Filed under: Article Evaluations
Joyce, Alexa (2006) eLearning for developing countries: what’s needed? Belgium
elearning-global.blogspot.com/2006/11/elearning-for-developing-countries.html
I stumbled across this thought provoking blog which reminds us how lucky we are when it comes to obtaining technologies and how fortunate we are to be involved in the ever expanding growth of elearning. Developing countries are not so fortunate for reasons other than financial. As Alexa points out, ”technologies are designed and deployed in a developed country context, and thus have a number of limitations when trying to implement in a developing country.”
Alexa brings up interesting ideas on how minority countries should utilise technologies in schools, ”despite the status quo of low bandwidth, poor infrastructure, low levels of training and support for teachers”. Ideas such as LAN based Learning Management System (LMS) installation, platforms based on mobile phone technologies and offline content creation. I agreed particularly with her knowledge of open content repositories with a language agnostic approach. This is why I believe that minority (developing) nations are not pursuing elearning in schools for 2 main and obvious reasons:
- Lack of web content available in minority languages. How many websites are out there in Khmer, Slovak or in Tamil? Not many i would assume. Many educators in developing countries say that there is little content available in their languages, but who should translate it or do large corporations feel there is no need because they are such a small markets/audience compared to the English/Spanish/Chinese speaking audiences?
- Low ICT infrastructure. We are so so lucky in Oz to have the facilities we do whether it be broadband at home, work, uni or in an internet cafe. It seems pathetically greedy to be holding a nation wide debate about demanding nation broadband coverage whilst minority countries are lucky enough to even get a computer with internet for a whole community. Internet speeds and connections are SO expensive in developing countries, (and thats to our price standards) no wonder its not an educational priority.
Its thought provoking stuff and as informal and ‘unqualified’ her opinions may be i encourage you to check out her website by clicking here. She has other interesting posts about how MySpace can teach education technologists and about teen habits on the internet.
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I must appreciate your work. from last couple of days i was searching for something interesting and this post is really nice.
Thanks for this nice post.
Great post Jemma!
I have read a few articles on educational technology in developing countries too recently. Its really interesting, and relevant considering our combined international studies degree. I read somewhere that more than 80% of the worlds population has never heard a dial tone, let alone accessed the net. Makes you realise how lucky we really are!
Take a look at a couple of my pages if your interested =)
Oops, forget to give you the address =D
unabee.edublogs.org