ICTlogy

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

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.

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

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.

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)

On November 5th, 2008, I attended the V Encuentro de e-Inclusión [V e-Inclusion Conference], a meeting of telecenter administrators from all around Spain organized by Fundación Esplai.

If last year’s edition looked at the Web 2.0 as something new — I imparted then a seminar entitled What do they say the Social Web is? —, this year’s general belief was that not only the Web 2.0 is here to stay but that it’s impact on the way the Internet is used and on how communities go online has altered the whole landscape. Thus, telecenters should reflect on their own activity and, above all, their own role in this new participatory web. The session debated around three main questions, put down below.

The paragraphs that follow freely report the opening session of the Encuentro, featuring three conferences, Q & A to the conferences, two showcases and, lastly, some personal reflections on the whole session.

Telecenters 2.0 and community building
Ismael Peña-López (Universitat Oberta de Catalunya)

More information:

• From Social Networks to Virtual Communities of Practice. Beyond e-Inclusion through Digital Literacy (I): the Case of the Crafting Community, where a proper framework and explanation is given to the slides above
• Download slides and citation indications in English and Spanish

Training in ICTs and community building
Ricard Faura (Generalitat de Catalunya)

Telecenters achieving maturity: extensive geographical presence and intensively enhanced by new social technologies, the threat being long-term sustainability, both at the economical level and the conceptual (i.e. is there still a need for telecenters?).

1.- The evolution of the telecentre towards v2.0 and community building: utopy or reality?

The telecenter has to work in a network of telecenters, working and collaborating together.

The telecenter as a living lab: a place where tools are put at the citizen disposal, so that the citizenry can innovate, can take part in innovation.

The telecenter has to train and empower the citizen to benefit from social networks, by taking part in the community.

2.- How to build community through digital literacy?

Find and engage the social connector, the person that has to be activated to trigger a multiplicator effect.

3.- Challenges of community building from social initiatives?

Once the first milestones of an inclusion project have been reached, the public sector has to step aside and let the civil society lead. Community leaders – “shakers” – have to be the ones that drive inclusion projects.

Centros comunitarios de aprendizaje
Ernesto Benavides (Tecnológico de Monterrey)

1.- The evolution of the telecentre towards v2.0 and community building: utopy or reality?

Reality, not utopy: the Tec de Monterrey has 33 campuses, 37 campuses + 25 corporate universities in the Universidad TecMilenio framework, a virtual university present in 17 countries and the Instituto para el desarrollo sostenible with 26 social incubators and 1709 Learning Community Centers. Comunity building can thus be understood at many and different levels, the important thing being to act at al levels and in a networked way, sharing principles and resources, and adapting the procedures to the target population.

2.- How to build community through digital literacy?

Engagement is the answer. Let people take part into the whole deployment of projects, from design to evaluation.

Planting solid roots and setting a slow (but steady) path, with easy to reach milestones that report small successes.

3.- Challenges of community building from social initiatives?

Impact in the civil society:

• infrastructures are a must, but not enough
• open software and content are the next required step, but not enough
• empowerment: the telecenter as a window to generate identity and build community

Impact in public policies: try and keep long run strategies (despite of political changes) and try and bring grassroots initiatives into macro policies.

Centros comunitarios de aprendizaje:

• cut down poverty and marginalization throug social inclusion
• bring alternatives of access to education, information and communication
• promote productive projects for a sustainable community development

Q & A

Cesk Gasulla: Facebook is really successful, but is it useful for community building?

Ismael Peña-López: Facebook has been perfect to get people together, and there are plenty of interesting uses of Facebook, but it lacks the possibility (or makes it really difficult) to draw guidelines, schedules, milestones and goals or, in other words, to design, manage and implement a project, as it is difficult to separate one community from another, or different interests, as they live together under the same roof. There is too much “noise” in Facebook to engage in a quiet conversation led by an engaged coordinator without the danger of passerbys peeping inside the project. Probably, Ning is the answer to this need of a closed room for community building. Indeed, as Ning requires more effort to be set up and customized than i.e. an event or group on Facebook, it might probably be taken more seriously by their own promoters, that will commit more as they’d be expecting a return of their higher investment (of time, resources, etc.)

Ricard Faura: while agreeing with the former, we should not forget that Facebook’s main success has been popularizing and making easy to understand what social networking sites are, how do they work, etc. And this is something that other platforms have been having toughest and longest time to achieve.

RedPizarra.org
María Eugenia Moreno (COGNOTEC (Red TIC Bolivia))

In Bolivia telcenters are (often) located inside schools so that they can supply the techonolgycal training that schools do (or can) not. Telecenters are also place in rural areas in order to provide access to these remote areas.

Two main areas of speciality of telecenters in Bolivia:

• education: digital literacy, formal and long-life learning. Portals, community wikis where to upload any kind of content.
• agriculture: e-commerce, etc.

How can web 2.0 contribute to telecenter development and community development? What’s the utility of social networking sites?

