Training recipients and scope

Type of trainees
Courses are most frequently oriented toward in-service teachers, perhaps because pre-service teachers are gaining access to those ICT curricula during their university or college studies. Countries either train all in-service teachers in all subject areas, or only those teachers teaching selected priority subjects. South Korea, India, Mongolia and Viet Nam concentrate on a few subjects first and then have expanded reach as time goes along.

While teachers are the main target audience, there is a predominance of the inventoried programmes also addressing the critical needs for administrators, such as the principals and supervisors to understand the management issues of technology well enough to make good decisions for ICT policy and programme implementation. Afghanistan, Mongolia, Pakistan, World Links-funded countries, Coca Cola and Intel projects are including principals/headmasters, and supervisors/ administrators in their training courses.

The number of countries which are providing training at both pre-service and in-service training on ICT is growing. Four inventoried countries (India, South Korea, Singapore and Indonesia) have reported of reaching both in-service and pre-service teachers - they have done so in massive numbers. Singapore and South Korea have integrated pre-service teacher training on ICT in various undergraduate and graduate studies, while more and more universities/colleges in India are just starting to integrate it into their teacher training colleges. The more advanced countries usually cover both in service and pre-service from K-12 teachers (South Korea, Australia, and U.S.) Intel-funded countries (China, India, Japan, Pakistan, Malaysia, Philippines, South Korea,) also cover both in-service and pre-service.

The public at large and communities are also being reached. A few online training courses are open to the public at large. Some projects (Malaysia’s eLearning for Life, World Links-sponsored countries, IBM) include community participation in various forms as a means to broaden the scope of their programme and provide ICT access to the community. IBM addresses the learning community and encourages parental participation, while World Links employs a more direct community role through the development of community learning telecentres based in the schools.

School level of trainees
Teachers at all schools levels are being trained – primary, secondary and colleges. However, due to funding constraints and the massive infrastructure and facilities required, secondary level training is initiated first in many countries. The more advanced countries cover all three school levels. Most of the World Links-funded countries cover in-service secondary only. Malaysia’s eLearning for Life and Philippines’ Coca Cola Edventure covers in-service training for secondary level.

Number of teachers being trained and already trained
The number of teachers being trained varies from country to country but inventoried programmes have reported having trained huge number of teachers, especially in those countries which have had a long history, are more financially endowed, and more advanced in their ICT development.

South Korea reported of having trained all teachers in selected subjects or a total of 3,897 in-service teachers per year. Intel India has reported of training 210,999 in-service teachers across 35 cities in India and a total of 11,582 pre-service teachers. Intel Malaysia has trained 7,000 teachers of the 12,000 targeted as of March 2003; World Links-sponsored training programme in India has trained 130,000 teachers.

Some countries start with small number of teachers per school like 3-4 teachers per school in several schools or ten teachers from pilot schools.

The number of teachers to be covered also depends on the scheme being followed. Malaysia’ eLearning for Life and Intel Teach to the Future observe the strategy of training a specific number of teacher trainers in each school who in turn are instructed to train the other teachers from various subject areas in their respective schools. This cascade type of echo training ensures that more teachers will be provided the opportunity of being trained on ICT simultaneously nationwide.

A number of the projects start with selected pilot schools spread all over the country or a selection of sample representing the urban, semi-urban and remote areas (Philippines) or a concentration of one region of the country (Western provinces of China). Most of the projects inventoried are undertaking the training on a selective basis- pilot testing on a few schools first reaching not more than 1,000 trainees per year. Many are doing it nationwide.

Geographical coverage, Location, Duration
Most of the more advanced countries (in terms of length of ICT use and presence of donors like Intel) cover wide areas in their training. The location of training is generally in the country capitals, if not major cities and often covers selected provinces or regions of the country (China, Malaysia, South Korea, Philippines, etc.)

If it is nationwide, the training courses are usually organized or coordinated by the provincial or regional education offices.

It should also be noted that different donor-funded teacher training projects select various parts of the country to avoid overlaps, and consequently result in covering many different places nationwide. In China, the Philippines, Viet Nam, Malaysia, Coca Cola, Intel, IBM may be sponsoring various teacher training programmes on ICT in different places in the country.

Emerging countries like Afghanistan, Cambodia, Lao PDR, Mongolia, Myanmar, and Viet Nam are going slowly in extending their coverage by just pilot testing the activities in a few provinces or schools.

The duration of training varies from country to country but usually 5, 10, 14, 21 days (Mongolia); 10-15 weeks (Afghanistan); one week and 20 days (Pakistan); 14 days (Korea and Viet Nam); or as short as 2 days on specific training on the use of Internet for university teachers in Indonesia. South Korea uses 60 hours/30 hours/15 hours to measure the length of teacher training programmes; Malaysia Intel-sponsored training programmes requires 40 hours of in-class training for 10 modules (at 4 hours each) and 20 hours of take-home activities.

Trainers
Who are the trainers? One will note that most of the trainers were sourced from outside the organizations. These include trainers from funding agencies (Afghanistan and Mongolia among others); from universities of technology (Mongolia); from training centres (Mongolia, Pakistan, Viet Nam); and experts invited from various organizations (Mongolia, Viet Nam).

Only two countries inventoried reported of running training courses by in-house trainers (Indonesia, Singapore, South Korea and Viet Nam). Countries sponsored by Intel in their Teach to the Future Project rely on peer approach type of training and thus mobilize local skills across the country in spreading ICT skills among teachers. The same holds true for Coca Cola eLearning for Life in Malaysia.