Basically, I think there are two visions for free and Open educational resources and technology, that can be summarized by these two figures.

Scenario #1: Closing Gaps

In the left figure, we have the “closing gaps” vision. In this vision, everyone benefits from new educational technologies, but low-income students disproportionately benefit. The hope here is that as the ecology of education is flooded with new free and nearly free resources, low-income students will have access to resources previously only available to students in schools in affluent places.

Take Khan Academy as an example. It’s possible that students in wealthy schools have access to great instructors and plenty of content resources, so Khan Academy is just one more tool in their kit which only offers a minor benefit to these students. But maybe students in schools serving low-income kids have more novice teachers and fewer content and instructional resources, so Khan Academy with it’s free material represents a major boon for these learners. This is a hypothetical scenario of how Khan Academy might disproportionately benefit low-income students.

Scenario #2: Rising Tide

In the right figure, we have the “rising tide” vision. In this model, everyone still benefits, but now the wealthy disproportionately benefit. From a John Rawls framework, this is still a good thing–everyone is better off than before–but the opportunity gap between wealthy and poor has expanded. Consider Khan Academy again.

Maybe teachers in wealthy schools–with fewer students per teacher, more students passing tests, more prep periods, fewer classes to teacher, more curriculum support, more IT support, etc.–are better able to use Khan Academy videos not just to push content to students, but to reimagine pedagogical models. These teachers use the content to flip the classroom, differentiate and personalize instruction, release students from seat time requirements, etc.

Any of these new models are possible because teachers can assume that every kid has reliable broadband internet access at home and on their mobile device. By contrast, maybe teachers working in schools serving low income students simply can’t make as much use of the Khan Academy videos because they lack the planning time, broadband access, etc. In this model, schools with greater fiscal and human resources have more capacity to take advantage of even free and open resources.

This second model is actually quite troubling in its implications. If this model is generally true, then virtually every education technology initiative which does not specifically target the needs of particular populations will disproportionately benefit the wealthy, even if the materials are free.

The empirical reality: Scenario #2

We don’t necessarily have to sit around and guess which model is true, we can use research to answer these questions empirically. This is what I have tried to do with my research with wikis. My assessment of our findings is that in the case of wikis, the second scenario is certainly true.

Wikis are more likely to be created in wealthier schools, more likely to persist longer, and more likely to create opportunities for students to develop 21st century skills. Even within schools, wikis are more likely to be used with AP and honors tracked students (who in turn are more likely to be affluent) than with lower tracked students. I don’t think low-income students are harmed by the innovation of wikis, and I think there are plenty of instances where low-income students have had great opportunities with wikis to work collaboratively and create multimedia publications of their understanding.

But I am also very confident that wealthy students have benefited much more from these innovations. (This research is forthcoming in Educational Researcher this January, a pre-print paper is here.)

Of course, research about wikis doesn’t answer every question about these two models of ed tech and inequality. Are blogs any different than wikis? Possibly, though I can’t imagine why. Are Khan Academy videos different? Possibly, although again, it’s not clear why they would be. But these are empirical questions that we can answer with research.

Three suggestions for greater equality

So if education technology does disproportionately benefit the affluent, what should we do about it? Let me offer three suggestions for teachers, developers and funders.

Orientation towards inequality with technology

For teachers, the orientation towards inequality with technology is very important. Educators need to make a commitment to using social technologies with all their students, not just honors and AP students. Many teachers working with at-risk youth are concerned about inequities with technology access within their classrooms, but urban school teachers need to be more concerned with inequities between schools.

We need to ensure that urban and rural students have the same opportunities as their suburban peers. We can’t make it so no students in a class have a tech-rich learning experience because some students have difficulty with access. That’s fair within a classroom, but not within a society.

Develop technology initiatives that specifically target the neediest students

Technologists, designers and researchers need to develop technology initiatives that specifically target the neediest students. TechGoesHome is a fabulous program that provides netbooks and internet connections to students, along with computer training for the entire family. The Glitch Game Testers in Atlanta, have built a program that hires African-American male students as game testers, teaches them the AP Computer Science curriculum, and has an incredible placement rate in not only getting these kids into college, but into engineering and CS majors.

Bootstrap is a terrific program that teachers students to program their own video games, developing algebra and computer science skills at the same time. . The Leadership Public Schools use CK-12 Flexbooks to develop content for math and science courses that build literacy skills while teaching domain knowledge. These programs are much more likely to benefit the students who most need our support and investment.

Focus funding streams on students who most need support.

Finally, the big foundations supporting ed tech innovations: NSF, Gates, Hewlett, and MacArthur need to be sure to focus a considerable part of their funding streams on students who most need support. A terrific example of this are the Gates/Hewlett Next Generation Learning grants, which target specific kids in specific high-risk courses.

I’m sure down the line that all students will benefit from these kinds of experiments, but if we start by focusing on the kids with the most needs, then we’re more likely to create a scenario where education technology is vehicle for meliorating rather than exacerbating educational opportunity gaps.

Additional Thoughts

I have a video op-ed up on the Harvard Graduate School of Education website, where I address some of my concerns about the role of education technology in expanding educational inequalities. Here’s the video:

So those are some of my thoughts on the topic… obviously there is much more to say. If you are interested, I will be giving a Berkman Luncheon talk on the topic this January.

If you have questions or reactions, please leave me a comment!

This post first appeared as Will Free benefit the Rich?, and is republished here with Justin’s permission

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Over the last 5 years, several low-cost laptops were introduced expressly for educational systems of the developing world. Starting with the XO-1 laptop from One Laptop Per Child, and expanding to include the ClassmatePC, these computers then spawned consumer netbooks like the Asus Eee-PC, which could also be used for education. Now we have tablet computers like the Amazon Kindle and the Apple iPad that also can be used in educational settings. In fact, there is a whole plethora of low-cost ICT device options for educators.

So which one of these computing platforms is the best for education? Which form factor can help students learn better and allow teachers to reach greater educational outcomes in the classroom and across school systems? Is there a single laptop that works better than the rest?

Let us first learn more about the four main types of low-cost computers that are widely used in education

Which one is the best?

This is a great loaded question as there isn’t any one device that is best for every situation. In fact, experts in ICT for education (ICT4E) deployments have come up with six success criteria for educational ICT projects that should be considered long before choosing the hardware:

1. Infrastructure:
   ICT4E projects require a significant infrastructure in order to run effectively. This infrastructure need doesn’t just include technical aspects such as the availability of electricity and Internet access but also logistical aspects such as how to efficiently and reliably distribute hundreds of thousands of laptops in some of the remotest regions of the world.
2. Maintenance:
   Regardless of how robust an ICT device or software solution is there will always be issues with a certain percentage of them. This is especially true when computers are deployed in rugged environments, which are dusty, hot, and humid, and the main users are young children. As a result processes and solutions need to be developed to address how to repair broken equipment.
3. Content and curriculum:
   One of the core requirements for ICT4E projects is appropriate e-content and e-curriculum that enable the technology to be used as a tool for learning. Simply scanning in existing books and making them available digitally doesn’t come close to utilizing the full potential of a digital and connected device such as a laptop or mobile phone. Hence interactive learning content the supports the local curriculum, and supplemental materials such as digital multimedia libraries, need to be developed to effect learning, regardless of the hardware chosen.
4. Community inclusion:
   One component that often seems to be underestimated in ICT4E projects is the importance of community inclusion and the buy-in from key stakeholders such as teachers, parents, principals and administrators. Grassroots support is the main requirement for enabling initial adoption, daily project support, and long-term sustainability.
5. Teacher training:
   Using a new tool and approach is always hard, particularly when we’re talking about something as complex as learning and education. Therefore it is vital that teachers receive adequate training on how to efficiently and effectively use ICT such as laptops as a tool for education. Training people is both very resource-intensive and complex, yet without it ICT4E projects are very likely to fail.
6. Evaluation:
   Last but not least, evaluating the impact that ICT4E has on learning, and the broader society, is a key criterion. Unfortunately, appropriate baseline data is difficult to acquire in many cases, hampering the project evaluation process. Evaluation is often an afterthought that only receives attention once technology implementation has started. This is too late to gather baseline data. Ideally, evaluation is started in early project stages as well as a continually used toolset to refine and improve a project.

