The inventory presents programmes that have developed through a variety of means. International organizations like the World Bank and individual national development agencies have pioneered some of these programmes. Technology industry leaders have also championed the development of programmes often engaging the governments of the specific nation within which they work. Examples of these donors which pioneered teacher training on ICT include Intel with Microsoft, Coca Cola, IBM, World Links, World Bank, Bellanet, UNDP, Japanese Funds, JICA, among others.

The more advanced countries like South Korea, Australia, Singapore and Malaysia spend a large portion of funds in teacher training from Government allocations. In summary, sponsorship has been an important aspect for providing training and pedagogy in emerging nations. The cost of technology and the continued expansion of training programmes to a large body of in-service and pre-service educators is enormous, explaining why it was not possible for the Governments of some countries to do it alone. Outside help at the beginning of the programme on ICT for Education has been necessary.

Some agencies have provided enormous assistance by making materials available in a variety of languages (Bellanet iTrain). Other organizations have provided assistance by provision of programme sponsorship around the world (Intel, World Links, and Japanese Funds). Some of these programmes also provide the hardware and software for people to begin to use (Microsoft). Many programmes have worked directly with those governments to bring curriculum to the professional development communities within the government and together they build the capacities of people and encourage the spread of ICT teaching to places where resources may not yet otherwise be available.

Issues in sponsorship

Cost in developing modules - Some arguments could be made to the cost effectiveness of emerging nations developing their own modules, rather than localizing content that already exists. Pilot training projects which had been sponsored by external funding institutions have developed such modules in many countries which could be revised and adapted for either initiating or further expansion of existing professional development programmes in the region.

Training scheme – There seems to be a trend to employ the peer training approach, especially with Intel-sponsored programmes, where teachers from schools are trained first and when they go back to their respective schools are instructed to train the rest of the teachers.

On the one hand such an approach has its advantages in that one skips going through the pilot testing approach and promotes immediate spread of technology skills development on a nationwide basis, as well as allows native language peer-to-peer instruction of the content, its main disadvantage is the dilution of quality of training, especially if the trainer has not mastered enough knowledge and skills to share with other teachers.

A spot check in one school in the Philippines following this approach has shown that although the teacher who had been trained as peer trainer in various aspects of ICT use including the integration of ICT in teaching, the peer training conducted in the school he/she belongs only covered the basic computer literacy aspect, neglecting the integrated technology aspect.

Another weakness could be that the teacher trained is not able to transfer the knowledge in the time limits given and in the midst of inadequate support.

Access to online facilities and infrastructure - In terms of access, this issue must be viewed broadly in terms of language, programme coverage, infrastructure, and copyright among others.

Infrastructure is a key issue that sometimes is overshadowed. The costs associated with the provision of adequate access to the Internet is prohibitive for the educational systems in many emerging nations. In order for them to use materials that may be online, they need infrastructure that can support rich media, because even the most simple of demonstration programmes (ActDen) uses a high graphic representation in its more accessible version without Flash.

A number of teacher training projects covered in the inventory in fact promote online collaborative projects and telecollaboration, use of Internet resources to develop lessons and lesson plans, chatting and engaging in discussion forum, etc. which require a reliable connection, i.e. broadband, which is costly.

The issue of language is another significant factor to consider where most of the resources are in English that are not easily understood by many people in the region.