Are children really early adopters of new technology? There are authors like Vygotsky or Prensky that have pointed at some factors that may make children more creatitve.
A research was performed by running several workshops on storytelling, playing, taping, etc. What happens behind the scenes, how documentaries are made, etc. was analyzed through action research, and looking at the different narrative activity phases
Every workshop provided qualitative and quantitative data on the activities, children and parents to demonstrate that workshops for children incorporating digital video technology provide children with means of expressing their creativity in different and enhanced ways.
Initial conclusions showed that this is a research that never ends: its ethnographic and participatory approach makes it a non-stop experience. On the other hand, replication requires the development of a manual, which was done too. 3 keys to success proved to be adaptability, simplicity and scalability. Performance and sharing with your community, and real-time evaluation by your peers are certainly very interesting and valuous aspects of creativity.
(personal note: difficult to liveblog session, due to the rich and constant examples and references to works produced by children.)
Discussion
Q: We need to find the way to put all the (digital and creative) skills together, so that things can happen. On the other hand, how do we “control” children? how do we manage the planning stage? Bhimani: having a fresh, young mindset does help. In any case, control is definitely not the option, control has to go out the window. Trust, confidence, nearness are very important, and the teacher is a facilitator, not a director. And the environment makes it all: it is not a classroom, but another kind of space where to enjoy oneself, to play, to tape. And technology is not important: is how we use technology in that specific environment.
Edem Adubra, Chief of the Section for Teacher Policy and Development, UNESCO Paris, France Enhancing the status and professionalism of teachers in the digital age: UNESCO’s perspective
Teachers are a priority in the framework of Education for All (EFA) and Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) implementation. At a global level, the role of teachers has been mentioned in major conferences and reports related to EFA and MDGs. And this role has increasingly been mentioned in parallel with the important role of technology in education, both as key players of the development of education.
UNESCO has five main functions:
Laboratory of ideas, including foresight on the future of education.
Standard-setter, helping to set educational policies.
Clearing house.
Capacity-builder in UNESCO’s fields of competence.
In the field of capacity development, UNESCO works in the intersection of ICTs and teacher education, assisting with the development and adaptation of online tools and resources, with a focus on open educational resources (OERs) and guidelines for the effective use of ICT in teacher education, including how to adapt curricula, methodologies and syllabuses.
Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) is also an important part in capacity development for teachers.
UNESCO usually partners too with the private sector to be able to carry on specific projects: Microsoft, Intel, Varkey GEMS Foundation, Nokia, etc. We need to bring the expertise of those who are working in the field to know what is working and what is not, so that UNESCO’s policies and actions are guided by research and real experience.
Discussion
Emma Kiselyova: what can be done to increase the adoption and impact of the recommendations, resources and outcomes in general of conferences and committees related to education? Adubra: Curricula and teachers’ practices are very difficult to change overnight. We have to have a clear and smooth implementation plan, and this is what is lacking. And most of the research on these topics remains closed within the “ivory towers” of academic publishing, with serious flaws concerning outreach and with an arguable lack of effectiveness.
Q: how can we avoid the “westernization” of teaching all over the world? how can we embed in international policies the way of thinking that is not from Western countries? Can ICT be used outside of Western educational context? Adubra: surely governments have a crucial role in “transposing” international recommendations to the context of their own populations. And the responsibility of education is to tame technologies so that they do not destroy, but help in the building of a society.
Arthur Preston: what strategies can we put up in practice to fight the digital divide in education? Adubra: basic infrastructures are a prior stage that has to be addressed. Education and ICT in Education cannot be treated as an isolated matter, but within a bigger framework.
Q: how do we use technology for assessment? Adubra: we promote participatory teaching, collaborative learning, but our assessment (especially State-level ones) still is based on pencil and paper, writing essays, etc. Maybe, instead of trying to organize new assessment strategies yet again at the State-level, what we should focus is on teacher training on new assessment methodologies, and afterwards see how we make them compatible or comparable one to another.
All the debate around Net Neutrality and the right to be forgotten is about a new container — the Internet and all new technologies at large — and a new container — digital content and services.
And what this container is asking us is to feed is for ourselves, for free and providing personal data in exchange.