Recommendation to policy makers

Note what is not listed in the six criteria for success: the actual hardware form factor or its unit cost. In fact, research on the cost of ICT interventions in education by Vital Wave Consulting found that hardware was not the main cost in ICT4E activities:

Governments need to consider the entire cost of school computing solutions, rather than merely the initial expenses. A total cost of ownership model takes into account recurrent and hidden costs such as teacher training, support and maintenance, and the cost of replacing hardware over a five-year period.

Support and training are recurrent costs that constitute two of the three largest costs in the total cost of ownership model. They are greater than hardware costs and much higher than software fees.

So it is my continuous recommendation to policy makers to focus on the educational ecosystem, and support the change management that is required when introducing a new tool. Because no matter if it’s a “$100 laptop” or a magical iPad, the success (or failure) of ICT interventions in education is directly related to the supporting investments in teachers, administrators, community leaders – people not devices.

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In this context, we are interested in exploring the following questions:

• Where and how are mobile devices or other affordable technologies being used for access to learning materials and collaboration? What lessons can we learn from these experiences?
• What are the key challenges for the use of these technologies in education in Africa? What are the critical success factors for their effective use?
• What recommendations should be made to policy makers, regulators, donors and other stakeholders if technology is to be used to support learning and collaboration in an equitable, sustainable and scalable manner?

The next several posts will look at some of these questions and we hope that they will trigger discussion on some of the issues they raise. We invite responses questions as well as the sharing of both successes and failures.

This conversation is part of the eTranform Africa initiative.

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Tablets offer a number of advantages for education in comparison to laptops or netbooks. First, their lighter weight and orientational flexibility makes them far superior for digital reading or accessing of content. Second, their instant-on capability and fast switching among applications allows learning activities to proceed with less delay. Third, their touchscreen interface allows a high degree of user interactivity. Fourth, they are much more mobile than laptops, as students can carry them inside or outside a room without having to close and reopen the screen and can also use them for mobile data collection or notetaking. Fifth, since it is inexpensive to develop apps for mobile platforms, there is a rapidly growing amount of free or low-cost apps for tablets, many of which are suitable for education. And finally, tablets’ long battery life makes them more suitable for a school day.

This past year, my research team has started to investigate the use of iPads in K-12 schools in the US. In one private school we are studying in California, students have daily access to laptops and frequent access to iPads, thus allowing us to compare the use of the two. In a science class we have been observing, students unanimously tell us that they prefer using the iPads to the laptops due to the tablets’ light weight, mobility, touchscreen, and apps. Students use the iPads to read a free open source Earth sciences textbook, investigate the elements and the composition of the Earth and galaxy via interactive apps, access the school’s e-learning platform, log and analyze lab data, and produce lab reports. Our observations suggest that the iPads are particularly helpful for laboratory work as the students carry the devices around to input data on the move.

Though iPads are thus far the most educationally suitable tablet, current models also have disadvantages compared to netbooks and laptops. iPads are more expensive to purchase than netbooks (making them costly even for a US context), and more difficult to write and edit on than netbooks or laptops, unless one gets an external keyboard at extra expense. The lack of a computer-style file structure in iOS can make the organizing and sharing of student work more complicated, at least without establishing new file maintenance systems. And iPads are unable to access Websites that use the Adobe Flash multimedia platform, which is still common on many educational sites.

Of these disadvantages, the most important long-term educational one is in the area of writing. Learning to write well is a critical part of education, and is hindered if students don’t have a device optimized for composing and editing. However, this problem can be overcome through use of an external keyboard, and we will likely see a wide variety of mobile tablets in the future with detachable or folding keyboards or other alternative input systems.

Some of these devices will also be dual bootable, with both a mobile and desktop operating system, or have new operating systems that merge the strengths of a mobile and desktop OS. As for the cost of tablets, this will come down over time and cost savings will also be realized as students use tablets to access and use lower-cost digital textbooks.

In short, if I were advising US school district leaders that were interested in implementing a “one-to-one” technology program right now, I would probably recommend that they hold off on tablets, as laptops and netbooks provide a better educational bang for the buck today. But, looking down the road? Yes, I expect that tablets with keyboards and e-texts will be the way to go, replacing not only laptops but also textbooks to facilitate more personalized and interactive learning.

Once again, though, my research on educational use of tablets has thus far been confined to U.S. schools. I will let others speak to the viability of tablets for education in developing countries.

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Mobile digital devices rocketed to popularity around 10 years ago with the release of the iPod. Mobile computing went mainstream with the release of the iPhone in 2007. With the release of the iPad just one year ago, we are now seeing a significant shift in the dynamics of computer purchase and practice – moving away from desktops and laptops to iPads and other mobile devices. Their cost relative to laptops along with the promise of mobile computing has raised tremendous interest in iPad use in education.

I don’t believe Apple anticipated the demand for iPads as educational devices. When they were first released, more than one Apple sales representative suggested that iPads were designed for personal media consumption and laptops would be a more appropriate investment for schools. In response to overwhelming interest among educators, I started our online community – iPads in Education – within weeks of the iPad’s release.

The site is an online network that provides guidance on educational usage, allowing users to ask questions and gain from others’ experiences. In the past several months we’ve learned a significant amount about how mobile tablet computing may impact education now and into the future.

The Promise

• Form factor: Anyone that has used an iPad can attest to its compelling form factor. It just feels right. Light, portable and easy to hold or lay in your lap. As opposed to a laptop where the upright screen acts as a barrier between people in classroom settings, the iPad tends to be used more organically; it’s small, lays flat and is easily shared and passed around.
• Long battery life and instant-on: Continuous, transparent access to information is a key educational goal and these are two core requirements. The long battery life of iPads allows you to charge them overnight and use them throughout the school day without any need to pull out messy power cords or search for sparsely located electrical outlets. Additionally, they power up almost immediately. Teachers have little class time to meet increasing demands and don’t need to be wasting five or more minutes every lesson waiting for students to open laptops, power up and log in or shut down. The iPad simply flips open and it’s on. Importantly, as with other mobile devices, this also enables natural, almost transparent educational use. You’re more likely to just spontaneously turn to it for information in the course of a discussion. Students can carry it around easily and instantly access and integrate information and tools into discussions and educational activities.
• Price: The cost of computer implementations has been a stumbling block for many communities and countries. The advent of cheaper alternatives – netbooks, smartphones and iPads – are closing the digital divide and making computing increasingly accessible to more people.
• Touch interface: When combined with the simplicity of the screen layout, the touch interface is a key element of the iPad’s popularity. Most notably, you will observe how young children instinctively take to it without instruction – the web is replete with examples. From my own experience, I find that younger children adapt to the interface even more naturally than teens.
• Improved digital reading: The crisp quality of the display, especially when combined with the light weight and portability, enables a far superior reading experience than currently exists on desktops and laptops. Along with the iPad’s light weight and portability, this finally opens the door to the possibility of utilizing eBooks in education in place of their far heavier and more expensive paper counterparts.
• Integrating multimedia: We live in a society that increasingly expresses itself in images and video. There is an abundance of apps delivering high quality multimedia content to iPads, allowing for integration of fantastic media experiences into educational activities. This is especially applicable to news events where fresh, sharp video footage and images are easily accessible and can spark valuable class discussion.
• Special education: Increasingly we are hearing how the iPad has been a huge success within special education. The simplicity of the touch interface is making it an extremely popular device for students with special needs.
• Connecting: The educational value of social networking lies in its ability to facilitate the growth of impromptu virtual learning communities – connecting people around the globe to share opinions and experiences. Social networking applications are an integral part of iPad usage – whether connecting users to news events, industry experts or video-conferencing with students and classes in other countries.

Consumption or Production?

Much has been written about the opinion that iPads are great consumption devices but are less stellar at allowing students to express themselves creatively. I don’t entirely agree. Firstly, it isn’t simply a consumption device – it’s an extraordinary consumption device – and the role of information acquisition in education shouldn’t be under-valued.

Also, as the application market matures we’re starting to see an evolving depth in the creative opportunities. Music applications, digital storytelling, animation, mathematics … now with the addition of a camera to the second generation iPad and the hallmark release of core Apple applications such as iMovie and GarageBand, the creative possibilities are expanding rapidly.

