide Asia leads the decline in global poverty Proportion of people living on less than $1 a day, 1990 and 2002 (Percentage) Source:The Millennium Development Goals Report 2006

  10. ICTs in Education Policy

  11. The need for policy Without policy, the ICT landscape is the modern equivalent of the Wild West and gunslingers abound fighting each other for power. N. George

  12. Survey of ICT for Education in Africa: Infodev & COL

  13. The study indicates that • National ICT policies act as a catalyst for ICT policy development in education. • Most policies have been developed in the last five years. • Most ICT/education policies are comprehensive

  14. The study indicates that…. • All policies stress enhancing access to ICT tools and connectivity • Policies show differential implementation progress • Public-private partnerships are seen as critical • Digital divide is also a gender divide

  15. ICT in Education Policy April 2007

  16. Lessons • Situate ICT/education policies within the development framework of each country • National policies on ICT have to provide necessary frameworks for cross-subsidisation, multiple sources of funding and long-term recovery of costs. • Realistic and sustainable implementation plans

  17. Lessons • A more proactive approach to gender inclusion • A coherent policy for the integration of technologies in education

  18. Open Education Resources (OERs)

  19. “If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas”. GB Shaw

  20. Open Education Resources (OERs) • Open source software • Course development & delivery tools • Open course content

  21. Principles: Open Source • From elitism to mass ownership • No centre, no hierarchy • Inherent capability to self-organise • Amateurs too can be producers of content • Collaboration for the common good

  22. The dynamic context of ODL • 1969-99—four generations—print, audio, video, teleconferencing, broadcasts, online courses, learning objects(tech for education) • 2000– fifth generation—fully integrates pedagogy, educational and institutional management and technology (tech in and for education)

  23. this courseware is mine to this courseware is for (open) mining • MIT: Open Courseware sharing knowledge • 2. UKOU: Open Content Initiative sharing learning • 3. VUSSC: Collaborative contentsharing teaching and learning

  24. Commonwealth of Learning helps governments and institutions to • expand the scope, scale and quality of learning • promote policies, build models, develop materials, enhance ICT capacity and • nurture networks in support of development goals. 80% “For my generation the great innovation was the course team. For the next I suspect that it will be Open Educational Resources.” Sir John Daniel, 2007 Slide 2

  25. VUSSC Virtual University for Small States of the Commonwealth OER Network • 28 Commonwealth countries • Collaborating online using WikiEducator‏ • Building capacity through regional boot camps (Mauritius, Singapore and Trinidad and Tobago, Samoa)‏

  26. Goal 8: Digital Divide

  27. Lessons • ‘Ownership’ critical • Interface b/w the decision-makers and doers • Clear roles and responsibilities • ‘participation with gentle expert guidance’

  28. Critical success factors • Commitment • Capacity • Connectivity: physical and social • Content

  29. Content April 2007

  30. Development costs of DE resources Cost categories Instructional design, multimedia design, editing etc. 20% 80% Academic authoring time

  31. Development costs of OERs Authoring and design costs shared among participating institutions Mackintosh

  32. The New Learner: a New Teacher?

  33. Generation Next • Half the world’s population (6.5 billion) is under 20 • 2 billion teenagers in developing world

  34. The ‘new’ learner • Digital ‘natives’ • Digital ‘migrants’ • From ‘constructivism’ to ‘connectivism’? Mark Prensky

  35. The ‘New’ Learner • seeks immediate gratification rather than delayed responses; • prefers fun rather than suffering; • wants education that is relevant to real life • would rather have social relations and interactivity than isolation. Wood and Zurcher

  36. One Laptop Per Child (OLPC)

  37. One computer per teacher • USD 300, Intel • Loans from Banks • Less than USD 10 per month

  38. The ‘New’ Teacher? • ‘unlearn’ • collaboration in the time of competition • find ways to cater to individual learning habits and strategies as never before.

  39. The ‘New’ Teacher • helps learners construct knowledge for themselves • encourages multiple perspectives • uses multiple ICT tools rather than only the printed text • promotes creative and innovative thinking over memorisation

  40. Implications for institutions • Research on the ‘new’ learner • Equipping the learner to be an agent of change • Pedagogic transformations

  41. Access to ICTs Access to ICTs grows fastest in the mobile sector. Number of telephone subscriptions and internet connections per 100 population, 1990-2005 (Percentage) Source:The Millennium Development Goals Report 2007

  42. DE Unit, Univ of Pretoria • 14,000 teachers • 1% internet; 99% phones • Administrative • Academic • By 2010, 2.5 billion users of mobile phones

  43. Towards a dividend for all

  44. Initiatives in the last 10 years • content first • people & learning first • technologyfirst AVU • African Virtual University OLPC • One Laptop Per Child VUSSC • Virtual University for Small States of the Commonwealth (COL) TTISSA • Teachers Training Initiative for Sub-Saharian Africa (UNESCO) TESSA • Teachers Education for Sub-Saharian Africa (AVU\UKOU) governance (top-down) India PanAfrican Network AVU (1st phase) AVU (2nd phase) TTISSA TESSA empowerment (bottom-up) VUSSC 1st gen. 2nd gen. 3rd gen. OLPC less sustainable more sustainable

  45. From ‘divide’ to ‘dividend’ • the emphasis on people, rather than on technologies • consider knowledge as a social product emerging as an effect of a network of human, text, machines • see learning as a process of knowledge creation

  46. In other worlds ‘Bridging’ • Generations of technology? • Generations of people? • Generations of practice? Or do we need a new vocabulary and new strategies?

  47. We have the technology • Do we have the politics and the political will to convert the ‘divide’ into a ‘dividend’?

  48. Whose responsibility? • The governments’s? • Development partners? • Civil society? • Providers? • Or all of the above?

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