Professor Asha Kanwar

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Digital Divide or Digital Dividend? POSTCARDS
FROM THE SOUTH

• Professor Asha Kanwar
• Commonwealth of Learning

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This Presentation

• The Digital Divide
• ICTs in Education policy
• Open Education Resources
• Thenew learner new teacher?
• Towards a dividend for all?

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The Digital Divide
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divides
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Access to Internet
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Internet Use
From www.internetworldstats.com
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Access to phones
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Divides
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The development divide
Asia leads the decline in global
poverty Proportion of people living on less than
1 a day, 1990 and 2002 (Percentage) So
urceThe Millennium Development Goals Report 2006
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ICTs in Education Policy
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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

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Survey of ICT for Education in Africa Infodev
COL
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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

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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

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ICT in Education Policy
April 2007
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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

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Lessons

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

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Open Education Resources (OERs)
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• 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

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Open Education Resources (OERs)

• Open source software
• Course development delivery tools
• Open course content

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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

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The dynamic context of ODL

• 1969-99four generationsprint, audio, video,
  teleconferencing, broadcasts, online courses,
  learning objects(tech for education)
• 2000 fifth generationfully integrates pedagogy,
  educational and institutional management and
  technology (tech in and for education)

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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 content sharing
  teaching and learning

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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.

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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
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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)?

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Goal 8 Digital Divide
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Lessons

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

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Critical success factors

• Commitment
• Capacity
• Connectivity physical and social
• Content

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Content

• April 2007

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Development costs of DE resources
Cost categories
Instructional design, multimedia design, editing
etc.
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80
Academic authoring time
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Development costs of OERs
Authoring and design costs shared among
participating institutions
Mackintosh
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The New Learner a New Teacher?
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Generation Next

• Half the worlds population (6.5 billion) is
  under 20
• 2 billion teenagers in developing world

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The new learner

• Digital natives
• Digital migrants
• From constructivism to connectivism?
• Mark Prensky

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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

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One Laptop Per Child (OLPC)
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One computer per teacher

• USD 300, Intel
• Loans from Banks
• Less than USD 10 per month

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The New Teacher?

• unlearn
• collaboration in the time of competition
• find ways to cater to individual learning habits
  and strategies as never before.

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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

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Implications for institutions

• Research on the new learner
• Equipping the learner to be an agent of change
• Pedagogic transformations

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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) SourceThe Millennium
Development Goals Report 2007
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DE Unit, Univ of Pretoria

• 14,000 teachers
• 1 internet 99 phones
• Administrative
• Academic
• By 2010, 2.5 billion users of mobile phones

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Towards a dividend for all
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Initiatives in the last 10 years
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
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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

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In other worlds

• Bridging
• Generations of technology?
• Generations of people?
• Generations of practice?
• Or do we need a new vocabulary and new
  strategies?

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We have the technology

• Do we have the politics and the political will to
  convert the divide into a dividend?

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Whose responsibility?

• The governmentss?
• Development partners?
• Civil society?
• Providers?
• Or all of the above?

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What kinds of leadership?

• Transactional?
• Transformational?
• Both?
• How will this change take place? Who will lead
  the process?

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TIME person of the Year 2006

• YOUhave
• the freedom and the responsibility
• We have nothing to lose but the divide!

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Consider

• human resources are the essential infrastructure
  without which technology means nothing
• Manuel
  Castells (2001)

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thank-you