ICTlogy

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Notes from the UOC UNESCO Chair in e-Learning Fifth International Seminar. Fighting the Digital Divide through Education)

Reflections & Conclusions

The real fact of the digital divide

• Multiple factors
• Many different (digital) divides, in relationship to context: culture, geography, education, wealth
• Where to start? Many and different approaches

Importance of the “digital” issue

• The “digital” embedded in the socioeconomic divide
• The “digital” embedded in the education divide
• What’s the relationship between digital and analogue variables

ICT4D

• Awareness raising
• Build from previous experience (e.g. best practices)
• Open processes, open outputs, open participation
• If added value, will to pay (i.e. impact and sustainability)
• Evaluation, assessment

Community

• Communities of practice
• Leveraging communities by focusing on their needs
• Self-organization
• Partnerships
• Networks
• Distributed agoras to debate

ICTs and Education

• Technology not to replace the teacher
• Need to train teachers in ICT usage
• Who’s the expert? The role of youngsters
• Relevance of open content (i.e. OER)
• The networked, multidisciplinary and multicultural teacher & faculty
• Gain from system disruptions to review teaching & assessment

Digital literacies

• Multiple literacies: textual, visual… and language
• Evolving and pervasive nature of digital literacies
• Digital skills as part of the curriculum, embedded in the whole educational process
• ICTs as a language, not just technology
• Training the trainers, educating the educators

What’s next? (VI Seminar 2009)

• Best strategies of knowledge diffusion
• Semantic web in Education
• Teacher training in the Information Society
• Awareness raising in policy-makers and decision-takers
• Education for citizenship, values and attitudes
• Back to open education
• Social learning, peer learning, emergent learning

Acknowledgements

I would personally like to thank the speakers — for their collaboration —, the audience — for their engagement and participation — and, most especially, to Carlos Albaladejo for being a perfect partner in this trip.

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Notes from the UOC UNESCO Chair in e-Learning Fifth International Seminar. Fighting the Digital Divide through Education)

Begoña Gros, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya

65% have computers at home, but half of them have access to the Internet. 70% of companies have access to the Internet, but the use of the Internet drops to 50%. Access of citizens to e-Administration is about 45%. 90% of schools and 100% of universities are connected to the Internet, however teachers are not using it for teaching.

Digital natives? = Digital Fluents?
Tíscar Lara, Universidad Carlos III

Being fluent and being stimulated has nothing to do. From the technological paradigm to the communicative and social paradigm.

Digital skills

• information access
• information use
• fluen in different languages and media
• critical thingkin
• knowledge share and publication
• collaborative work
• social values and citizen awareness

Product, write, construct, encode vs. analyze, decode. For the first time both sides of the equation are available to everyone.

More than using technology, it’s better to learn how to take be in a participative culture.

When designing curricula, we should forget about hardware and software, but being centered in problems:

• building and managing a digital identity
• privacy
• intellectual property
• what does it mean being a consumer in the Information Society
• how to understand marketing and advertising

Above all, values have to permeate the whole process of acquiring and using digital skills:

• Fake culture can be very creative and thrilling and liberating, but, on the other hand, we have to tell truth from lies.
• We are constantly exposing our privacy — and our familiars’ and friends’ — and we have to be aware of the pros and cons of such exposure
• Have to learn to distinguish information and advertisements
• Amateur vs. professional

Digital literacy, what for? A digital literacy tied to values and citizenship:

• Have voice for awareness
• Engage in civic participation
• Reduce any divide
• Build a better world

Interactional Space
Javier Nó, Universidad Pontificia de Salamanca

The space determines the educational behaviour. Physical space and technological environment determine interactions. People are part of the environment.

An specific interactional space is the definition of the environment where communication takes place. A learning space is an interactional space that has to be designed. Which are the features of the environment taht produce effective interactions?

Dimensions that have changed that enable universal access

• Physical access
• Digital skills
• Affordance: usability
• Affordance: language
• Affordance: visual literacy
• Affordance: accessibility

Affordance takes access to another level, beyond “just” access.

