Page 131 - Education in a Digital World

118 International Development

These latter projects reflect a growing trend within the field of educational
ICT4D to encourage and support localised communities to make the most of so-called
‘open source’ products and processes to access and build their own learning tools (see
Ngimwa and Wilson 2013). Much attention is now being paid by NGOs, charities
and other community organisations to the use of local, ‘bespoke’ open source pro-
duction and reproduction of learning content – thereby providing opportunities within
low-income communities for “customising to fulfil specific educational needs and
for the development of collaborative on-line learning communities” (Carmichael
and Honour 2002, p.47). Popular instances of this open approach involve communities
of local educators and technologists adopting principles of ‘open education resources’
and ‘open courseware’ to provide education to more disadvantaged learners – thus
freeing up the ‘intellectual property of learning’ to low-income contexts where it
otherwise could not be accessed readily (Willinsky 2009, p.xiii).

Assessing the Effectiveness of Educational ICT4D Interventions

All of the actors and interests discussed in this chapter – along with the supranational
organisations discussed in Chapter 3 such as the UN, World Bank and IMF – are a
significant part of global educational technology provision, practice and policy. As
such, these forms of educational technology provision certainly demand sustained
consideration and attention. Yet while academic commentators are often prepared
to acknowledge the shortcomings of educational technology in developed indu-
strialised regions of North America, Europe and East Asia, the forms of educational
technology discussed in this chapter are less often the subject of a similarly rigorous
critique. Instead, educational efforts in the field of ICT4D are often welcomed
broadly and uncritically as an inherently ‘good thing’ regardless of their outcome. It
could be argued that the ‘good intentions’ that such initiatives are seemingly built
around leave these forms of educational technology almost beyond reproach in the
minds of many commentators.
In particular, a noticeably acritical and confirmatory tone pervades many of the
official studies and ‘evaluations’ that are conducted of educational ICT4D projects.
While the claimed gains from many studies of educational ICT4D programmes and
initiatives remain measured and reasonable, some evaluations adopt an impassioned
and evangelical tone. For example, the Hole-in-the-wall initiative has attracted all
manner of plaudits and transformative claims. Soon after the initial pilot stages, it
was reported that the majority of children visiting the Hole-in-the-wall computers
had been able to teach themselves basic operational skills of word-processing,
drawing and internet searching. Moreover, the longer-term outcomes of what the
project’s director termed the ‘self-activated learning’ nature of the initiative were
reported in even more breathless terms:

Ten years later, a girl in rural Maharashtra is studying aeronautical engineering
following her encounter with the computer in the wall. A village boy who