Some Considerations

• Sharing: iPads are intensely personal devices that record your digital footprint – logins, preferences and more. There’s no login process. This makes them difficult to share. A 1:1 iPad implementation requires very different planning than an implementation that shares iPads among students. My hope is that educational app developers will see the obvious need for sharing in schools and add login layers to their apps.
• They aren’t laptops: You can’t manage iPads in the same way as laptops. Imaging and synchronization processes, content management, application purchasing – they all raise specific issues that require thorough discussion and planning.
• Keyboard: The touch screen keyboard is not popular with all users. I find that it’s more than sufficient for smaller typing tasks such as emails, notes, blog posts and more …. but I believe we’re approaching the end of qwerty typing in computing. The popularity of tablet computing may end up stimulating development of alternative, more efficient input methods that also utilize voice and video.
• eTextbooks: At this point, the promise of eTextbooks still exceeds the reality. There aren’t enough quality books available in digital format and frankly, most still stem from a model that is built upon their physical, paper counterpart. It’s not enough to simply translate textbooks to digital files – we need new models that utilize the media and interactivity capabilities available on iPads. A digital textbook should be cognizant of what the learner has mastered and where he/she needs assistance. It should customize the content to the reader’s strengths and weaknesses and report the student’s progress to the teacher. Effective use of multimedia – interactive multimedia – will become core elements of new eTextbooks and eCourses. There have been some excellent first attempts and eTextbooks and eCourses will improve as the market matures.

The Immediate Future

• The app market will mature and we’ll move from single task, short session apps to more sophisticated offerings. The release of GarageBand and iMovie are the first steps in that direction.
• The barrier to entry for creating and distributing eBook content will become lower. Increasingly, teachers and communities will create their own eBook content.
• Social reading is an imminent phenomenon that combines the reading of eBooks with social networking. When reading eBooks users can connect to friends and other readers, asking questions and sharing notes or opinions. Apps such as Inkling are a bold first step in that direction.
• While the iOS browser is adequate it still lags behind desktop offerings. As mobile continues to expand we can expect a consolidation of desktop and mobile systems and browsers resulting in better mobile web editing, more collaboration tools and support for a wider range of web technologies.

Finally, it’s still a free-for-all in the mobile tablet market. The huge popularity of the iPad is spawning a wealth of new applications and cultivating the development of a host of competitive products that will only serve to strengthen the overall educational value of mobile tablet computing.

The most popular answer to the question of how to improve the quality of schools and education in developing countries is: Invest in more teachers and more schools.

Let there be more teachers

I think there are few people who would contest that having one full time, fully qualified teacher in front of every class of 25 children would bring education of the highest standards to any country.
But could this really be the solution to the educational problems in poor countries? I sincerely doubt whether this solution is feasible. I even fear it is completely impossible to solve the plight of education in the developing world by this route alone.

Here is a statistic that paints a bleak picture, indeed:

India has one of the lowest ratio of teachers. In the US, it’s 3,200 teachers per million people, in the Caribbean it’s 1,500, in the Arab countries it’s 800 and in India it’s 456 teachers per million people. The Times of India (2009)

The US might not be the best example, but even to get at the level of the Caribbean, the Arab countries must double their number of teachers, and India must more than triple its number. And that would be just the number of teachers needed to get at the level of the Caribbean. If the teacher pupil ratio should get close to that of the US, double the number of new teachers would be needed.

Obviously, if the aim would be to decrease the number of pupils per teacher in all developing countries to the level of the developed countries, enormous numbers of teacher would have to be recruited and trained. For many countries in the developing world the number of teachers would have to double, like in the Arab world, in others it would have to triple, like in India and many African countries.

A lot of numbers

How many teachers would have to be recruited, trained, and send to schools? Below, a lot of statistics will be presented. If you are already convinced, you can skip the arithmetic and go to the next section.

Let us look at the numbers, some of which are collected in the table. For OECD countries there are around 16 students per teacher in primary education (CESifo DICE Report). Looking at the numbers, we can take a national average of 15 pupils/teacher as the norm for primary education in developed countries and 13 for secondary education. But note that these are just very global statistics on education. And keep in mind that worldwide, approximately 100 million children that should be in school are not.

Furthermore, as these statistics are global, they do not tell us how the available teachers are distributed. The developed countries are able to organize education in such a way that all children have comparable access to education. The difficult situations in the developing world make that the already low number of teachers are also distributed unequally. The pupil/teacher ratio can be much higher in rural areas than in urban areas. So for many children, the situation is even worse than these averages indicate.

Teaching staff in millions, pupil/teacher ration (P/T), and enrolment ratios in percent (net- NER and gross- GER) in primary and secondary education. Data for 2008 unless indicated otherwise. Source: Unesco

Just to get the average number of teachers in the developing world to the level of that of the developed world would mean that the number of teachers in Sub-Saharan Africa and South- and West-Asia must more than double. In other regions increases of over 50% would be required.

To get these numbers in a global perspective, there are currently some 58 million teachers in the world, 28 million in primary education and 30 million in secondary education (see table). If the worldwide average ratio of pupils to teachers should be reduced from 25 to 15 for primary and from 18 to 13 for secondary education, an extra 30 million new teachers would be needed (19 million in primary, 11 million in secondary education).

Even a more modest aim to get the pupil to teacher ratio to 20 in primary education and 15 in secondary would require some 13 million new teachers, world wide. And that is without increasing the enrolment ratios in primary and secondary education to 100%. That alone could require another 20 million teachers.

In conclusion, any attempt to improve education in the world by increasing the number of teachers must prepare to recruit, train, and deploy well over 10 million new teachers, and maybe even up to 50 million new teachers. Trainers are needed to train these new teachers. If we are in a hurry, we would have to train them in, say, 6 years for a 3 year teacher training program, that would make 4-13 million new teachers a year entering training. This training program would require anywhere from 130,000 – 400,000 trainers for these teachers.

Round numbers:
13-35 million new teachers: Recruit, Train, Deploy
40 million teachers: Retrain
150,000 – 250,000 trainers for these teachers

Can we really rely on training more teachers alone?

Obviously, the numbers given above are rough ballpark estimates. But it is clear that “invest in teachers and schools” often means “double or triple the number of your teachers”. A truly gargantuan task.

There is an important question that has to be answered before such an effort is undertaken.

Why is it that there are not enough teachers in the first place?

It is not that training teachers is an unknown art. Teachers have been trained for a century now. Why is the world short of tens of millions of teachers?

It is not for a lack of trying. Ever since development aid became into existence somewhere after WWII, it has been known that more teachers are needed. But somehow, the developing countries have been unable to supply them. There are many reasons for this shortage, underfunding, bad working conditions, labor migration away from rural areas, competition from other employers, low social status, bad organization etc. These are social problems. And we know that social problems are the hard problems. And there are as yet no convincing ideas on how to solve these very hard problems.

So, that is why I think any plan to “invest in teachers, not technology” is bound to fail. There is simply no known policy that can solve the problems that plague teacher recruitment and training in less than a generation, if they can be solved at all. Trying to recruit and train millions of new teachers is simply going to fail. Any attempt to just throw money at the problem will fail just as badly as all the other cases where a solution was dropped on the developing countries.

I like the idea of supplying every child with a well trained teacher in a class with only 30 pupils. My sole objection is, it cannot be done. And even if it could be done, what should be done for the children that enter and leave school in the meantime?

Technology to the rescue

Compare the problems of supplying children with teachers to supplying them with technology. If we would supply the roughly 900 million children in dire need of education with OLPC laptops over a period of 5 years continuously, this would cost around $40B a year, worldwide. (200 million laptops a year at $200). I can write a small encyclopedia with all the objections to spending $40B/year on OLPC laptops. But we all know that it is actually possible to produce and distribute 200 million laptops per year. It costs money, but it can be done. This is technology, and technology is easy.

As education will have to rely on the existing workforce for the foreseeable future, their work, and that of their pupils, should be made as easy and productive as possible. In a service industry like education this means using technology, i.e., ICT. But we should not forget that a lot can be done using less glamorous technology. For instance, in many regions in the world, a bicycle may improve mobility of children and teachers alike and enable children to continue further education (Indian Times, 2009).