And not only are these data consciously provided, by uploading content, of befriending people on 3rd parties’ platforms, but also in a hidden form, by means of cookies, scripts or other devices.
There still is an unanswered question and it is whether technology as an ideology. And the Law should deal with this issue explicitly and bravely. This includes code, that in some aspects is becoming a derivative or procedural law.
And not only whether technology conforms an ideology, but also whether it conforms a new 4th generation of human rights.
An interesting question to explore in the future is whether we can proceed with the concept of habeas data.
We are now fighting the inefficacy of Law, that always arrives late at regulating and, when it does, there are hackers and crackers (conceptually very different) that make many laws irrelevant in practice. Thus, we need global solutions, founded on the Philosophy of Law and Law Theory, so to provide solid and long-lasting frameworks.
Track on the Right to be forgotten, data protection and privacy Chairs: Mònica Vilasau Solana, Lecturer, School of Law and Political Science (UOC)
Pere Simon Castellano The constitutional regime of the right to oblivion in the Internet
It is the principle of consent the one that gives us the legitimacy to claim for a right to privacy or data protection.
Especially related to search engines (though not only) is the legality of a given content another important factor when claiming for our privacy rights or the right to be forgotten.
Jelena Burnik Behavioural advertising in electronic communications. A benefit to electronic communication development and an intrusion of individual’s right to privacy and data protection
Behavioural advertising tracks Internet users’ activities online and delivers only relevant advertisements, based on the data collected and analysed over a given period of time. It is normally enabled by cookies, that are placed by websites or advertisements on websites.
Behavioural advertising is defended in the name of relevance of advertisements, enhanced user experience, precise segmentation and less money spent on non-relevant audiences, support to free Internet content and a driver of innovation.
But it is a controversial practice that requires a fair balance between the interests of the industry and the rights of individuals. As cookies assign a unique ID with an IP address, there can be concerns on data protection. On the other hand, cookies are normally placed in the computer by default, while maybe a debate on opt-in vs. opt-out of cookie placing and cookie-based tracking should be considered.
A new “cookie” European directive should aim at shifting from an opt-out principle to an opt-in one, and cookies being placed only under explicit user’s concern. But how is the technological solution for an opt-in cookie principle?
In the US, though, what seems to be more acknowledged is an enhanced opt-out model.
But only true opt-in provides for transparency, and self-regulation of the industry will not suffice.
María Concepción Torres Diaz Privacy and tracking cookies. A constitutional approach.
It is worth noting the difference between privacy, intimacy and personal data. And cookies can harm privacy. So, users should get all necessary information on cookies and tracking so they can decide whether a specific behaviour puts at stake their privacy. In case the user decides to go on, explicit consent should be provided to the service to perform its tracking activity.
We have to acknowledge that new technologies will bring with them new rights and new threats to old rights. Thus, we should be aware of the new technologies so that the law does not fall behind.
Philipp E. Fischer; Rafael Ferraz Vazquez Data transfer from Germany or Spain to third countries – Questions of civil liability for privacy rights infringement
There are data transfers at the international level continuously. If those data got “lost”, the operator might have incurred in privacy rights infringement.
The European Directive on data transmission, it has been established that there can be data transmission within the European Union (nationally or internationally) or with 3rd countries with adequate level of data protection. There still are some issues with the US and there are other countries which are simply banned from data transmission between them and member states.
Faye Fangfei Wang Legal Feasibility for Statistical Methods on Internet as a Source of Data Gathering in the EU
Privacy protection steps: suitable safeguards, duty to inform prior to obtaining consent (transparency), consent, and enforcement. Request for concern should be looked at as a very important step towards privacy protection. Consent must be freely given and informed.
There is an exemption clause in the UK legislation, to be used when gathering some data is strictly necessary for a service to run, or for scientific purposes, etc. But the exception clause must be used legally.
Ricardo Morte Ferrer The ADAMS database of the Anti Doping World Agency. Data protection problems
The ADAMS database stores whereabouts, reporting where a sportsman is during 3 months, for a daily time span from 6:00 to 23:00 and including a full daily 1h detailed report of their whereabouts. Instead of presuming innocence, this database kind of presumes guiltiness.