Digital skills are not enough: the Internet is a specific culture with rules, meanings, organization and a visual language created and negotiated by a very small group of users… the users that have the power to negotiate.

To be able to be part of the Net, one has to understand this culture beyond just practical skills. And to negotiate the culture of the Net, one has to be engaged and implied. So, the question is how to design a space to promote implication, so that, through implication, comprehensive and shared meanings are created.

There is a trade-off between the certainty that is needed for structured knowledge, vs. the uncertainty that an innovative environment brings with it. How to deal with this? How to match innovation with structured knowledge and education?

The crossroads, the interactional space: affordance, negotiation, certainty.

Pedro Aguilera, Fundación Esplai

Mission of Fundación Esplai: to educate during leisure time.

Projects to overcome the digital divide: Red Conecta and Conecta Joven.

The digital divide is but a reflection of social exclusion. We have to avoid the “ostrich strategy”: “technology is not my business”. But also, the technological hype: “we have to wire everything”. In between both models, strategy, step by step processes.

Four main drivers: to reduce the digital divide, to improve employability, to take advange of the potential proximity of the organizations, to eliminate mental and physical barriers.

The usual question is not “how can I use technology”, but “why do I need technology”.

Three main lines of action:

• Training: functional digital skills
• Community strengthening: learn a common “language”
• Access to labour market

Main targets: women over 45, immigrants, unemployed, elderly people, youth at risk of social exclusion, poverty pockets, people from disadvantaged neighbourhoods.

Telecenters are part of the local NGO, to embed it inside an existing local community. Besides saving money by saving resources, the participation inside the community makes the e-inclusion projects way more powerful and socially sustainable.

On the other hand, telecenters work within a network to share resources, methodologies, etc.

The central key of the e-inclusion methodology is the person, the telecenter motivators: people can’t trust a machine, people trust persons. These motivators have at their own reach many resources to support their work: handbook of the “perfect motivator”, a network of motivators and online cooperation tools, tool-kits, etc.

The key issue is understanding e-Inclusion as a social project. As such, partnerships have to be build with local NGOs, Enterprises and the Public Administration being part of them.

Q & A

Mariana Petru: we have to be able to speak both of digital skills and digital competences. Besides, the cultural fact and self-awareness is also a very interesting one. We have to include in training the learning to learn part, and the learning from one’s own life part. Tíscar Lara: Learning to learn is so transversal that it has to be embedded in all disciplines and across the whole educational process. Javier Nó: if we are able to innovate the learning process itself, then all this things will come together.

Francisco Lupiáñez: is there a need to speak about the digital divide if everybody agrees that technology is not the key? Pedro Aguilera: the digital divide is, of course, but a part of a whole. But is a good indicator and a good way where to start. The e-inclusion is a crack in the exclusion wall that you can leverage to achieve broader goals. Tíscar Lara: it is true that we are seduced by ICTs, but ICTs are so comprehensive that approaching them you’re actually approaching a really broad range of “divides”. Javier Nó: ICTs have a versatility you do not find in the “analogue” world.

Linda Roberts: Should people have to learn how to use ICTs at all? What happens with multiculturality? Javier Nó: Of course, best of options would be that people learnt but that what they learnt was a technology designed for and by them, in a dialogue, in an agreement. Pedro Aguilera: ICTs enable multicultural preservation and even enhancement, way higher traditional means of communication.

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Notes from the UOC UNESCO Chair in e-Learning Fifth International Seminar. Fighting the Digital Divide through Education)

Hole in the Wall
Sugata Mitra, Newcastle University

Strong correlation between school performance and geographical distance from Delhi, the capital: the longer the distance, the lower the performance. Teachers from rural areas, indeed, do want to move to Delhi or closer to the capital, to an urban centre. Remoteness reduces the quality of education.

But remoteness not necessarily has to be geographic: there is some sort of “quality remoteness”, where some teachers want to get closer to “good” schools, and feel remote by staying in a low quality school. Remoteness, thus, has many shapes and depends on the cultural, economic, social, geographical, etc. contexts.

