Promising uses of applied science in education in poor, rural and isolated communities around the world

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This folio in:

don't worry: your solutions -- and possibly your salvation – have finally arrived!
don't worry: your solution (salvation?)
has finally arrived!

One persistent challenge for educational policymakers and planners related to the potential use of informational and advice technologies (ICTs) in remote, low income communities around the world is that most products, services, usage models, expertise, and inquiry related to ICT utilise in instruction come from high-income contexts and environments.

One consequence is that technology-enabled 'solutions' are imported and 'made to fit' into what are oftentimes much more challenging environments. When they don't piece of work, or where they are too expensive to be replicated at any scale, this is taken as 'testify' that ICT use in instruction in such places is irrelevant -- and perchance irresponsible.

That said, lessons are being learned as a result of emerging practices, both good and bad, in the utilise of ICTs in pedagogy in low resource, poor, rural and isolated communities in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Pacific that may be useful to help guide the planning and implementation of educational applied science initiatives in such environments. (It may even turn out that the technological innovations that emerge from such places many have a wider relevance …. but that is a topic for another give-and-take.)

Products similar the BRCK (a connectivity device designed and prototyped in Nairobi, Kenya by many of the people backside Ushahidi to better address user needs in places where electricity and internet connections are, for lack of a better word, 'problematic') and MobiStation (a solar-powered 'classroom in a suitcase' which features a projector and lots of off-line educational content developed past UNICEF Republic of uganda) remain notable exceptions to the lamentable reality that, for the most office, 'solutions' touted for apply in schools in due east.1000. rural Africa, or in isolated communities in the Andes, are designed elsewhere, with piddling understanding of the practical twenty-four hours-to-twenty-four hours realities and contexts in which such technologies are to be used. Many people who have lived and worked in such environments are quite familiar with well-pregnant but insufficiently loftier cost efforts frequently informed more by the marketing imperatives embedded in many corporate social responsibility efforts than by notions of cost-effectiveness and sustainability over fourth dimension or the results of user-centered blueprint exercises.

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Some principles or approaches to consider when planning to innovate ICTs into remote, depression-income educational environments might include:

ane. The best technology is the one you lot already have, know how to use, and tin can beget (in about cases, this is increasingly the mobile phone)
2. Start down and out, then move up and in (if yous desire to somewhen piece of work in difficult places at scale, *outset* working there first, don't just get where things are most likely to piece of work)
3. Treat teachers similar the trouble … and they volition be
4. It's the content, non the container (don't focus on devices, only rather on what actions these devices enable – and make sure not to be diverted by various related myths and misconceptions)
5. If you lot are pointed in the incorrect direction, technology may help y'all get in that location more than quickly
6. Anticipate, and mitigate, Matthew Effects (people who are already privileged in many means are more probable to benefit get-go, and nearly, from new technologies)
7. To succeed in doing something difficult, you lot may first need to fail (and learn from this failure)
eight. Put sustainability kickoff
9. We know a lot nigh worst practices -- we should make sure we don't repeat them
10. ____ (there are many more than such principles to consider, of grade, so #10 is left blank every bit an acknowledgement of this fact – and that nosotros still have much to acquire)

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While many groups have been and are engaged in efforts to invent, place and/or develop the platonic educational technology device for developing countries (the tablet currently seems to be a peculiarly popular form factor, supplanting the laptop in the popular consciousness), and equally challenging equally the development of new technology devices can be, the greater challenge in education is nigh ever on the 'human' side.  Didactics, and the educational or learning process, is after all a human effort, and information technology is on the 'messy human stuff' (every bit one very smart technology guy in Silicon Valley once put it to me; to adopt his language, I recall he was disruptive a bug with a characteristic) that many efforts neglect.

The 'digital carve up', which was once primarily thought of in terms of admission to applied science, and increasingly every bit a function of admission to reliable power (indeed, the digital divide in much of the earth closely aligns with the 'electricity dissever'), is now understood also to exist about the skills and abilities of people to benefit from access to applied science (the so-chosen 'second digital carve up').

The World Bank's EduTech web log exists in part to help investigate and document emerging applications of educational technologies in eye and low income countries, and to share these with audiences who, for whatever reason, may not otherwise come across them in the course of their daily lives but who might nevertheless find them interesting or relevant to their own circumstances in some way. Some related practices and initiatives which are notable in various ways include:

Using 'old' technologies (like radio and boob tube) in new ways
While virtually of the attention, and pretty much all of the hype, effectually the utilise of technologies in pedagogy focuses on the latest shiny gadgets, in many places 'sometime' technologies like radio and boob tube are still in widespread employ – although oft with slight twists. Under Interactive Radio Teaching, radio broadcasts are used to prompt specific actions by teachers and students in the classroom. The use of Interactive Educational Television in places like the Amazon helps remote schools with situations where you have many students but no teachers. Same Language Subtitling of Bollywood movies assist promote the acquisition of reading skills to millions of 'low literate' people in India.

