ICTlogy

Marcus Duveskog
Tekkie Kids – A learning laboratory for future engineers

Goal: create an interest in kids for science engineering and technology; and provide researchers with a live lab for distance education

What are the key elements that make a tech club successful in developing positive attitudes towards Science Engineering and Technology?
What is needed to support massification of technology clubs among South African primary schools?

Research method: Action Research

Fun factor is important, and so is competition, but there’s a trade-off between engaging and “creating losers”. Planning is hard, being that some kids are “spoon-fed” one of the possible reasons.

As per massification issues, hub schools and teacher training might be good answers.

How should we asess and evaluate the TekkiKids project?

My reflections

• Markus brings out as a main working tool Lego Mindstorms, but states that though it is a very good learning tool, is is quite expensive and out of reach for most schools’ economies. It is important to notice that the same people that developed Mindstorms also developed Scratch, which is based — more or less — on the same concept of making programming easy and very effective. And being Scratch a web 2.0 project, it’s cost is just the one of the access to the network — which might be, of course, also quite an issue.

Muhammad Atif Ishaq
Usability in e-learning

The usability of a learning system is quite tricky as it involves fuzzy concepts and multiple dimensions and factors.

Indeed, developing countries have added factors that make usability even more complex to define, such as:

• Low DOI
• Basic level operating skills
• Digital Divide
• Heterogenous cultures and languages

Evelyn Kigozi Kahiigi
Exploring the e-learning state of art

Evelyn begins by describing an overview about the fundamentals of e-Learning

Main challenges of e-Learning

• Lack of technical skills
• lack of time management skills
• Credibility of e-learning
• Integration of emerging tech
• Digital Divide
• lack of policies and strategies
• Increasing dropout rate

To explain the why of failures (and successes in e-learning for development), Hypothesis: Applying social presence factors of communication, interactivity and feedback can create successful e-learning experiences

My reflections

• Connectivism, as a new approach beyond Behaviourism, Cognitivism and Constructivism, and really related with the hypothesis of the project, as Connectivism is really about feedback, interaction, co-participation, etc. Same with e-Learning/Education 2.0
• Siemens, G. (2004). Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age
• Connectivism.ca
• Downes, S. (2006). Learning Networks and Connective Knowledge

Annika Andersson
The (jigsaw-) puzzle of e-learning: case study Bangladesh and Sri Lanka

Thesis theme: Inhibiting and facilitating factors for e-learning in developing countries

• which are the nhibiting and facilitating factors for e-learning in developing countries
• which of these factors are of specific importance to developing countries
• Contribution: a conceptual framework on factors that contributes to enrollment and completion of e-learning courses in developing countries: student, teacher, course, technology, support, institution, society.

But, besides the difference in degree of factors, is there a difference in concept between developed and developing countries? Maybe not…

Nevertheless, in academic literature, when analyzing this factors the focus in developed countries is in the individual (the student) while when analyzing developing countries the focus is usually in culture. Isn’t this a prejudice?

Arguing for a holistic approach but still focusing on a few factors.
Categorizing and looking for differences between “developed” and “developing” countries… Extremely unhappy with this terminology.

More Info

• Annika Andersson: What is so special about e-learning in developing countries?

In the following articles I’ll be writing about the Second Annual ICT4D Postgraduate Symposium organized by IPID, the International Network for Post Graduate Students in the area of ICT4D, and supported by SPIDER (The Swedish Program for ICT in Developing Regions). Sincerest thanks to all those that have made possible this second edition, especially Gudrun Wikander, Annika Andersson and Marcus Duveskog

Keynote speech: Tim Unwin
ICT4D: a dialectic exploration

We might do quite well in practice, but… what about an ICT4D theory?