Without light and heating, education would have to be curtailed severely during the winter in my own country. But such measures, e.g., electrification or increased mobility, have obvious positive impacts on economic development. Such measures do not have to be argued. Here I would like to concentrate on ICT4E, the advantages of which are much more contentious.

ICT4E has the same problems as ICT4D(evelopment). It is inconceivable that a solution to every local problem could be devised by a person sitting behind a keyboard in Western-Europe. People on the ground, locals, know what is needed and what is available. Bicycles can help some children get to school in the Netherlands or regions of India, but it would be a complete waste to send bicycles into other areas, e.g., the Andes or Himalaya. However, there are many “simple” problems that crop up everywhere in the world, and might be solved by a single tool or technology. Just like the blackboard solved a problem experienced in every classroom in the world, there might be technologies that are valuable everywhere.

In our quest to look for eligible technology, I would like to stick to ICT solutions that avoid the “Top 7 Reasons Why Most ICT4D FAILS” (Rogers, 2010, a nice YouTube movie). The video explains it all so I will not repeat them here.

The central question is how to make ICT useful for schools. Received wisdom is that technology should be integrated in community life before it can be really useful. It is instructive to study cases where this received wisdom has been flouted. Prime examples are radio, television, and mobile phones. History has shown that these gadgets have been embraced by almost all communities, even those that lacked any understanding of the underlying technologies. In a completely different field, the simple formulation of Oral Rehydration Therapy helps local staff tackling one of the leading causes of child mortality in the developing world without lengthy training or expensive infrastructure.

The successful electronic consumer gadgets all have in common that they require zero maintenance and are robust in normal use. The only consumables of the gadgets are electrical power or batteries. A costly infrastructure is needed for all three, but this is both outside of the view of the consumers and the costs are shared by all.

These technologies fitted every human society because they were transparently enabling some of the most basic human needs: Exchanging stories, gossip, and news and playing music. This acceptance is not a matter of User Interface or ease of use. Text messaging on a mobile phone must count under the worst User Interfaces ever invented. But because the feed-back is immediate and transparent, even small children are able to put up with it (and often can do the task blindfolded).

So we need turn-key drop-in technologies that have zero-maintenance, are robust in the field, including fields of the green and grassy type, and latch into basic human behavior. Mobile phones might be the best examples, as they require little more than electricity and a (prepaid card) number. They are easy to carry and protect: Just keep them out of the rain or in a pouch. And they help people to do what they seem to like most, talk and write to each other.

A last feature of successful technology introductions is a long technological horizon. Anything that takes so much effort to introduce should last a long time. We can expect our children to still use something that functions as a phone or a TV. The actual device might look different, but we should be able to recognize the function. Especially in education, new technology should last a generation. The children of the pupils that are introduced to the new technology should be expected to use something alike. So if no continuous upgrade path is expected over the next decades, I think the introduction of a technology should be seriously reconsidered.

To summarize, the kind of technological solutions that I am looking for would fit all of the following (think radio, TV, and mobile phones):

• Solves a global problem or need
• Robust in normal daily use
• Turn-key drop-in
• Zero-maintenance
• Consumes only electricity, and very little of it
• Connects to content or communication channels (including surface mail)
• A long technological horizon

Note that the technological solutions discussed are intended to solve serious problems. Nowhere is it assumed that technology should improve education if there are no real problems. Technology does not replace a teacher, but it can help her teach and help the children learn.

My archetypal example of successful educational technology is the blackboard. The blackboard solved a huge educational problem in teaching for large groups: A simple, flexible, and cheap method to present text and diagrams to large groups of pupils. It allowed to effectively display and explain complex concepts so that children in the back of the classroom could see them too. It is a pity that you need chalk to write (a consumable), but that proved surmountable.

Two examples will explain these bullet points: The pocket calculator and desktop PCs running Microsoft Windows.

Pocket calculators, or better, graphical calculators, were introduced in secondary education in Europe at the end of the 1970s. The problem they solved was that some important mathematical concepts could not be taught because the calculations on anything but toy problems were too cumbersome. With these electronic calculators, realistic problems in statistics, matrix algebra, and function theory could be introduced into secondary education. As these calculators can be used in class and at home, their use can be easily integrated into the relevant courses. Moreover, pupils learned how to perform arithmetic on real calculators like they would need in working life later.

So using the calculators solved a small, but very real problem in the teaching of mathematics, economics, and science. Obviously, a pocket calculator fits all of the other bullet points. They run for months or years on a single battery, get their contend from the text books, and they have been in continuous use for over 30 years now. A clear success story.

On the other hand, desktop PCs in school running Microsoft Windows defy every bullet point. The only general problem that is solved by a PC in school is Internet access. But there is little use for direct Internet access in class. Desktop PCs can be used in courses directed towards computer use, but even that is hardly useful in school. At home, PCs do have general practical value, but that has little to do with the limited presence of PCs in school. Introduction of such desktop PCs in schools in the developing world generally ends in a deception.

An important problem is that Microsoft Windows has a tendency to break in daily use, especially when the computer has an Internet connection. The hardware of desktop PCs is not designed for a tropical climate. Moisture and dust can easily break the hardware. Installation and maintenance are difficult and require special skills and knowledge. Desktop PCs consume a lot of power and, therefore, cannot run on batteries. So their use is very limited in locations with unreliable power supplies. Connectivity is good, if a wired or wireless Internet connection is available. And they can be used with CD/DVD disks or USB memory sticks.

The technological horizon is more complex to judge. In future generations, we can expect to see screens, keyboards, and computers of some kind. However, I still remember a quote from a parent in the 1980s. When asked why she preferred the use of MS Dos PCs over Apple Macintosh computers in primary school she answered “Because when my child will go to work, it will have to use MS Dos, and not the fancy graphical interface of the Apple Macintosh” (paraphrased from memory). And it has been this way ever since.

If we look at the developments of computer use in the last years, we see perpetual shifts. Nowadays, the shift is towards a completely different model of computing with the integrated User Interfaces of mobile phones (iOS and Android) becoming the standard for tablets, netbooks, and upwards into other computers. So the technological horizon of standard desktop computers has always been very short.

An example of new technical gear: The OLPC XO

As an illustration of a recent project, compare the above with the OLPC XO laptop. The design goals of the XO laptop came very close to the ideal of a no-worry drop-in technology.

The software is distantly related to the Android mobile phone operating system with a zero-maintenance update and security model. The laptop was designed to be robust and the only consumable was electricity. The laptop was easy to carry and protect. It enabled access to the Internet for video and voice connections, email and Instant Messaging, and you could also use it to play music. Connected to the Internet, it could replace radio, TV, phone, and music player.

The laptops could double as book readers and store a complete library, allowing schools that could not even afford textbooks to get a library for each child. On top of it, it could also be used as a computer. The technological horizon looks promising as some kind of small, mobile computer with a simplified interface is likely to be around for the next decade or so.
What went wrong with the first version of the XO laptop?

Basically, the execution fell somewhat short of the design goals. Quite a number of laptops were rolled out before the software was finished and these laptops suffered from a lot of very annoying bugs. These bugs could not be solved by the normal update mechanism, but required replacing the operating system itself. The logistics of supplying a new operating system image to laptops in the field proved to be impractical.

On the hardware side, the keyboard was not robust enough and broke in too many laptops, as did the trackpads. And power consumption was still a bit too high for many locations. The mesh network to share Internet connections did not scale well inside schools and did not deliver the planned connectivity. Supplying Internet connectivity to schools proved to be the Achilles heel of the project. And without an Internet connection, the laptops became much less useful for their intended purpose.

In then end, the first generation of the OLPC XO laptops came very, very close to achieving the status of a no-worry drop-in technology. And where there was Internet, they seem to function as intended. But without a solution for the Internet connectivity, the laptops are much less useful. Had there been Internet connectivity at home, we can be pretty sure that the children would have found out how to use the keyboards and navigate the User Interface. If primary school children can find out how to send text messages on mobile phones without formal instruction, they can learn to use the OLPC’s Sugar interface.

But even if the XOs function as intended, there remains the logistic problem of giving out and replacing laptops and delivering electricity and Internet connectivity. In general, all technological solutions require logistics to distribute the gear (TV sets, mobile phones), the electricity (or batteries, or solar panels), and the connections (transmitters, cell towers). These will always be a problem for rural areas in the developing world. But these factors affect each and every attempt to solve problems in the developing world as they are at the heart of the economic under-development to start with.

