from: lentell_h 5 months ago

We live in a world where the potential of technology to offer new ways of learning and communicating is seemingly limitless. It is exciting. It is empowering. Technology holds out the promise that education can reach people and parts of the world previously denied access. Get the technology out there and educational provision will be scaled up and children from the developing world will have the access to learning so long denied to them. Vast amounts of money are being spent promoting this view. Many careers are being built. Many reputations are being made. But can this happen? Using the case study of the University of the South Pacific and my experience of working for the Commonwealth of Learning I want to argue that this a dangerous fallacy. Sadly the promoters of this approach have forgotten, or ignore, what practitioners on the ground know so well. ICTs like educational media and the simpler technologies of blackboards and chalk are merely tools. If these tools are to provide ongoing sustainable provision, (long after the development agencies and personnel have moved on to the next “sexy” topic), attention has to be given to long term engagement with the need to build on the ground competent educational institutional leadership and management and institutional operational capacity at all levels. This will not happen overnight. In failing to address these issues we are promoting a model of technology in education in the developing world as the difference that makes no difference, the change that brings no change.

Tags: open and distance learning for