Alternative primary education is needed where there are no schools, or schools are not good enough, or where there are no teachers, or where teachers are not good enough.

Educational technology should be designed for and reach the underprivileged first. Indeed, educational technology is perceived to be over-hyped and under-performing in schools that have good students and teachers. And educational technology should be designed by educators, not corporations, politicians, lobbies, mass media…

Values are acquired: doctrine and dogma are imposed.

Self organizing system

Self organizing systems structure themselves without any intervention from outside the system (e.g. John Conway’s Game of Life). Is it possible to set some kind of self-organizing system whose output is an educational system? The Kalkaji experiment: a computer fixed on a wall, and, without instructions, children learnt how to browse (by essay an error) and did browse and teach each other how to.

The Madantusi experiment: will English stop them from using the computer? with enough time, the kids learnt how to play games with the computer and asked for more power and better pointing devices… and saw English not as a barrier but as a challenge: “if I learn English, I’ll be able to use the computer better”. Assertiveness, not negative statements.

Evolution of the experiments

But, are these projects replicable? sustainable? adaptable to different contexts? Can really emerge educational systems from such experiences?

The pattern was: discover the use of the computer, discover browsing… and, systematically, discover Google and see the whole experience shifting towards a higher level.

Next step: install a software to learn English, based on voice recognition. No instructions provided. Again, with few time children were using all the features of the system.

But more than computer literacy, other things were happening.

SOLE: Self Organised Learning Environments

Groups of children interacting with groups of computers. No timetables, no instructions. They are able to find solutions to problems given. Questions being: is this learning? How far can this go (e.g. learn Quantum Mechanics)?

What about the teacher? Is the teacher just presence? Is the teacher guidance? Experiment: put the teacher in a screen (videoconference) with webcams communicating in both directions (teacher-classroom). It’s interactive, and somehow present.

Some conclusions: Education for development

Development is about reducing inequalities. And engagement, and effort, is worth it if the reward (reducing the personal distance with the rest) is big. If there is no reward (inequalities are relatively small), effort does not pay off, and thus engaging in learning is a tough thing to do. How to fight this lack of commitment, or vision, toward one’s own education?

Some conclusions

• Groups of children can learn to use computers, irrespective of who or where they are.
• Children share a computer and get literate in 3 months: learn by doing, but also learn by watching.
• $0.03 per child and day
• Computers improve maths and English (even biotechnology)
• Improve school attendance
• Anwer school leaving examination questions
• Reduce petty crime
• Generate local goodwill
• Change social values
• Children in unsupervised groups can self organise to do all these things, and teach themselves English (speaking and pronunciation too) or improve algebra

Can they change their own aspirations? Can they achieve their own schooling?

Q & A

Paul West: Can such a method be mainstreamed in any way? A: It can be done. Examples and evidence are more convincing than good words.

Q: Can it be applied with adults? A: Adult ego is a strong inhibitor and it might probably not work.

Emma Kiselyova: Can we use second hand hardware to replicate this kind of experiences at a broad scale? A: Children are enraged if they do not get the appropriate (cutting edge) technology. So, the answer is: let’s keep the old computers for us, as we are less power demanding, and send the new ones, as the kids do need more powerful features.

Q: Would this work with retarded or autistic children? A: Autistic children are brilliant, but lack the social skills, a clue of success of these experiences. And brilliant as they are, they might end up going on their own.

Ismael Peña-López: if kids are now so exposed to abundance of information, and learn to collaborate and learn together with other students, are they going to become different adults? A: Definitely. Some youngsters are already collaborating in most intensive ways and even challenging their workspaces and ways their jobs are managed or structured. Surely the nature itself of Education has to change because the reality has dramatically changed. Because full generations are chaning.

Francisco Lupiáñez: Besides remoteness, GDP per capita, or health conditions, do they affect too? Beyond a threshold (i.e. 200miles from the urban center), all these variables are homogeneous in rural India, while remoteness still suffers a gradient in relationship to performance.

