Education IT - equal opportunities for all?

By Amelia Kwok | 9 October 2008 | Permanent link | 2 comments

For much of the region education is going digital – but will this leave some countries and students behind? I had the good fortune to be in Bangkok recently for a UNESCO-organised seminar focusing on the role of IT in driving the modernisation of the region’s education systems – and this was a persistent theme for participants.

When you are struggling to provide an education in straitened circumstances, as many teachers are in the region are, having the imagination and perseverance to propose investing in technology to improve the educational experience marks you out as out of the ordinary.

This was one of the reasons why I felt inspired by the opportunities for development more than down-heartened at the scale of the challenge: at the UNESCO event the bulk of the participants were people like Julito Aligaen, part of the project team which won a UNESCO award in recognition for being a noteworthy ‘Education Planner and Administrator’. A computer, a 21” TV and audio support – and the rest was magic, providing students with access to a world of knowledge, as well as to their peers in the country. And all for US$8 per student annually.

There were a lot of other ‘Aligaens’ sharing their stories with me at the seminar, and a common theme was how little awareness they were able to achieve for their hard work to improve the systems within which they operated.

Aligaen lamented to me his disappointment in the lack of support from his native country from a publicity point of view, in contrast to the support he received from UNESCO Bangkok and the newspapers in Thailand, such as the Thailand Post and The Nation. “It is difficult when you are not supported morally, much less, financially,” says Aligaen. He explained that his project team had to use their spare time to meet education planners informally to garner support, in a public vehicle or even at the market.

Typically when stakeholders discuss digital inclusion issues we tend to focus on access and budget - whether to electricity or to the funding of a laptop for every child. But a crucial element – providing support to the change agents themselves is as important. Capacity development is more than IT literacy and investment in hardware; it needs to be viewed as providing mentoring, encouragement, and respect for those rare individuals who see opportunities where the rest of us see nothing.

Sri Lanka’s Minister for Education, Susil Premajayantha, was also present at the event, and told me that the key issue was whether the system was as committed to the individual teacher as much as the teacher was committed to the system. Wise words; now we just have to live up to them.

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