Integration Of ICT In Education

By: Wan­jo­hi. P. Mugam­bi

Worth Not­ing:

• This means, of course, that there is no school there. Dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy was brought to the vil­lage in the form of a tablet to see if the village’s chil­dren could become lit­er­ate when inter­act­ing with the tech­nol­o­gy Wolf and her col­leagues intro­duced.
• The sit­u­a­tion was set up so that every key stroke on the tablet was record­ed and video cam­eras were set up to tape all events where the tablet was locat­ed. The tablet, placed in a strate­gic loca­tion in the vil­lage, had apps that were espe­cial­ly built to take into account, as much 4 as pos­si­ble, children’s expo­sure to writ­ten lan­guage for the first time. For many impor­tant rea­sons, the writ­ten lan­guage was Eng­lish.

One cen­tral ques­tion regard­ing illit­er­a­cy and innu­mer­a­cy in remote areas con­cerns how edu­ca­tion for these basic cul­tur­al tools can be made avail­able to them. The ques­tion, as posed here, is about deliv­ery. How can we get edu­ca­tion to so many chil­dren who are not in schools or whose schools are inad­e­quate and are scat­tered over vast dis­tances in some­times remote areas with lit­tle access? A lever regard­ing ram­pant illit­er­a­cy and innu­mer­a­cy among large swaths of our world’s chil­dren is the use of dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy. The idea is that through lap­tops, tablets, smart phones and more, we can democ­ra­tize edu­ca­tion by giv­ing those devices to dis­en­fran­chised chil­dren across the globe and teach­ing them, through appro­pri­ate appli­ca­tions, to be lit­er­ate about the writ­ten word and numer­a­cy. This has already been under­way in sev­er­al loca­tions around the world. One exam­ple is One Lap­top Per Child (OLPC) which orig­i­nat­ed in the Media Lab at MIT. This non-prof­it orga­ni­za­tion has sup­plied inex­pen­sive lap­tops to chil­dren around the world.

The most strik­ing exam­ple of this is Uruguay which is sat­u­rat­ed with lap­tops. All school-age chil­dren and their teach­ers have lap­tops. And that is cur­rent­ly being extend­ed to Uruguay’s elder cit­i­zens. For the first time in human his­to­ry, a gov­ern­ment decid­ed to pro­vide dig­i­tal com­mu­ni­ca­tion to all its youth. Some of these chil­dren live in remote parts of Uruguay where there is no elec­tric­i­ty. Yet chil­dren from there now have the pos­si­bil­i­ty of being con­nect­ed to oth­er chil­dren and their teach­ers. This social exper­i­ment, on a large scale, can be vision for neglect­ed school-age chil­dren around the world. It is with this in mind that anoth­er attempt is being made to bring lit­er­a­cy to dis­en­fran­chised chil­dren via dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy comes from Maryanne Wolfe’s work in Ethiopia as part of the Glob­al Lit­er­a­cy Project (Wolf, this vol­ume; Wolf, Gottwald, Galyean, Mor­ris & Breazeal,2013; Wolf, Gottwald, Galyean & Morris,2013). She chose to work in two vil­lages there in order to help fos­ter lit­er­a­cy. In one of the vil­lages, in a remote part of Ethiopia, none of its cit­i­zens is lit­er­ate.

This means, of course, that there is no school there. Dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy was brought to the vil­lage in the form of a tablet to see if the village’s chil­dren could become lit­er­ate when inter­act­ing with the tech­nol­o­gy Wolf and her col­leagues intro­duced. The sit­u­a­tion was set up so that every key stroke on the tablet was record­ed and video cam­eras were set up to tape all events where the tablet was locat­ed. The tablet, placed in a strate­gic loca­tion in the vil­lage, had apps that were espe­cial­ly built to take into account, as much 4 as pos­si­ble, children’s expo­sure to writ­ten lan­guage for the first time. For many impor­tant rea­sons, the writ­ten lan­guage was Eng­lish. The think­ing behind this ambi­tious project was that if illit­er­ate chil­dren in a vil­lage of non-read­ers could become lit­er­ate through the use of dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy, a case could be made for bring­ing such tech­nol­o­gy to oth­er remote vil­lages and towns around the globe with sim­i­lar or less severe lit­er­a­cy prob­lems.

For the moment, the results have been encour­ag­ing although suc­cess has not been com­plete. The encour­ag­ing, even incred­i­ble, find­ings are that some of the chil­dren, who pri­or to the intro­duc­tion of the tablet had nev­er seen a pen­cil, could sight-read some words. What is sight-read­ing? You may have noticed this with your tod­dler chil­dren or grand­chil­dren. They can rec­og­nize their name. My name is Sid­ney and when I was age 3, I could rec­og­nize it, and I also knew that oth­ers’ writ­ten names weren’t mine. I sight-read. I rec­og­nized my name as a whole. What I hadn’t yet known was that each of the let­ters rep­re­sent­ed a sound and that com­bi­na­tions of sym­bols cre­at­ed com­bi­na­tions of sounds that were a word. This leap, what Wolf calls the Helen Keller leap, is the one that has not yet hap­pened for the Ethiopi­an chil­dren, and it is the one that is nec­es­sary for these vil­lage chil­dren to enter the world of print as lit­er­ate peo­ple. Being lit­er­ate goes beyond this, of course. We have to learn to deci­pher mean­ings, authors’ intents, and much more

.Even grad­u­ate stu­dents at the Ph.D. lev­el are still learn­ing to deci­pher writ­ten texts. But the more advanced aspects of read­ing will be denied if the basic aspect of con­nect­ing sym­bols to sounds is unavail­able. As men­tioned, at present, the Helen Keller leap has not yet hap­pened with these chil­dren. That is where things stand now regard­ing the hero­ic project to fos­ter lit­er­a­cy with­out teach­ers among chil­dren who live in places where there are no schools or where there are schools but they are woe ful­ly over­crowd­ed and under­staffed. In an attempt to find a dig­i­tal solu­tion to this leap, the X‑Prize is hold­ing an inter­na­tion­al com­pe­ti­tion to encour­age teams to build apps that will enable these vil­lage chil­dren and even­tu­al­ly hun­dreds of mil­lions of chil­dren to enter the world of lit­er­a­cy. Under­ly­ing these efforts is the under­stand­ing, based on research and plain obser­va­tion, that some­one who has deci­phered the sym­bol-sound code by her/himself is a rar­i­ty. A teacher is need­ed for that to hap­pen. In lieu of sit­u­a­tions where there are no schools or over­crowd­ed class­es, dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy is being devel­oped to do the teach­ing. The jury is out about whether or not it can be done. If it can, all of us gain.

I sug­gest that there is anoth­er lever that can bring teach­ing to dis­en­fran­chised and neglect­ed chil­dren: chil­dren. No, this is not a typo­graph­i­cal error. Chil­dren can teach chil­dren. Indeed, they do that nat­u­ral­ly and spon­ta­neous­ly all the time from an ear­ly age. They are nat­ur­al-born teach­ers. They do not need teacher train­ing cours­es nor do they need to be licensed to be teach­ers. They teach, and do so at a remark­ably ear­ly age. They have learned how to teach as part of their cog­ni­tive, emo­tion­al.