As many technophiles, I really love the OLPC laptop. But I know that was not the question. What we really want to know is whether there is a technology that solves the problem at hand. However, this discussion is targeted at a global audience, and we know that the cost of technology depends on the production volume. The very first radio was extremely expensive, the billionth transistor radio is a free promotion item. So I will look here at global problems with high volume solutions.

Example of a global problem and solution: Textbooks fantasies

To illustrate the ideas presented above, I will fantasize about a real global problem in education and a technological solution.

Textbooks are a necessity in school, but they are expensive. My country spends around 300 euro ($400) a year per pupil on textbooks in secondary school. For this money, each pupil could get a laptop and a broadband Internet connection at home for the duration of her education. With some change to spare for electronic textbooks. Most of this cost is the result of monopoly rents by the publishers, as it is in many developed countries. But even at half the price, each student could get an ebook reader with a lot of money to spend on electronic books and prepaid mobile Internet.

The root of the textbook problem lies in the cost of production. Textbooks are a difficult market, with high investments in writing and printing and high distribution costs. And it is an all or nothing market. Either your book is selected for the curriculum, and you sell big, or it is rejected and you sell nothing. Moreover, to stay up-to-date, textbooks have to be revised very often. A lot of insider knowledge is needed to produce a textbook that fits in the standard curriculum. As a result, the market for textbooks for primary and secondary education is always limited to a single school system (country).

And in the end, the textbooks are not that great at all. Ansary (2004) gives an illuminating and entertaining, but also infuriating, account of the way text-books are produced in the USA. Quite often it is a pain to use these textbooks. Most teachers have to create extra “cheat-sheets” to supply missing material and explain incomprehensible portions of the text. Beyond all these problems with the content, there is the daily wear and tear of paper books that makes every textbook usable for only a few years, if well cared for.

In accounts of classroom practises in the developing world, we often hear of whole classes that spend their day copying the complete text of a textbook from the blackboard into their notebooks. This seems a waste of time. When copying large amounts of text, you are unable to think about the text or even remember it. However, supplying the books themselves to the children was obviously not possible. So copying a book wholesale might be the only way the children can ever get hold of the text. Still, we will all agree that it would be better if the pupils had the same textbooks as the teacher. The teacher could then spend her time explaining the material in the textbook and children could spend time learning and practising the skills covered by the textbook.

So here we have a truly global problem: Expensive, outdated, low quality, and cumbersome textbooks that are often not available for the children in the developing world. Can we fantasize about a better system? One that gets both teachers and children the books they so desperately want and need?

There is a very good idea that was actually embraced by (some) politicians in the developed world, the Open Textbook Initiative. Creative Commons electronic books produced by authors and teachers in Wikipedia style (Creative Commons, 2010; Beshears, 2005; Durbin 2009). In principle, this can be applied world wide. The ministry can give grants for writing specific electronic textbook, or volunteers and teachers can write their own. The textbook are licensed under some Creative Commons license that allows free distribution and adaptation. The books are archived and made available in a repository and distributed electronically as ebooks.

Teachers, scientists, and students can add and submit changes in Wikipedia style. It cannot be said that ebooks are better than paper books, but they will be preferred over no books at all.
And the costs? As I wrote above, for what the developed countries pay for textbooks now, they can supply top of the line ebook readers and Internet connections to the students, and have massive amounts of money to spare for grants to write the books. And if you ever tried to lift the school backpack of a high-school student over here, you know that ebooks would take a heavy burden from their shoulders.

In the developed world, the Open Textbook initiative solves kind of a luxury problem. The developed countries can actually pay for the costs of over-priced paper books. They just feel they do not get quality for their money. And often no quality at all. The question is, could such an Open Textbook initiative work in the developing world, where paper textbooks are problematic?

Here we have to look again at our technology bullet list. The Open Textbook initiative does serve a pressing need for good and affordable textbooks. We can be pretty sure that every teacher in the world would welcome better, up to date, textbooks. So, provided a collection of good textbooks can be produced by way of government grants or volunteer work, this part is covered.

Current ebook readers are constructed for indoor use in the developed world. They do have too many unprotected openings and fragile components for a developing world environment. However, covering up these holes and putting in more robust components is not very difficult, the OLPC has done most of that work already. For most ebook readers this would be a minor, and cheap design change, not a problem.

The use of ebook readers is quite simple. You drop in an ebook (or a shelf of ebooks) and you start turning pages. Apart of language and date and time there is not much to set. So, indeed turn-key drop-in technology. Theoretically, you can update the software of an ebook reader, but there is not often a need for doing that. An ebook reader can in most respects be considered to have zero-maintenance.

And last, but not least, ebook readers using electronic paper displays have extremely low power use. Their requirements are low enough to make charging with small solar panels feasible. Current retail costs for cheap ebook reader offerings are below $100 for consumers. Ebook readers cannot be repaired (easily) in the field, so any program to supply them should stock for replacement readers.

The next bullet point is connectivity: How to get new books on the ebook reader. Ebooks can be transferred to an ebooks reader by either connecting it to a computer which has them stored or downloaded, or over a wireless connection in the more expensive ebook readers. Most readers have a slot for external memory SDcards, which could be used to distribute ebooks. Even though SDcards might be rather fragile in daily use, they can be distributed over surface mail. So, the connectivity could be handled by sending USB sticks or memory cards with the mail or a messenger. There would have to be some outlet with a computer or laptop to transfer the new ebooks.

Sounds ideal, so why has it not been done yet?

Even at $50 a piece (gross price), a complete roll-out would be a rather big investment for a single purpose gadget. The cost would exceed the total educational budgets of many countries by a large margin. And the organization of a coordinated roll out of so many devices could overwhelm the capacities of most administrations. The cost and organization alone of an ebook reader roll out would exceed the resources of the countries that need them most.

Furthermore, the technology is all very new. If you roll-out ebook readers today, you might miss out on the powerful and cheap tablet computers of next year. A kind of, very realistic, economic deflation fear. So the technological horizon is short, very short indeed with all the new tablet computers coming out. Ebook reader apps are already part of every new smartphone. In a few years time, separate ebook readers will cease to exist and a general mobile platform will have taken over their function.

There is also the chicken-and-egg problem of needing electronic textbooks to use an ebook reader in class, while these textbooks will not be produced if the children have no ebook readers. On the other hand, if there is one thing that can be learned from the history of the World-Wide-Web and Wikipedia, then it is that if there are readers, the writers will come. The real challenge is to get a national Open Textbook initiative going. This will be addressed in the next section.

Teaching the teachers: A program fantasy

From the earlier discussions on Educational Technology Debate, it has become quite clear that the real challenge is not to get cutting edge ICT4E gear in the hands of the children. The real challenge is to ensure that the teachers are able to actually make use of the technology in their lessons. The solution is simple to formulate: Remedial courses for the teachers. But the initial problem was that it was not possible to adequately teach the children. How can we then train the teachers?

First of all, there are much less teachers than children, and they can occasionally travel. So it should be possible to arrange some classes in (semi-)urban areas where it is easier to provide education for adults. On the other hand, children have ample time for learning, adults have other responsibilities. So any courses for teachers must be short, targeted, and effective. The main point is that a one week course during the summer break will not be enough to prepare for a large change in the curriculum including hitherto unseen technology. And for teachers too, it holds that education must be interactive. Simply dumping a large amount of documentation on them will not lead to them actually mastering the subject.

Let us assume some technological solution has been selected for a nationwide roll out. For the sake of argument, our fantasy ebook reader program is introduced in schools which lacked books. The ebook reader program is accompanied by a national Open Textbook program. Now, what follows is my fantasy of a teacher instruction plan to use these ebook readers. It is assumed that the Ministry of Education can hire some local (or international) educational experts to construct a basic curriculum and lesson plan for use with the textbooks on the ebook readers. These plans are the basis for the textbooks.

The current practise is that teachers do group drill exercises, e.g., children copy the teacher’s text book from the blackboard and memorize some part of it. Such drills normally would take most of the in-class time. The task of the training program is to instruct the teacher how to operate and use the technology itself. They should learn how best to teach the children the use and care of the technology. But this introduction to the technology is just the basic part.