That is a lot of information and, being the holder an international agency based in Canada, a threat on data protection as it implies a continuous traffic of personal data internationally.
Inmaculada López-Barajas Perea Privacy in the Internet and penal research: challenges in justice in a globalized society
The possibility that personal information of citizens can be retrieved, remotely, by law enforcement institutions, is it just the digital version of the usual (and completely legal) surveillance methodologies, or is it something new and something that threatens citizens’ privacy?
Looking Beyond ‘Information Provision’: The Importance of Being a Kiosk Operator in the Sustainable Access in Rural India (SARI) Project, Tamil Nadu, India Janaki Srinivasan
How has changed the life of the women that operate information kiosks in India?
Information kiosks provide information on agriculture, prices, government services, etc. especially to reduce information asymmetry in the population.
Do info kiosks actually end up providing information to everybody in a community? (IIITB, 2005)
Does provision of information naturally improved socio-economic conditions? (Gopakumar, 2004)
Is information provision the main role player of info kiosks in practice?
This research puts the stress on the last point.
The project focuses on information asymmetry framed as the problem and information provision as the solution. In this framework, ICTs are the tools that enable the solution.
Kiosk operators have many duties and interactions that go beyond mere service provision: interact with other operators, with elected leaders, with residents, bureaucrats, domain experts, and with the Dhan for meetings and training sessions.
At the e-Government level, the kiosk has several objectives such as information provision (schemes, procedures, records) and improving state-vilage resident interactions (transparency, efficiency).
Outcomes for kiosk operators:
Seeing the state (and other domains) differently: awareness (schemes, procedures, techniques, who’s who), interaction (frequency, diversity, learning by doing, coping, dealing, negotiating).
Being seen by the village differently: status in the community (“girl with the computer”, “girl for certificates”).
Discussion
Q: So, the research showed that there were a lot of unpredicted consequences/outcomes for kiosk operators, but… what happened with the intended outcomes? A: We found that they were not in conflict and, actually, they were mutually reinforced.
The Social Meaning of ICTs: Patterns of Technology Adoption and Usage in Context Cynthia Putnam, Beth Kolko
3 rounds survey (2006, 2007, 2008) in four countries in Central Asia to compare Internet users in that region with US Internet users (using for those data from the Pew Internet Life survey).
Two methodology:
Technology acceptance model (TAM): external variables determine perceived userfulness and ease of use, that determine attitude, intentions and effective usage.
Diffusion of Innovations (DOI): characteristic of the technology, diffusion channels of how technology is communicated, time and social assistance. These issues define 5 characteristics of an innovation: relative advantage, complexity or ease of use, compatibility with existing values, trial-ability and observability.
Data (2008) showed that for Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan most of Internet users were innovators and early adopters, while in the US, at that time (PEW data for 2007) there already were many laggards now using the Internet.
Predictors were calculated with income and other variables and the resultant statistic proved to be a good predictor on who would be online in Kyrgyzstan or Kazakhstan at a specific time. Internet users share demographic similarities when compared to non-users. On the other hand, usage is also pretty similar between countries and within profiles.
Discussion
Jim Murphy states that there should be much more focus (work) on the context and in the framework where all this technology adoption if framed into.
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Information and Communication Technologies and Development (2010)
What are the academic contributions from Africans to the ICT4D field? Why are there so few of them? Only 9% of all articles o nICT for/and development topics come from African institutions (i.e. not African researchers living or working elsewhere.
This poses, at least, a problem in four different dimensions:
Representation.
Validity.
Shaping.
Legitimacy.
Roots of the problem: lack of conference attendance, institutional factors, access to information, publishing culture, political and language bias, strength of the research community.
These issues should be fixed, and a first proposal goes in the line of addressing the resource and institutional issues directly — advocate merit, more and different research incentives, collaboration between universities in Africa to pool resources, etc. — and to find alternative research strategies.
Discussion
Q: Is there any way to address the language issues? A: Journals or events where English is non-mandatory.
Anriette Esterhuysen: What about open access journals? A: Yes, but still open access journals lack the impact of long-established (closed) journals.