Sharing one device with lots of people
While much press attending is paid to projects that promise things like 'one educational tablet for every student', information technology is not only in the case of communal technologies similar radio and television where the benefits of using one device can achieve many learners at in one case. As function of some projects, classrooms of upward to fifty students can each 'operate' a single computer independently, as long every bit they each take their own mouse. Such efforts are enabled where technologies are bachelor to aid transform simple projectors into low-cost versions of digital whiteboards. The Hole in the Wall project in India demonstrates how placing shared computing facilities outdoors in slum communities can bring about lots of interesting benefits to children outside of formal schooling.

Caching on-line content for offline use
In places where Internet connectivity is sporadic, unreliable or intermittent, innovative approaches to caching and distributing digital content tin enable off-line access to vast numbers of online resources in ways that can simulate on-line environments. The emergence of low toll e-readers is enabling groups to distribute vast corporeality of books in digital formats to students who read them on small, purpose-congenital reading devices.

Promoting literacy and learning, and supporting teachers, with mobile phones
In remote communities where teachers may face daunting challenges related to isolation of peers and a lack of resources (including textbooks and other teaching materials), mobile phones are helping support teachers in minor but meaningful means by providing access to education content (every bit in Tanzania) and regular prompts and tips on how to apply this content (as in Papua New Guinea). In Islamic republic of pakistan, students are sent short quizzes via SMS to their mobile phones to help them (and their families) guess how well they are agreement topics beingness discussed in class.

Using low cost video to support peer learning and support
The increased availability of very depression cost video cameras (including those in mobile phones) tin can provide opportunities for reflection and peer back up for teachers who may have received little (if any) training on pedagogical approaches to delivering their curricula. In Indonesia, for example, teachers accept short videos of their peers and then jointly review and discuss pedagogical approaches and particularly hard topics to teach in breezy, low stakes ways as part of their professional person evolution.

Developing content and tools locally
In places where learners practice not speak one of the major international languages for which lots of educational content already exist in digital formats, the capacity to produce such content locally -- in local languages, in line with local curricula -- is oft constrained by the fact that there simply is not sufficient ethnic know-how to create and distribute educational content easily in digital formats. Efforts in Afghanistan prove that there are approaches that tin can work in such environments, particularly where they use the technologies with which people are already familiar (e.1000. low finish mobile phones) in means that unproblematic to apply and very convenient.

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These sorts of practices and projects are just the tip of the iceberg, of course. In and of themselves, certainly none of them provides a argent bullet solution to accost all the challenges confronting educators and learners in remote, low income, depression resource communities. That said, and as the brusque list above hopefully suggests, in that location are a lot of encouraging developments around the world – sometimes (depending on one'south perspective) pioneered by the nearly unlikely people doing the well-nigh unlikely things in the almost unlikely places (although quite a few of them, it should be said, are seeking to do things with a very likely device: the mobile phone).

While monitoring and sharing what people are doing can be quite useful, such basic data is fifty-fifty more valuable when its accompanied by efforts to evaluate what results such efforts are (or purport to exist) having. While the people and groups pioneering educational engineering science initiatives targeting populations and communities all over the globe accept until recently had to rely as much on instinct and 'learning by doing' than on an established knowledgebase informed by rigorously collected evidence, touch evaluations from Latin America to Africa to Asia are slowly emerging to help lessen the characterization that many efforts are, if nosotros are honest nearly it, largely faith-based initiatives. (Along the fashion, researchers, policymakers and practitioners are request some of import questions about the practical relevance of such impact studies for those who make related decisions, and for those who carry them out, beyond the narrow, sometimes rather insular academic audiences who publish in and read the scholarly journals).

We clearly do non have all the answers well-nigh how to do this stuff. Only hopefully nosotros are at least getting improve at request the right questions.


Notation: The image used at the top of this blog post of people and things being parachuted in from other places ("don't worry: your solution (salvation?) has finally arrived!") comes via Wikimedia Eatables and is in the public domain.

Authors

Michael Trucano

Global Lead for Innovation in Educational activity, Sr. Didactics & Technology Policy Specialist