The real training must be to instruct the teachers how to use the electronic textbooks in class. As copying and memorizing the text books has become an irrelevant exercise, there is time during class to do other things. So teachers will have to get an idea what these textbooks can be used for. The curriculum will be adapted to reflect the presence of the ebook readers. As other commenters have already remarked, this is not something that can be achieved in a mere 1 or 2 week course.

The solution would be some kind of continuous distance learning program. Any one-time out-of-town courses should be followed by refreshers over correspondence. This could be anything from surface mail of course materials and assignments, special magazines, to special (off-hour) radio and TV programs, phone-in sessions, and if Internet is available, live Internet chat or video conferencing sessions. Given that the whole program will cost quite a lot, a special, one time a week radio or TV show will not be that expensive. Tapes can be send to those who cannot listen or watch life.

For our ebook reader program, the reading and audio materials can be mailed on a USB stick. We can nicely integrate the distance learning course with the Open Textbook initiative. Instead of dumping the textbooks on the schools, it would be nice if the teachers would get a say in what would become part of the textbooks. So, part of the assignments could be to suggest improvements to the textbooks. Maybe write or edit paragraphs. And send back the notes. Nothing fancy, pencil and paper would already be enough. These notes can be processed by the editors of the textbooks. Best to keep a list of contributors at the back of the final textbooks.

Obviously, there is not a lot that can be done in the one to two years in the run up of a large roll out. Especially as the teachers will have their normal responsibilities and duties, which would already take up their time. A course with associated book, magazines, and radio and TV programs would probably be the best option.

This is a format that is used world-wide for teaching languages. There is a lot of experience with such TV/radio courses. The exact formulation will obviously depend on local circumstances and customs. The real advantage of such a program is that it can be produced and staffed by locals. Teachers “on the ground” can be interviewed, and radio shows can contain phone in question and answer sessions as well as listener feed-back. This is all quite ordinary practise in most countries.

It would be unrealistic to expect that all teachers will have opportunity and time to fully participate in the interactive and collaborative aspects of such a program. But the more teachers have a chance to be active in the program, the better it will take root. And for teachers too it will hold that peer instruction is the second best thing after teacher instruction. So if the program can reach a large fraction of the teachers, we can hope that their knowledge will diffuse through the whole community. And there is no reason to stop the information program after the roll out is completed.

Discussion and Conclusions

It is obvious that developing countries will not be able to double or triple their number of teachers in the short term. So for the next decade or so some solution will have to be devised and implemented to improve education for the children entering school. Beyond more teachers, there are only few options left. Technology is one of them. To increase the chance that the chosen technology will actually be effective, some precautions should be taken. Basically, the probability of success will vastly increase if the technology can be used and maintained by children for the intended purpose. Which is basically the main aim of the small bullet list above. Anything more complex or demanding risks being relegated to gather dust in a corner.

But after we have the wonderful gadgets and gear, it should improve education. As teachers will have to change their teaching habits, it is very advantageous to instruct them in using the technology to improve their lessons. Given the other obligations that occupy teachers, any face-to-face training courses have to be short. To make the changes permanent, an interactive follow up is needed over the months that follow the face-to-face courses. A large number of options exist for semi-interactive distance courses and follow ups: magazines and tapes in the mail, radio and TV with phone-in, or question sessions by mail or phone. All these are distance learning practises with a long history. Only think of all the language courses broadcast around the world.

Under-development and over-stretched schools have shown to be very hard problems to solve. Although some kind of technological progress will be involved in the eventual solution, it is still unclear whether introducing any single technology can actually help. But as technologies like radio, TV, mobile phones, and even Oral Hydration Therapy have shown, the dire effects of important global problems can be alleviated by introducing certain types of technology. With only limited instruction, I think it will be possible to find solutions to help alleviate some of the educational problems that result from a chronic shortage of qualified teachers in the developing world.

References

Ansary (2004). A Textbook Example of What’s Wrong with Education: A former schoolbook editor parses the politics of educational publishing, Tamim Ansary

Beshears (2005). The Case for Creative Commons textbook, by Fred M. Beshears, U.C. Berkeley, April 07, 2005

CESifo. Class size and student-teacher ratio, CESifo DICE Report 4/2009

Creative Commons (2010). Open Textbook,

Durbin (2009). Durbin Introduces Legislation to Make College textbook more Affordable (press release)

Huebler (2008). International Education Statistics, Analysis by Friedrich Huebler, Pupil/teacher ratio in primary school, Pupil/teacher ratio in primary school

Indian Times (2009). CM gives Rs 15,000 and a bicycle each to girls, Feb 4, 2009

The Times of India (2009). India has one of the lowest teacher-student ratios: Expert,, Nov 7, 2009

Rogers (2010). Top 7 Reasons Why Most ICT4D FAILS – Dr Clint Rogers

UNESCO. Table 11: Indicators on teaching staff at ISCED levels 0 to 3, (accessed 02022011)

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Impact of School TV

There still is School TV, and most countries make use of some air-time or another for it. However, in-class use is very, very limited. A TV in front of the class does not seem to reduce the need for teacher based instruction much. TV is at best an accessory to classical education.

And outside school? We have Sesame Street for preschool children, which can be written down as a full scale success (in my opinion, it is often the best program of the evening, on any channel, for any age-group). As Ali G joked, Sesame Street is so good, they should make a version for children. In addition, every country seems to have a, small, selection of informative or educative programs for any age group. For the rest, TV quality is considered proverbially low.

There is a direct parallel between the discussion of the quality of TV programs and Internet content. Except that Internet content is considered again one, or several, steps worse. So what can we learn from the  history o television? First, that if you give people choice, they will make their own choices, not yours. So they will seek what they like. And people do not want to be educated. At least not all the time. Most of the time, people want to sit and relax, watching some show that is a waste of time.

But that is the point of relaxing, wasting time.

But we also see that the spread of TV has had a tremendous impact on society. Because of the implicit knowledge gained from watching “mindless entertainment”. Mindless entertainment spreads behavioral norms and expectations. It spreads language. And all those people in the world that watch foreign (e.g., US or Brazilian) TV shows, they learn a lot about the world outside their country. As Charles Kenny wrote:

In the not-too-distant future, it is quite possible that the world will be watching 24 billion hours of TV a day — an average of close to four hours for each person in the world. Some of those hours could surely be better spent — planting trees, helping old ladies cross the road, or playing cricket, perhaps. But watching TV exposes people to new ideas and different people. With that will come greater opportunity, growing equality, a better understanding of the world, and a new appreciation of the complexities of life for a wannabe Afghan woman pop star.

Now we often saw comments about the next generation of children being dumbed down to medieval levels of intellect, thanks to Novels, Radio, Movies, TV, or the Internet. However, in this point, science shows differently. Since IQ has been measured, it has gone up (the Flynn effect). So, despite, or thanks to, television, our children have a higher IQ than we have, and we had a higher IQ than our parents, etc.. Now IQ cannot be equated with intelligence, but it is the best measure of school ability we have. The Flynn effect shows that every generation is better at school than the previous.

In conclusion, did TV make children worse? Never. Did it have a direct impact on education? Hardly, there was ever only an indirect effect. But that indirect effect was huge.

If you go over all the criticism of TV programs of the past, it has often been compared to junk food for the Mind. Watching TV or Movies is called “media consumption” as if watching the tube is eating food. Viewers are cough potatoes, watching too much TV, and eating too many TV dinners.

This parallel between bad eating habits, including addictive behavior, and media use is even made stronger with respect to the Internet. We hear about “junk information”, “information overload”, “information obesity”, obviously with a work shop. The book and articles written by Nick Carr are inside the same trend. We get too much information from the Internet, and it is bad for us.

But information is not food. You can eat too much, but you cannot know too much. And you certainly do not “consume” information. After learning some information, it is not spend and forever gone, you can revisit the very same information time and again, gaining more insight every time.

Books and (non-)linear thought

Both TV and the Internet have been blamed for the low number of people that read books. This criticism implies that this is bad for these people and for society. I will not contest one way or another whether or not reading books is good for society. The point is, in the whole of history, only a minority read books for pleasure. But now the accusation has been leveled that the always-on connectivity of the Internet and mobile phones threatens the intellect of our children (again?).