A Study of Connectivity in Millennium Villages in Africa Jyotsna Puri, Patricia Mechael, Roxana Cosmaciuc, Daniela Sloninsky, Vijay Modi, Matt Berg, Uyen Kim Huynh, Nadi Kaonga, Seth Ohemeng-Dapaah, Maurice Baraza, Afolayan Emmanuel, Sia Lyimo
Goals: characterize users and owners of mobile phones in rural communities in Sub-Saharan Africa. Asess the potential of mobile phones in increasing income, affecting people’s lives, etc.
Methodology: quantitative and qualitative approaches. Quantitative: baseline reading on connectivity; qualitative: understand the impacts of mobile phones after network strengthening. Took place in four Millennium Village Project (MVP) sites in Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya and Tanzania.
Many of these areas depend on agricultural production, either crops or sheep/goats.
In-depth interviews were carried on in four sectors to see which were the different uses and influence on their daily lives.
Concerning small businesses, in general, the main impact was to have access to “safety nets”, in the sense of lowering (economic) risks, increase safety, security, strengthen contact with social/community networks, connection to other resources that were out of reach, etc.
Concerning the Health Sector, the main usage was not reporting health data (which was actually the less important one), but they were perceived as an improvement to access health information, to reach other health professionals, improve emergency response, or even to improve health facilities management.
In terms of Education, mobiles were used specially on the managerial site, though there was a desire to use mobiles for educational purposes. Improving management, communicating with teachers or accessing information were the main reasons to use mobiles in the educational sector. It was perceived an increase in enrolment and attendance, and improved management and teacher retention.
Policy implications: People are willing to pay for services, though it strongly depends on purchasing power and perceived usefulness of services. Thus, there is a need to foster these “useful” content and services. To increase the impact of the mobile phone, though, there is a need to improve too the quality of other infrastructures like roads and electricity, that are now hampering the maximized benefits enabled through mobile telephony. To go one step forward and impact health, education, governance, etc. there is though a need to move from mobile telephony to broadband.
Discussion.
Q: How do people pay (cash) for they mobile telephony costs, when money is not the norm in many rural Africa communities? A: That was not surveyed, but it indeed is a problem when many economic deals happen in the informal economy, and when many revenues in cash depend on the season, markets, etc. and are not stables.
Digital and Other Poverties: Exploring the Connection in Four East African Countries Julian May
Are ICTs pro-poor? It does seem so when looking at the private consumption expenditure (PCE), where poor people consume much more than rich ones in ICT in share of expenditures [is that because of quantity? of saturation? of affordability? Not clear…].
Does the use of ICT systema change the level of poverty of households, individuals and communities? Are investments in CIT a viable option for the poor? Questionnaire survey of 1,600 households in Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda, interviewed twice: 2007/ and 2010. The sampling unit came out of a purposive selection of 20 poorest census Enumerator Areas, being that sample representative of the poorest regions in the selected countries. A 35% of the original sample was unmatched for the second round of interviews due to several reasons, but this finds within reasonable boundaries if attrition is taken into account.
Data shows that between the two periods, poverty was reduced according to well established poverty line measures. Other measures of poverty were used: income, vulnerability, assets, human capital, inclusion, services. A correlation appeared between ICTs and much less poverty in those aspects, with the exception of vulnerability and inclusion, that seem to remain equal independently of access to ICTs.
A logistic regression showed that education and PCE each increase the odds of having access to ICT threefold, and that the interaction between these variables is the dominant cause fo gains in ICT access. A multnomial regression finds that digital poverty is strongly associated with physical poverty and assets. And these associations are unchanged along time.
Gains resulting from ICT access for the most poor are twice as high as those for the non-poor.
The loss of ICT is also new source of shock to the poor. It will take a century for a poor family to call, text, tweet or friend itself out of poverty. Cost and time saving is the dominant mechanism, and managing shocks is the dominant context.
Discussion.
Q: What about the opportunity cost? A: That was not measured, and it is certainly something to be taken into account in further research. In some cases, indeed, and especially in those households just above the poverty line, ICTs might be making them poorer. Data are inconclusive, but this is something to be aware of.
Q: What about not only access to ICTs but capacity to use? A: Interviews showed that most users were highly skilled in the usage of their devices for their specific purposes, indeed being very effective in getting the things they intended to done.
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Information and Communication Technologies and Development (2010)
