Education

One of the first ever posts on the World Bank EduTech blog was about a purported US$10 computer for education in India.  While the hype around that effort has considerably cooled, efforts to provide a $10 educational computer have not gone totally cold.  PlayPower is exploring such a device -- and you may be surprised at how they are going about it.

As Derek Lomas explains in the accompanying video, one of the ways that PlayPower is able to cut costs is to utilize a technology available even in some of the poorest communities in developing countries -- a television.

(The idea to cut the cost of basic computing in such places by utilizing TVs as the display mechanism is not new; industry pioneers like Raj Reddy and Ashok Jhunjhunwala, among others, have championed efforts in this regard through the years, with varying degrees of success.)

Many developing countries have embarked upon – and others are seriously considering – large-scale roll-outs of information and communications technologies (ICTs) in their education sector.  Similar processes began in most OECD countries 10-20 years ago, in many middle income countries more recently. Structurally, education systems organize themselves in various ways to fund, implement and oversee these sorts of initiatives, which are typically quite expensive – and complex – and the related organizations evolve, in ways incremental and radical, over time.

Despite the highly varied local contexts, in most countries, a single institution is core to the implementation of ICT/education initiatives.

What do we know about how such institutions work, and what suggestions might we have for governments creating such institutions for the first time, supporting these sorts of agencies over time, and/or restructuring such organizations to meet future challenges?

Every three years, students around the world participate in an international assessment of their competencies in reading, mathematical and scientific literacy as part of the Programme for International Student Assessment, more commonly known as PISA.  In 2006, schools from 58 countries were randomly selected to take part in the effort, overseen by the OECD, to test how well students can apply the knowledge and skills they have learned at school to real-life challenges. (When you read a press report about a given country being highly ranked -- or doing poorly -- in comparison to other countries on how its students do in reading, math, or science, quite often this a  reference to the so-called 'league tables' that are published by the OECD in this regard.)

PISA provides a goldmine of data for researchers interested in many topics, and the OECD has just its analysis of Technology Use and Educational Performance in PISA, which notes that "OECD countries ^{[here's the list of them]} have undertaken significant investments to enhance the role of technology in education. What are the results of these investments? Are they fulfilling expectations? PISA 2006 provides a wealth of comparative data to begin answering these questions ..." 

The One Laptop Per Child program has brought much attention to issues related to '1-to-1 computing' (each child has her/his own personal computing device).  While perhaps the most prominent initiative of this sort in public consciousness, OLPC is just one of many such programs around the world.  At a recent event in Vienna, the OECD, the Inter-american Development Bank and the World Bank brought together representatives from these programs, the first such face-to-face global gathering of leaders in this area to share information and insights about their experiences. 

In putting together this event, it was clear that there was no consolidated list of leading '1-to-1 educational computing initiatives'.  Here's a first attempt at such a list, based on participants in this event (links are meant as pointers to more related information; not all lead to the specific project sites):