I would like to quote Steve Vosloo when he summarizes the views of Nick Carr from The Shallows:

In The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, author Nick Carr asserts that human memory works best when it encounters ideas in a linear way, such as when a concept is explained in a way that logically builds out an idea, with each new layer of explanation resting on the layers before it and adding to the whole, coherent idea. And further, that focus — free of distractions — is essential for the mind to deep learn in this encounter with a developing idea. This kind of focused, linear idea-building often happens when engaging an educational book. The reader starts on page one and ends at page whatever; a clear path from start to finish — no distractions, no hyperlinks taking the mind off the matter at hand.

Nick Carr then links these ideas to neural plasticity and the way the brain works. This view on (educational) books is a peculiar one. Because, it again views mental interaction with a medium, here reading a book, as a kind of consumption. Like if you “eat” your way through the book.

Although it is true that we tend to read through a book from page to page, front to back, this is not the whole story. First, with educational books this is the exception, instead of the rule. I cannot remember having ever read a school text book from cover to cover. But more important, I have never read a book in one single, uninterrupted session, except when it was very, very short. Often I read a book over days or even weeks or months. Each time I start again, I do remember where I left of in the story or train of thoughts. This is what every reader does without problem.

This reading in installments has been part of book publishing itself. Serialized books are very common, from the archetype of the oral “Arabian Nights”, with its 1001 nightly cliffhangers to “The Pickwick Papers” and the “Count of Monte Cristo” all over to the seven parts of “Harry Potter” published over a period of almost a decade. Interruption is the rule in book reading, not the exception. And only the simplest of children’s book are linear in structure. The plot lines of books are more like a river system with many sub-plot lines coming together in ever larger flows. In argumentative and educational texts this is not different. Many strands of reasoning are tied together to get to the point, if there is a point.

Note also that there is a literary genre of published correspondence, more like correspondence chess. Each publication is a turn in a game of conversation. This genre is still alive in learned and scientific journals. It is not that one book or letter leads to one idea or insight. But ideas are developed over time in a tight interaction of publications. Conversations come in book sizes because of limits of technology. We would be better off if we were able to get the original conversations back. Conversations with all their non-linear and complex interconnections.

In books and articles, references are used as a prosthesis for these intricate connections.  Hypertext was just what was needed to recreate the connections between thoughts and arguments. Nowadays, articles are published on-line with the sources and references directly linked. You see this in this ETD discussion. In the previous paragraph, I could have added a footnote after describing a view on the development of ideas. I did not think of this view myself.

The footnote would point to a reference where this idea is developed and explained. The Wikipedia article about this contains links to other relevant references, on-line and off-line. And so on. Would this bother any of you? Normally, I am not very much distracted by such a footnote-with-link. In general, I visit such footnotes and links only during second or later readings. Or if it concerns something I find particularly interesting.

And with the Internet, and mobile phones, we finally go back to the original form of the formulation and development of ideas as it was practised by the likes of Socrates: (almost) real time conversations between author and reader, speaker and listener, where the discussions in the comments section can be more interesting and thought provoking than the original article. These conversations come naturally to readers, as the wealth of blog comments and things like the m4Lit mobile phone project show. See the ETD articles by Marion Walton and Steve Vosloo.

So, I disagree with Nick Carr. I do not think books are straight, direct, and uninterrupted roads to ideas and insights. In my view, books are, at times convoluted, episodes in long running conversations with intricate relations between the episodes. Hypertext is a good tool to make these relations explicit. And readers only gain from seeing them in their face.

I think that the real problem Nick Carr is referring too, distraction and lack of focus, is not about the structure of information, or information overload. These problems have more to do with noise and learning to chose, select, and concentrate. These problems would not go away if the Internet goes away. We had the same complaints earlier about TV shows and MTV culture. This is simply a matter of adaptation to noise. And people can adapt to a lot of noise.

This was looking back, now lets look to the future of education

We are living a revolution of the same extend as the introduction of movable print. Suddenly, information is not scarce anymore. Communication has become cheap. Things like Google, Wikipedia, and the ETD blog were unimaginable a few decades ago. How do children look at these new possibilities? Obviously, they push them to the edge of the possible. And they use it for what children always liked doing most: Chatting and playing. These two activities cost time, so the children will cut back on other activities.

It would be great if chatting and playing could be recruited for education, but that is not happening yet (but see “Serious fun with computer games“, Nature 466, 695 5 August 2010, doi:10.1038/466695a ). We know from the research discussed on this site that next to watching TV and reading comics, children will cut back on doing homework to free up “computer time”. This will affect their grades. Does this mean they will be educated worse. No. But they will not learn the things we learned when we went to school.

Many of the endangered skills are out of date anyway. Will children learn how to read and type? Yes, they need it to surf the web, or to tweet. Will children learn good handwriting? Why should they bother? Will they learn arithmetic? Probably not as good as their parents did. For someone with a pocket calculator, the skill does not seem particularly worthwhile.

This poses a dilemma to the schools which was well presented in a comment by Eileen Honan, where she presented the fable of the horse riders (taken from Heppell, S., 1994). If everyone starts driving cars, how relevant is it to test for horse riding skills?

The relevance of the existing curriculum was a central motive in many of the comments. I too see it as of paramount importance to ensure that children learn skills and acquire knowledge that are relevant to their future lives, and that they are helped to understand why it is relevant. It must be very demotivating to study hard to pass the standardized tests, only to understand that what you are working so hard to master is useless for anything you will ever do. Especially so, when you learn that demands you should be prepared for will not be addressed in school.

Children do understand this. Will they learn English/Spanish/Mandarin as a second language or economics classes? You bet. Offer courses in anything the children expect will give them an edge in the job market, and the classes will fill up (whether these expectations are realistic or not).

The biggest complaint from students is never that they have to learn, it is that they do not learn enough. It always has been, and probably always will be, that students complain they have to spend too much time learning things they see as useless. They want to spend their time learning things that are relevant to them now and in the future.

To summarize and get back to the point. I see this discussion largely as a rerun of the earlier arguments about the pros and cons of television. Despite mountains of writings and studies lamenting the mindless nature of the TV shows beloved by the men and women in the street, all serious evidence shows us that TV has improved life on earth. And improved it considerably.

What the example of television, and School TV in particular, also shows has been formulated best by reader Chineye in a comment to “The Reality of ICT in the Classroom Doesn’t Live Up to the Potential”

2) to my knowledge, mankind is yet to develop a learning system that is devoid of guided interaction – even student-centric models need to be teacher-led in order to be effective

In this light I think that most attempts to use ICT4E to replace teachers will fail. Just as ICT helps a doctor (MD) do her work, but does not replace her, ICT4E should be geared towards helping teachers teach, not replace them.

In the developed (rich) world, ICT at home or in computer labs will simply help students to learn, understand, and communicate outside of the classroom. And we must accept that the students will spend their time in reverse order, foremost to communicate with friends and play online, only then read, watch, and understand, and only after all procrastination has failed, to study.

In the developing world, things are obviously completely different. In the developing world, the problem is that there are not enough teachers, books, and class-rooms to educate all the children. This is a point that has been made several times in this ETD discussion. For children in these circumstances, ICT4E simply is the only feasible way to get any education at all. Because, for all the costs of, e.g., 1-1 computing, training a teacher and equipping a class-room is much more expensive and simply takes too much time.

Make education relevant to the children, and use ICT to help the teachers do their work

In short, my conclusion of this whole debate, here and elsewhere, is: In the developed world, make education relevant to the children, and use ICT to help the teachers do their work. And outside school, computers and the Internet will make our children smarter, much smarter that we ever imagined. Which will obviously have an effect on their school grades, just as TV did for the generations before them. Obviously, being smart is not the same as being skilled or productive.

Every generation lives in a different world requiring new skills. It is up to the schools to make sure children also learn the practical skills they need to cope with the demands of society. And if society switches from horse riding to motorized transport, schools should prepare for a drivers license. It is pretty useless, then, to give cars to schools just to drive the children to horse-riding lessons. Often, ICT in schools is used like cars for taking children to horse riding, and then complaining the cars did not improve their horse riding.

In the developing world, use ICT to enable children to learn when teachers,  books, and classrooms are is short supply. In many cases, I see good possibilities for 1-1 initiatives using connected appliances, be it netbooks or (docked) mobile phones. But as for all problems, the solutions should fit the local problems and opportunities, and these will be different in every place.

