Page 61 - Education in a Digital World

48 International Organisations

a number of forms, with its Bangkok office particularly active during the 2000s and
into the 2010s in promoting educational technology across South and East Asia.
This saw sustained efforts to offer ‘tool-kits’ and advice for school leaders and policy-
makers, the production of policy publications alongside an extensive programme of
measuring and monitoring technology use throughout the region. Similarly,
UNESCO’s Paris office pursued a number of educational technology programmes
throughout the same time, not least through its ‘communication and information’
directorate. These included efforts to promote the use of open courseware in higher
education, to encourage the development of national strategies for e-learning and
distance learning, as well as supporting the development of model ‘virtual university’
provision. Perhaps most significant has been the work of UNESCO’s Moscow-
based ‘Institute for Information Technologies in Education’ (UN-IITE). This
agency has been working since 1997 to influence the UN’s general programme
with regard to the potential of digital technology to contribute to educational
quality and accessibility. As the UN-IITE mission statement suggests, much of this
work is intended to reflect the ‘humanistic’ as well as economic concerns of
the overall UN ethos: “ICT applications in education should help meet the chal-
lenges of knowledge societies, contribute to the reduction of the digital divide,
including disparities in access to knowledge, and provide opportunities for attaining
quality education and lifelong learning for all” (UNESCO 2010, p.7).
As this statement implies, the UN’s work with digital technology in education
tends to be informed by a number of wider non-technological concerns. These
include, for example, ensuring the right for all individuals to access education, and
supporting the ‘modernisation’ of education systems and establishment of ‘inclusive’
knowledge societies. All these issues, it could be argued, have underpinned the way
that UN agencies have approached educational technology over the past thirty
years. For example, the UN’s recent emphasis on open source software, open
courseware and ‘open knowledge’ networks could be said to be aimed at addressing
emerging forms of social inclusion and knowledge production.
That said, the key focus of the UN educational technology agenda continues to
be on the maintenance rather than disruption of formal educational systems. This
can be seen in the recent ‘UN ICT Competency Framework for Teachers’–
an attempt to offer system-wide standards for educational technology use around
the world and to provide a set of ‘harmonised’ standards for educational technology
policy, curriculum, pedagogy and teacher professional development. While this
framework is clearly intended to be of practical benefit to individual educators
and institutions, its wider significance lies as a direct attempt on the part of the
UN to shape national government educational technology agendas. Indeed, much
of UNESCO’s work takes a consultative, coercive and championing approach –
as the agency puts it, seeking “to help governments and others responsible make
informed decisions about selecting and implementing ICT support for education;
and to broker and monitor new partnerships to make this happen” (UNESCO
2010, p.13).