Arci
Milvia Rastrelli (Arci)

How to find the usefulness of ICTs, as a means, not as a goal?

Work with the youth, that have found clear uses of ICTs, in community building though these ICTs in the way they use them. By attracting youngsters with ICT applications that they are asking for (e.g. music sharing, video editing and publishing, etc.), next step (inclusion) comes naturally (or, at least, easily).

Work with immigrants, that again have mastered some ICT applications (e.g. radioweb) for their own benefit. But this has provided free information and in plural ways and approaches. Telecenters promote these actions to foster democracy, information, etc.

One of the most urgent needs for a telecenter is to identify who the dinamizator will be… and engage them in doing it.

Some reflections

I pick one of Cesk Gasulla’s quotes as the summary of the whole session: We should quit dynamizing technology, and dynamize people instead.

The reflections telecenters are making these days — and the Encuentro not only featured direct representatives form circa 200 telecenters in Spain, but somehow reflected also the philosophy of the whole Telecenter.org network, which gathers thousands of them — are not about setting up some guidelines for the nearest future to come, but reflecting on the essence itself of the role and even need of the telecenter. This reflection is threefold:

• Is there still a need for such a thing as a telecenter, when technology is made more affordable every day, and access is being incorporated in public policies at all political levels?
• If yes, what is the role of the telecenter: does it still has to supply access to infrastructures? should it shift towards digital literacy and capacity building? should it instead switch towards community building and focus on the personal and social networks?
• If yes, how should this be done? and what’s the role of technology in the whole (new) landscape?

There was quite a consensus that access is no more the primary goal of telecenters (though it still is a very important goal in many and many places around the globe).

And there was quite an acknowledgement that capacity building is neither the primary goal. Firstly, because the new 2.0 tools have made things easier to learn and build things on the Internet. Secondly, because there are several examples where newly digitally literate people saw no changes at all in their lives. What’s the purpose, then, in being digitally literate?

So it seems that, besides access and capacity building (remember: no one said it was not a need), telecenters should now focus on community building. There’s increasing evidence that after a first geeky wave of early adopters, the Internet is empowering already settled communities, strengthening their ties and broadening their scope and reach. The Internet has become a catalyst and multiplier of the social inclusion goodnesses of the community, the social and “real” network.

But, being a network as it is (made out of connected individual nodes), the only way to help the individual to weave their own network (offline and online… and back offline again) is being a part of the network too. No hierarchies, no top-down approaches will work for the telecenters to approach the community networks, but their own and sheer participation in them.

This is were the Telecenter 2.0 comes to place: how to be part of the network, speaking their own language, engaging in a conversation; how to find and trigger the community leaders; how to approach the excluded and get them inside the conversation, the network, the community. This is the real challenge of the Telecenter (2.0): the switch from a public service to being another citizen, another neighbour.

I’m proud — really proud — to present this year’s edition of the UOC UNESCO Chair in e-Learning International Seminar, Fighting the digital divide through education, in which I am part of the academic committee (i.e. I’ll be attending the Seminar).

UOC UNESCO Chair in e-Learning Fifth International Seminar is going to held in Barcelona between the 12th and 14th of November, 2008, and is aimed to debate the different possible solutions to the digital divide problem, cataloguing and analyzing success stories where ICT have played an important role in the development of education, in spite of technological and social barriers.

The Seminar is primarily addressed to:
* Top management at universities: presidents, vice presidents, general managers and executive officers.
* Those responsible for the application of e-Learning in higher education institutions, in which these tools play an important role: officers in charge of the introduction and use of new technology, e-Learning directors, faculty deans, research centre directors, etc.

The programme looks really interesting for those interested in the intersection of Education, ICTs and the Digital Divide. Confirmed speakers are: Tim Unwin, Teemu Leinonen, Ivan Krsti?, Linda G. Roberts, Sugata Mitra and Bakary Diallo and Begoña Gros.

More information

• 5th International Seminar official website
• UOC UNESCO Chair weblog

ICTs, development and e-government 2.0: empowering the citizenry

Presentation

Recommended Readings

Assignment

Find and choose an e-government, political or civil society project based in Web 2.0 applications (blogs, wikis, social bookmarking, social networking sites, etc.).

Briefly describe it, stating its purpose, who is running the project, what technology is using, etc. and what difference does it make (i.e. what innovation or added value does it bring) to the status quo.

Answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to the following answers (based on Zuckerman’s Innovation Test) briefly stating the reasons for your answer:

1. Does the innovation come from constraint?
2. Does it fight culture?
3. Does it embrace market mechanisms?
4. Does it innovate on existing platforms?
5. Does it come from close observation of the target environment?
6. Does it focus more on what you have more that what you lack?
7. Is it based on a “infrastructure begets infrastructure” basis?

Evaluation criteria:

• Identification of main/critical aspects
• Depth of analysis, conclusions backed with data/evidence…
• Use (and citation) of appropriate and complementary references
• Quality of exposition, structure, clarity of language…

More information

• Citation
• Download the presentation (, 10 MB)