Larry Nelson: What’s next after getting the skills? What’s the teacher role? A: After skills, games come. Then, Google opened a large gate of knowledge, really useful for homework. And it was on an imitation basis: the one that takes advantage of using Google to do schoolwork, is imitated by the others not to lag behind. Teachers end up encouraging this kind of behaviour: forbidding gaming is breaking the whole emerging learning process. And there are astonishing stories about kids leaving schools, having smashing success at high school, and attributing it to the computer experience.

Q: Are there any filters in the Internet access? A: Not even there are no filters at all, but even the default set links by the users were overridden from start. And public exposure avoids vandalism, criminal or socially unaccepted browsing. And as the computer is so needed by the students, they will not risk losing access to it.

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Wikiversity
Teemu Leinonen, Media Lab - University of Art and Design Helsinki

Any true understanding is dialogic in nature (Bakhtin).

UNESCO’s Young Digital Creators: UNESCO Young Digital Creators (YDC) Educator’s Kit.

Evolution of learning technologies

Is it learning with technology or learning from technology?

The best way to predict the future is to invent it, Alan Kay, 1971.

An evolution of instructional technology:

• The media center as a separate artifact, segregated from the gallery, meeting room and seminar room.
• The web becomes more and more the desktop, the meeting and collaborating place.
• Pervasiveness of mobile phones brings on the possibility of mobile learning, that has to cohabit with e-learning as we knew it.
• Affordability of multimedia devices that can record, create or edit sound, audio, etc. enrich e-learning experiences with rich media created by the user. This leads us to projects as the mobile audio encyclopaedia.
• Then to augmented reality with mobile phones like Shedlight.

Wikiversity

Course: Composing free and open online educational resources: a course planned (and paid by) Finnish students, but followed by +60 more people around the world. And now it can be (and it actually is) replicated elsewhere, at any time.

The syllabus, the assignments… everything took place on the Wikiversity page of the course.

Wiki platforms allow the collaborative creation of very simple — though effective — learning objects.

Three metaphors of learning

• Knowledge acquisition: you read a book, you learn. But access to courseware is not an issue when it is abundant. Learning is an individual cognitive process. Memorizing.
• Participation: learning is a socio-cultural process. Acting.
• Knowledge creation: learning is a socio-cultural process with an intention to produce artefacts. Cultivating.

In Wikipedia all three metaphors take place. But where’s the place for educators? What and how are they doing?

Grundtvig’s Folkenhøjskole: the university is more than four walls, it is a social dialogue. Freire: non-institutional education. Ollman: the University as an institution that is educating and nurturing acting people, but that has built a chasm between it and the society. Hakkarainen: Progressive Inquiry [reminds me of Participatory Action Research].

Q & A

Paul West: how to maintain, validate wikis? Does it leave room for the teacher? How digitally literate do they have to be? A: Le Mill makes it easier for the teacher to create content.

Q: is it really possible to have cultural diversity in wikis/wikipedias? A: Actually, the different structures themselves of the several wikipedias do demonstrate that even at the core, cultural differences shape the container itself, not only the content.

Tim Unwin: Are artefacts content? are we focussing too much on artefacts rather than content? A: Of course the artefact is but a tool. But the process of creating, even creating the artefact, does provide too some valuable knowledge, as it forces reflecting about the process itself.

Susan Metros: How can teachers assess the materials that students are creating, specially in collaborative ways? A: It is important to keep groups really small so that tracking can be easily done.

Julià Minguillón: the pervasiveness of English as lingua franca, won’t crowd out other smaller languages? Should this small languages speakers be encouraged to create content? A: ICTs enable small languages to survive, but translating content in other languages is not the strategy: it has to be genuine created content.

