Page 104 - Education in a Digital World

Local Variations 91

the background conditions”, or what Phillips and Ochs (2007, p.377) term the
‘embeddedness’ of educational approaches and provision in “the locally prevailing
cultural and other conditions”. In these terms, any apparent ‘choice’ of one form of
educational technology over another needs to be understood as being contextually
influenced rather than driven by individual choice. The important aspects of
‘context’ in this respect are varied – including the political history and political
present of a country, its linguistic, cultural, religious heritage, as well as economic,
demographic and geographical circumstances.
These contextual factors are therefore a potential influence on any instance of
educational technology ‘implementation’ in any national or local setting. For
example, all of the nations considered in this book so far vary considerably in terms
of geography – from small island states to vast multi-state federations. They also vary
considerably in terms of topography – from mountainous regions to remote low-lying
plain lands. While matters of physical geography feature rarely in analyses of
educational technology, it would be unwise to discount the bearing of these character-
istics on basic technical issues such as network connectivity. As we shall explore further
on in this chapter, the relative ease with which a country such as Singapore has been able
to coordinate the mass implementation of digital technology across its education system
is due in part to the constrained geography of the island state. Other instances of edu-
cational technology implementation have conversely been influenced by environmental
issues such as climate change, weather patterns and natural disasters. For example,
heavy storms in Inner Mongolia provided a major impediment to the Chinese
government’s planned use of satellite dishes and antennae through the ‘Modern
Distance Education Project for Rural Schools’ initiative (Latchem and Jung 2010).
Similarly, the socio-economic consequences of earthquakes in countries such as
Chile, Haiti and Turkey have been obvious mitigating factors in the recent use of
educational technology in these contexts. In short, it is often too easy to overlook
the natural contexts within which educational technology interventions are placed.
In a similar manner, educational technology is also shaped significantly by variations
in the man-made physical environment and infrastructure. In understanding fully
the success of any education technology initiative, thought needs to be given to key
underpinning material factors such as energy supplies, cabling and wiring, wireless
and satellite coverage, environmental sustainability and so on. Although unremark-
able and usually un-noticed, all these infrastructural factors are nevertheless critical
to the success of any form of educational technology-based change. For example,
the failure of many educational technology projects in sub-Saharan Africa has often
been attributed – in part – to the “lack or weakness of connectivity, dilapidated
infrastructure and power shortages” (Traore 2008, p.8). As Tim Unwin has also
observed in an African context, “on more than one occasion, ambitious programmes
have been developed to introduce computers into schools, only for it to be realised
subsequently that the absence of electricity has meant that only a few such schools
would actually be able to benefit. Indeed, much of the inequality in the distribution
of the benefits of ICTs can be attributed to a spatially differentiated supply of basic