ICTs as levers for educational systems change
ICTs have great potential for reaching out beyond the classroom and for improving educational quality. They help reaching those who have been bypassed by earlier institutional arrangements. Learners are now able to adapt education to their needs rather than having to adapt themselves. ICTs manage to bring the world into the classroom and to the learners.
A study identified developments that had contributed to a more institutionalized and widespread use of technologies in education in the 1990s:
- Digitization provided new opportunities for the storage, processing, and dissemination of information
- Liberalization and fragmentation of media contributed to new opportunities for community radio on one hand, and enhanced use of audio/video technology on the other hand
- Participatory methodologies in development communication showed that small-scale, short-term innovative projects targeting specific audiences are more effective than extensive long-term projects
- Mainstreaming open and distance learning contributed to professionalisation in this area
The apprehension that ICTs as levers of quality improvement will benefit only the better off and will accentuate educational disparities is widespread and must be addressed. UNESCO will have to show how quality improvements through ICTs can be reconciled with the concern for educational equity, whether within or between countries.
ICTs can leverage the creation of poles of educational excellence where ICTs provide access to advanced knowledge, where they help to develop educational research capacity, where they link up teachers and thus break their isolation, where they help improve school-community relations, or where they introduce new educational methods, techniques, and new contents. They will provide stimuli to improve educational quality on a system-wide basis. A great deal of the value of ICTs in education lies in their capacity to stimulate innovation and creativity in all areas of pedagogy and management.
Furthermore, ICTs have a great potential for revolutionising accustomed methods of educational planning, management, monitoring, and evaluation. Their use is not limited to processing and analysing educational data more or to rationalizing communication between stakeholders. Their real strength is the facilitation of more transparent, democratic, and decentralised educational decisions that involve not just the different levels of government, but equally importantly, students, parents, and civil society at large.
UNITE will emphasise the identification, description and sharing of best practice examples. This may also include pinpointing significant failures.
We will be concerned with the creation and sharing of knowledge and with reinforcing networks and partnerships. Linking praxis to principle there will be a -strong element of development co-operation firmly anchored in national education sector plans. Emphasis will be put on the following areas:
- ICTs are not just for schools. Experience and potential in using them for all learning environments, particularly for reaching the unreached, will be examined
- ICTs must be more than modern means of educational delivery. They must be tools to foster excellence
- Where widely used, ICTs have an important impact on interpersonal relations/school-community relations. In redefining the role of teachers we need to understand this influence and provide policy advice and information to countries that are at the early stages of change
- ICTs are powerful tools to improve educational planning, management, and monitoring, and they will be completely integrated into designs of national education sector plans
- UNESCO's focus on better 'South-South' networking of universities, on the development of centres of excellence, and on democratizing access through distance learning will fully integrate ICTs into its strategy
- Cost-effectiveness is certainly not the only criterion for the use of ICTs. However, In poorer countries it is an essential component of decision-making
- More information on cost and sustainability of ICT initiatives will be gathered and analysed
- UNESCO as a neutral partner can help develop a climate of confidence to move ahead and provide advice on strategies and actions