ICTlogy

This monograph is intended to help educational decision makers survey the technological landscape and its relevance to educational reform. This monograph is firmly rooted in a vision of education that begins with the learner and attempts to understand how technological tools can better contribute to educational goals. It looks at how technology can promote improvements in reach and delivery, content, learning outcomes, management of systems, teaching, and pertinence. In short, it is a contribution to global reflection on how to make learning throughout life a reality.

This new UNESCO/AED book, edited by Wadi Haddad and Alexandra Draxler and authored by a good collection of authors, presents some reflexions on how ICTs can help Education reach those that are unreachable by traditional educational means — thus, while not “for development” focused, it is indeed mainly targeted to people and institutions working for population under exclusion risks, specially those in developing countries.

My opinion is that the book is half complete. The articles chosen are really relevant, but there is a serious lack of strategical perspective. In other words, the actual situation being well described, there is no forecast on the current debates on instructional technologies and their immediate future. To note, two of the most prominent things absent in the book: free and/open source software for education (FLOSSE) and open educational resources (OER). The reason might be the date of the publication of the book: 2002. I know this is quite unhumble from my part, but I’d suggest taking a look at my master’s thesis e-Learning for Development: a model to complement the issues of OER and FLOSSE.

More info

• Technologies for Education: Potential, Parameters, and Prospects (1.52 Mb)
• e-Learning for Development: a model

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