Sugata Mitra: what is learning? when students “play” with computers, is that learning? A: It might be learning, but after the n repetition, is just repetition. Besides, learning and education might not be the same thing,

Ismael Peña-López: If the whole process is available, and everyone can join, how can we assess the learning of the student? how can we help them find whether they learned or not? A: Some of them might not be interested in a “formal” assessment, but just find the process was interesting. We could be talking about evaluation and feedback instead of assessment. Tim Unwin: peer assessment is a very effective — and even efficient — assessment method.

Linda Roberts: What’s next? A: Free Open Content should gain power. And a community will gather around the creation, sharing and use of these materials, enhanced by collaborative tools to engage one with each other.

Brian Lamb: How to evaluate collaborative work? A: The evaluation should also be like a dynamic dialogue. Of course, it requires time (and money).

Enric Senabre: How to create a local Wikiversity? A: Content has to be created, prove that “people will come”, and then the Foundation will create the local Wikiversity site.

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Opening
Mariana Patru, UNESCO

The importance of Education in all stages of development.

The increasing changes that the Information Society and Globalization are bringing impact all aspects of life. Life long learning is one of the paradigmatic effects of the recent changes the World’s been in.

Beyond digital literacy, and digital exclusion because of lack of physical access, there’s a huge knowledge divide that needs to be fought: access to useful, culturally relevant knowledge.

ICT4D as a tool to fight the digital divide
Tim Unwin, Royal Holloway University of London and World Economic Forum’s Partnerships for Education programme with UNESCO.

Fight the digital divide or build on individual strengths? Begin with information and communication needs, being the fundamental part “for Development”.

Partnerships

ICT4D partnerships have been very successful: they have been fostered per se, but also the private sector has had a leading role in ICT4D, in contrast with a lack of understanding among donor agencies. On the other hand, partnerships have worked well because ICT4D is still a complex an unknown area where collaboration is strongly needed.

But partnerships have also failed: partnerships with no clear goals or even meaning; focus on public-private partnerships, forgetting other kinds of organization; emphasis on the supply side; insufficient attention paid to partnership processes.

Sustainability is not something that can be thought of once the project is started — or near its “completion” — but should be included in the plan from the sheer beginning. Same with scale, trying to avoid pilot-project fever that think short run and narrow scope.

e-Learning for development?

The pros are many and quite well known. What are the cons?

• Costs of ICT are high, and infrastructures scarce.
• Tutorial support is required and more important than just content — though important too and needs to be localized indeed.
• The focus should not be put in ICT training, or “office” software, but in Education. Education vs. training.

Main reasons of failure in ICT-led education projects in Africa

• Understand context of delivery
• Appreciate African interests
• Overcome infrastructure issues
• Provide relevant content
• Top down
• Suypply driven
• Photo-opportunity “development”

Constructivism and 21st century skills

Learners involved, democratic environment, student centred learning, etc.

Critiques to constructivism:

• learning might be behaviourally active, but is not necessarily cognitively active.
• may not be delivered in teaching practices. Teaching practice mayh not deliver the theoretical realities
• Ignores the reality of the African classroom
• Emphasis on replicating “truths”
• Modular thinking
• Going for the easy option, e.g. go to the Wikipedia
• Tendency towards plagiarism
• Inability to think critically
• Lowest common denominator attitude
• Pandering to student “demand”

Most of ICT in education focusses on content and collaborative networking, but not in problem solving or critical thinking.

What kind of education for what kind of development?

Private sector and education. Engaged in setting a global agenda, and with strong interest in the knowledge economy.

Hegemonic model — economic growth and liberal democracy — need for focus on relative poverty — inequalities, access.

Emphasis on training for a knowledge economy while forgetting about critical ability and reflection.

Education is not a driver for economic growth. Key skills to be human, fighting the digital tyranny that constrains us rather than liberate us. Some ICTs (e.g. e-mail) do not let time enough to think creatively and take action.

Take control of technologies — and take control of those who control the technologies — to take control of our learning process. Re-define the role of the teacher and re-assert shared and communal educational agendas, while assuring equitable access.

Questions or opportunities for the future

• Post-constructivism and the role of the teacher?
• Processes of learning communities?
• Enabling innovative problem solving and critical thinking?
• How to provide appropriate infrastructure?
• The tyranny of digital environments?