And as for the attention grabbing headline: “Does Google Make Us Stupid? Attention, Thoughtfulness and Literacy in the Networked Age”? There might be too much food available for our good, but there is no such thing as too much knowledge.

Rob von Son is a member of the Institute of Phonetic Sciences at University of Amsterdam.
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Our model: Producing Educational Games for a $10 Computer

Playpower is an open-source community that supports the design of affordable, effective and fun educational media for underprivileged children around the world. We are currently developing a suite of educational games for a $10 educational computer.

The computer is so affordable because it is based on a 30 year-old 8-bit microprocessor technology that is now in the public domain; the computer is now produced by dozens of competing manufacturers, driving costs down. The 8-bit computer comes with a keyboard, mouse, game controllers, dozens of games, and uses a home television as a screen.

This computer is widely available for sale in dozens of developing countries, including India, Pakistan, Nicaragua and Brazil. The existing economy of scale creates an opportunity for a new model of ICT4D distribution, which we call a “Manufacturing Intervention.” In this distribution model, the completed Playpower games are given away to the manufacturers, who can “preload” the games with the computers they sell to distributors. In this manner, Playpower games can piggyback on the existing distribution network, which is already reaching millions of BOP (bottom of the pyramid) consumers.

This $10 8-bit computer is just the beginning. We believe that a wide range of technologies, including netbooks and smartphones, will soon be widely affordable to BOP consumers. As these devices already come preloaded with games like Solitaire and Snake, preloading educational games and media on these devices could effectively reach millions of children for a very low cost.

Where is the Educational Content?

While market forces will make ICT that is affordable to BOP consumers, it seems clear that low-cost computer manufacturers will not have the profit margins to invest in the creation of effective educational content. So, the question is, who will create the content? Perhaps more importantly, who will pay for the creation of the content? It won’t be the consumers, nor the device manufactures. We believe that government and private support is needed to create a shared, remixable global library of educational media.

Intellectual Property and Content Appropriation

The $10 computer uses the same microprocessor technology as the 8-bit Apple II computer. The Apple II (along with other low-cost 8-bit computers) introduced computing to millions of children in America, with 8-bit educational games like Oregon Trail, Number Munchers, and Where in the World is Carmen San Diego. While these games have little commercial value, they would be valuable on our platform—unfortunately, their copyrights will not expire for another 50 years.

We strongly advocate the modification of international intellectual property laws to promote the availability of educational digital media content in developing contexts. Ironically, at a consumer and business level, intellectual property is often completely unprotected in developing contexts—but this is not improving the availability of educational media. We believe that Intellectual property laws and licenses should be enhanced to support the legal flow of information to places that need it most—those who are most unable to pay for it.

The Case for Public Support of Digital Educational Media

Even conservative political philosophies believe that governments should provide free and effective primary school education. This is one reason why a quality, free public school education is recognized by the United Nations as a Universal Human Right. Despite this fact, millions of children around the world are receiving an ineffective primary education in government schools. In addition to the life of ignorance and low-wages facing these children, a lack of education stalls economic and political development. Low-quality education may even effect global security: the low quality of public schools has driven the dramatic expansion of religious schools in places like Pakistan.

In contrast to teacher training, quality digital educational media can scale rapidly and at a very low cost. It can often be quickly modified for regional languages and curricula, particularly if the source code is available. Furthermore, digital educational content can be improved over time, through an iterative development process. This suggests that digital educational media could dramatically impact education in developing contexts.

Unfortunately, creating quality educational media is difficult, time consuming, and often requires expensive efficacy studies and iteration. As a result, commercial media companies do not have the incentive to participate in the production of quality educational media—particularly media that is focused on developing contexts. This suggests a clear need for the public support of educational media development, at a regional, national and even international level. In addition to governmental procurements, governments could also incentivize content development through tax credits for media that serves the public good. To make the case for public support, however, it is important that ICT4D researchers can generate solid evidence for the utility of digital educational media.

Playpower Research

While we strongly support digital educational media in schools, Playpower.org is focused on providing games that can serve the needs of families—specifically, families that might buy a $10 educational computer. Therefore, we have undertaken an extensive field research program in India to identify these needs and to understand the use of the 8-bit computer in low-income households. Surprisingly, this research has identified a range of low-cost computing technologies that are currently prevalent in low-income households ($100-$300 per month, per household).

Since cable TV is widespread, even in low-income households, we found many families that had televisions or set-top boxes that had built-in games, including educational games, which are played with a remote control. Other households had handheld video game systems with small screens, while others had “Toy Laptops” that contained a range of educational games. Of course, mobile phones are ubiquitous in low-income households, and are almost certainly the most common gaming platform. Playpower.org has an academic collaboration with Millee, an organization that is focused on developing English learning games for mobiles phones.

Value of Playing Video Games

Given that our 8-bit computer platform is primarily used for playing video games, we hope to investigate whether video games contribute or detract from our educational objectives. Our fieldwork indicates that many low-income children in urban India have played video games, either on a mobile phone, on the television, in an arcade, or even on a PC. Does this experience have any positive or negative effects?

There is the possibility that playing videogames can improve economic opportunities for low-income children. While further study is required, the logic of this claim is as follows: videogame play seems to generally increase a child’s interest in computers; this interest results in more exposure to computers and enhanced motivation to learn computer skills, which subsequently results in videogame-playing children developing more computer skills, relative to children who do not play videogames. These greater computer skills can directly lead to meaningful economic opportunities.

Join Us in Person

Sound plausible? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below. And if you’re in New York City this weekend, join us for a Playpower 8-Bit Game Design Workshop at NYU.

The workshop will be led by Playpower founder Derek Lomas, Playpower programmer Kishan Patel, 8-bit artist Don Miller, and NYU professor Chris Hoadley (host). We’re focusing on:

• Furthering the develop Playpower’s current suite of games (e.g., Hanuman Typing Warrior, Hanuman Quiz Adventure, Malaria Prevention prototype)
• Learning the basics of 8-bit game design
• Expanding Playpower’s growing volunteer network!

We’ll have a mix of artists, graphic designers, programmers, learning specialists and ICT4D experts. If you’re interested in attending, please fill out this form ASAP.

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Now, several years on, how as the field changed? What new tools are available for teachers to improve their curriculum delivery? For students to master it? And for administrators to understand better the links, if any, between ICT investments and educational outcomes?

What happened to Elonex One?

Please voice your opinion in the comments and add your favorite ICT device to our list, now an editable Google Doc:

• Low-Cost ICT List – Editable Draft Update.

Our goal is to have a comprehensive, up-to-date list by the end of this week for future publication on the infoDev website.

Do note that we do not expect this list to be exhaustive, it’s a Quick Guide after all, and we are purposely leaving off mobile phones, as well as the plethora of devices that could be used in education, for a more targeted list of hardware devices that are used in educational systems of the developing world.

We welcome your contribution to this endeavor in the comments or as your own Guest Post

This is actually a description of slate tablets in the early 1800′s, but it could aptly describe the technological revolution we are seeing in education today with low-cost ICT devices.

The rise of ICT devices

From single-purpose educational aids like the Teachermate to commercial netbooks that can be re-purposed for the classroom, information and communication technology is dropping in cost while increasing in functionality and robustness. Soon, these ICT devices will be like slates in the 1800′s – ubiquitous.

Netbooks – one type of low-cost ICT device for education

In 2008, infoDev at the World Bank complied a Quick guide to low-cost computing devices and initiatives for the developing world to try and record the most prominent or promising of these devices.

For June, the Educational Technology Debate will attempt to update and organize this list through two efforts:

1. The list itself is now available as an editable Google Doc – we invite you to review and contribute to it here: Low-Cost ICT List – Draft Update.
2. We’ll also highlight some of the more interesting initiatives on the list in weekly posts for your input and commentary

Our goal is to have a comprehensive, up-to-date list by the end of June for future publication on the infoDev website.

Do note that we do not expect this list to be exhaustive, it’s a Quick Guide after all, and we are purposely leaving off mobile phones, as well as the plethora of devices that could be used in education, for a more targeted list of hardware devices that are used in educational systems of the developing world.

We welcome your contribution to this endeavor in the comments or as your own Guest Post

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