Ten Trends in Technology Use in Education in Developing Countries That You May Not Have Heard About

This blog entry exploring issues related to the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in education around the world looks into trends "that are sometimes not widely reported on in the international media (including some exciting 'innovations at the edges')." In brief, the 10 trends cited here include:

1. Tablets: "While in industrialized countries there are scores of iPad in education projects, in developing countries much of the discussions is around the use of lower cost Android tablets or simple e-book readers. Large projects like those in Russia, Turkey and Thailand, where plans to purchase hundreds of thousands, and in some cases millions of low cost tablets, are now underway..."
2. Social networking "has exploded among students and teachers in developing countries....In few cases do we find this being harnessed in systematic ways by education systems (apart from isolated instances by rather atypical educators)...and while, in our experience most of this use by students is, well, *social*, it is being utilized by students as part of their learning activities outside of school, especially as a homework and test prep aid."
3. Translating readily available digital learning materials into other languages is "a trend that we see picking up steam....Sometimes part of open educational resources (OER) activities and/or taking advantage of various Creative Commons licenses, it is true that many such translation efforts are to transform educational content created in industrialized countries for use in developing countries, and that comparatively little efforts have been made to translate education materials created in the global 'South' for use in other developing countries (or indeed by countries anywhere). It is also true that translating and contextualizing content to meet local circumstances and needs are not the same thing. That said, what was once largely the domain of enthusiasts utilizing new digital tools to make available their own translations...for wider audiences is becoming an activity that, while perhaps not mainstream, is of increasing relevance to learners in many countries."
4. There appears to be an increasing recognition by educational policymakers in developing countries of the important roles schools can play in digital safety and digital ethics issues.
5. In contrast to 10-15 years ago, many places in developing countries are specifically interested in investigating the use of ICT devices at the pre-school or early childhood development (ECD) level. "While there has long been robust debate about the 'impact' of ICT use in education on the development of various cognitive skills, it is particularly acute at the ECD level; while this debate goes on (and benefits from increasingly useful research), many countries, especially in Asia and Latin America, are moving aggressively forward."
6. "Even where many countries have been aggressively taking measures to ensure 'education for all' and have signed on to key international standards like those articulated in the Convention on the Rights of the Child, there is a very long way to go in many places to ensure that students with a variety of *special education needs* are able to participate as fully and productively as possible in formal and informal schooling..."
7. The reluctance to include issues of "e-waste" into discussions and plans for large scale ICT/education schemes in schools in many developing countries has "dissipated in many quarters, and we find increasingly widespread acknowledgement of the importance of the issue..."
8. "As more flows of information are digitized, and as more people have access to (and know how to use) computers and other ICT devices, there is an increasingly recognition that such data can be 'mined' in new ways that are quite relevant to many key issues facing educational decisionmakers." An example cited here is a BBC report from earlier in 2012 about the use of "intelligent uniforms", containing a small chip that would allow schools in a city in northeastern Brazil to know automatically if students were at school or not (with an automated text message sent to the parents of truant pupils). "There are numerous efforts to monitor teachers as well, via programs that introduce videocameras into classrooms or projects where teachers are photographed at the start of each day to confirm their attendance."
9. "Where a principal is not perceived to be supportive of uses of new technologies in a school, they often tend not to be used productively in new ways by many teachers. Providing relevant 'training' (for lack of a better term) for them can help turn them from indifferent observers (or even wary adversaries) into people supportive leaders for changing attitudes and practices."
10. In the author's words: "As we have done with other 'lists of ten' published on the EduTech blog, we have left #10 deliberately blank as an acknowledgement that that are many more things happening out there related to the use of educational technologies in developing countries that are perhaps 'under the radar' which we, given our own limitations, have not included here...." [CI Editor's note: please click on the URL below if you wish to add to this list of 10.]