Q & A

Linda Roberts: is there any good practice in ICT4D and Education? A: Sadly enough, there are very few of them, e.g. some of them mobile-phone centred that enable the student to access some content without displacing the teacher.

Eduardo Toulouse: is it the clue teachers and the quality of teachers? what happens when infrastructure is a barrier for even the teachers? A: Yes, the clue is teacher quality. And to achieve this teachers have to be able to live on their own work. And, in some environments, thinking that they are going to engage in the production of materials and share them (at the connectivity cost) for nothing is ludicrous.

[...] from University of South Africa: is there any option left but believe in ICTs, despite all the drawbacks, “buts”, failures and so? A: Top-down approaches do not work, so this “hope” in ICTs has to be indeed grassroots founded.

Ismael Peña-López: what if we do not have teachers? can ICTs help to bring them on our community? can open educational resources help attract teachers? can OER help to create teachers out of the blue? A: OER can leverage already existing social structures to create learning communities. Peer learning, by leveraging peers and turning them into teachers can be a thrilling option. Communal education is the one to be put under the spotlight, and even a local facilitator can even be a bridge between a remote teacher and the community if the tools and the human network are well thread one with the other.

Q: What’s after post-constructivism? What about critical pedagogy? A: Isn’t this a Western approach as well? Even if Paolo Freire is brazilian, his ideas are well rooted in the West.

Paul West: ICTs can help the teacher to lighten his burden by making him more efficient, e.g. when correcting and marking exams. A: Agree. The debate is in whether doing old things in a new way vs. or new things the old way.

Sugata Mitra: is there a possibility for real change? for a shift of paradigm? A: We have to find the gaps and expand them.

Ismael Peña-López: is there a room for co-operation that avoids cultural imperialism, fosters endogenous development, relies on content while not forgetting the teacher, etc.? A: The critique is not in collaboration or in technology, but on pre-established mindsets, one-size-fits-all or magic solutions, etc. Of course collaboration can take place, but to define a solution, not just implement the solution.

Linda Roberts: how to engage the youngest? A: Mass media might be a first approach to get to them easily.

Teemu Leinonen: what’s the role of languages related to education, ICTs and development? A: There are several initiatives where ICTs are being used to support languages that are dying out. On the other hand, localization is not (just) translation into the local language.

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Third session — and second teamwork session — at the Open EdTech Summit. This second teamwork session focuses in converging the ideas of the brainstorming session and try and come up with 5 “plus” ideas and 5 “idealistic” ideas.

(reprise and gather up from the previous session)

Focus on mentoring as the added value in the learning process

Microcredit structures, besides personalization, allow the evaluator and the evaluate to be different entities. Right now the system is self-referential, as the output is evaluated by the same one that facilitated the inputs.

Education institutions could split in three different institutions: the ones that provide content, the ones that provide guidance and the ones that provide certification.

The added value is in mentoring, not in content. So we should concentrate in mentoring. And open content and open technology to support it play a crucial role in this part.

And quality also has to do in this scheme of things: we have to go open to reach high quality standards.

From teaching to learning

The “bolonization” (convergence) of educational systems, shifting responsibility to the student, and putting more stress on learning rather than on teaching. Focus also in capacity and competences. If just e.g. 25% was standarized or compulsory, that will leave plenty of room for personalization within assessment.

Capacity building

On the competences side: empower people to do things.

On the choice side: allow people to do their choices.

Learner motivation

How to engage the student: personalization would actually be a good way to keep students engaged.

Quality

Quality assurance systems that foster innovation, or testing innovation in quality assessments, act as a bottle neck as normally do not include technology in their evaluation system. Their assessment map is closed. How much space for subversion, for innovation, can we find.

Empowering teachers

Make lower design statements to that the learning materials can be acted upon, that feedback from experience can be adapted and sent back to the material or the lecture.

(for “plus” ideas and “idealistic” ideas, please see next session)

Open Ed Tech 2008

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