Integrating ICTs in education systems

An array of papers and articles share various lessons learned dealing with factors which contribute to a successful introduction of ICT in education. One of these papers entitled, Communities and the Information Society: The Role of Information and Communication Technologies in Education prepared by the UNESCO International Bureau of Education, gives a good listing of these requirements:

A successful introduction of ICTs into an education system requires

• An appreciation by government of the financial, resource, and operational requirements and the resulting consequences
• A commitment by government to give time and take responsibility for decision-making and implementation strategies
• A commitment to a policy of an integrated support service encompassing teacher and technician training, curriculum and assessment - together with software and hardware provision

ICTs help to achieve the goals of educational programmes for several reasons. The benefits of ICT seem suitable for coping with the issue of basic literacy and technological literacy, even among the poorest population sectors.

The following reasons have been extracted from IT and Education for the Poorest of the Poor: Constraints, Possibilities, and Principles.

• Poor people in developing countries tend to live in dispersed geographical contexts and are comprised of diverse populations of youth and adult learners. In this context distance education through ICTs can be an effective tool.
• Generally, in poor parts of poor countries where teachers lack adequate training for their job, there is limited and thinly distributed professional expertise in terms of teachers. Considering the fact that quality of teaching is one of the key predictors of student learning effectiveness, ICT-supplemented teacher training becomes crucial.
• Many in the target population are unable to sit in classrooms and/or too old for the formal school system, therefore the interactive and asynchronous nature of ICT can provide useful solutions.
• Just-in-time learning is becoming more and more popular and necessary. Very often, much of the knowledge acquired during university or other courses is already outdated by the time a person starts a professional career. People increasingly tend to avoid unnecessary learning of content that is used only occasionally or for short periods of time before it becomes obsolete. Furthermore, professionals require individualized treatment in the planning of continuing education and training in order to keep up with changes in the workplace.
• The diversity of the population of poor people in terms of ethnicity, language, gender, etc. requires the kind of customer focus that, when properly employed, is potentially far more effective within the ICT realm than by individual teachers. For example, even teachers that are quite skilled may lack the language skills necessary to be effective with poor, minority-language learners.