This week, India's Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) announced the Aakash, a "$35" Android tablet computer they are boastfully claiming is the world's cheapest tablet for education.
At the beginning of this month, we initiated a discussion around ICTs in education with the open question: Are ICTs the best investment for scarce educational funding, or should investments be made first in the familiar tools and methodologies that are already being used? In the lively debate that followed, we've had a number of key points put forward, as much by Tim Kelly and Wayan Vota, the designated discussants, as the varied commenters replying to each post and each other.
In many educational systems, there is a shameful lack of capacity to administer the resources currently allocated to teach students. Waste and fraud combine to drain away funds before they get near to the classroom, or to the classroom teacher - historically one of the most underpaid positions in the world. How would adding expensive, desirable, and complicated technology into this system achieve anything but lost opportunity on a massive scale?
The near-universal excitement about the potential of the newest technologies that Wayan notes drives the ICT4E movement means that there is a lot of work being done in the sector. It ranges from one-off experiments to large scale evaluations. Here are some indicative projects.
John Daly's post about the value of "traditional" ICTs (e.g., TV, radio etc) in capturing the attention of kids reminded me of my own experiences as a child ....
Whenever I’m told that the newest technology, be it laptops or lasers, is the killer app for education, and every child should have one, I start to question this instigator. In doing so, I use a very loose form of the Socratic Method, which comes to us from the great thinkers of Western thought – the ancient Greeks.
It would be churlish to claim that ICTs are the best educational investment. After all, take away the teachers and the schools and there is not a lot left. On the other hand, taking away the ICTs would only take a school back a few decades, but it would keep functioning.
Nevertheless, ICTs represent a pretty good investment, and one that would rank pretty high in the pecking order once the basic requirements of a school or university are met. Consider the following:
New information and communication technologies are exciting. Everyone loves to ogle the shiny, flashy products developed by the IT industry and imagine the change that can come from them. The educational field is no exception. Technologists are always thinking of ways to apply the newest and most cutting-edge innovations to try and increase learning outcomes - from the current fascination with the XO laptop to previous excitement around television, radio, even ditto machines.