• Dialectics: seeking a synthesis, a/the resolution of the thesis and antithesis
• From a European intellectual apparatus (from Socrates through Hegel to Marx) to… an alternative African and Asian modes of thought? Might the solution to some problems be elusive unless you changed the way you look at the problem?
• What are the conditions under which ICTs may indeed be of value for “development”? And, in this train of though, what would be the role of technologies?

What is development? The dominant hegemonic model:

• Focused on the MDGs

Absolute poverty to be eliminate by economic growth
Providing the appropriate liberal democratic governance structures are in place

An alternative model?

• Focused on relative poverty
• Placing emphasis on social culture
• enabling people to fulfill their own voices — empowerment?

Thesis vs. Antithesis

• Exogenous or endogenous?
• Top down supply driven or bottom up demand led?
• Software and Knowledges: proprietary or open source
• Partnerships or project delivery?

Technology as exogenous: a thesis

• Much of literature addresses ICTs as exogenous: the Knowledge Society
• An “externally” introduced “innovation” that can bring significant benefits
• ICTs delivering “development” solutions in health, education, rural development…
• ICTs as technologies developed primarily in the major global economies, and made available to deliver on development (defined as MDGs growth…)

Exogenous Technologies: an antithesis

• ICTs are endogenous to “developed” capitalist economies
• Central to speeding circulation of capital, reducing labor costs, increasing market
• Need to focus on endogenous I&C technologies in other parts of the world

A top-down supply-led thesis: new ICTs developed in dominant economies and rolled out to developing world. Arrogance of economic and political power. Solutions that should “always” work, as norms; companies wanting to expand markets; countless self-proclaimed “successful” initiatives.

We should begin with needs, design needs based solutions.

Knowledge as private profit: proprietary thesis.

• Knowledge and education enable benefits
• People should therefore be willing to pay
• People should profit from their endeavours: intellectual property rights and copyright
• What is worth has a price
• Focus on the individual

Knowledge as global common good: an antithesis.

• Focus on the community
• Knowledge for the betterment of human society; must be shared
• Communal development

Thesis: Partnerships as the solution

• Complexity of problems requires new skills
• Engage all relevant stakeholders
• Reduce duplication and wheel reinvention
• Gain from synergies
• Combining demand and supply approaches

Where’s the balance?

Comments/Debate

Khalid Rabayah makes an interesting comment I fully share: the focus in ICT4D strategies is usually in Technologies (in Infrastructures) and neither in Information nor in Communication. There’s an urgent need to shift to content — local content — and design Information Strategies. While agreeing, Tim Unwin’s counterargument is based on the benefits of globalization: sharing what’s out there, not reinventing the wheel, being able to communicate across the World, etc.

Back in March 10th, 2006, I was asked to impart a workshop about Web 2.0 and diffusion of research. The workshop was improved, repeated and even published with a strong focus on teaching.

The subject quite caught on me and I’ve been working since to (a) strengthen the theoretical framework and (b) give it the “for development” bias that I’m so fond of. There’s quite a bunch or articles that I’ve been publishing here exploring ideas, doubts, thoughts about the issue — just on my previous article, for instance.

Finally, it has taken the appropriate shape and been published in the Knowledge Management for Development Journal, in an issue under the topic of Stewarding technologies for collaboration, community building and knowledge sharing in development, coordinated by Nancy White, Beth Kanter, Partha Sarker, Oreoluwa Somolu, Beverly Trayner, Brenda Zulu and Lucie Lamoureux. Having an article accepted — and commented — by such a team is something that makes you feel really good, as they all are people of reference in both the researcher and practitioner fields.

The full reference is:

Peña-López, I. (2007). “The personal research portal: web 2.0 driven individual commitment with open access”. In Knowledge for Management Journal, 3(1), 35-48. Amsterdam: KM4Dev Community. Retrieved July 30, 2007 from http://www.km4dev.org/journal/index.php/km4dj/article/view/92

On the other hand, a live presentation of the contents of this article will take place at the Web2forDev Conference in Rome next 25 to 27 September 2007.

Feedback welcome!