ICTs and leapfrogging development

Teens and social networking

Social networking researcher danah boyd (yes, she likes to have it without caps) has shared some questions that she has gotten from people on US teenagers and their use of social networking sites and her responses. Her very short and concise answers are surprisingly informative and thought provoking.

Wolfram|Alpha "computational knowledge engine"

For people that may have missed this despite all of the recent buzz, the Wolfram|Alpha "computational knowledge engine" is supposed to be launched sometime this month (May, 2009). Wolfram|Alpha is a search engine that will take various types of input and, drawing on data available on the Internet, will present, contextualize and perform computations on that data. This will be an incredibly valuable tool for researchers. Here is an introduction to Wolfram|Alpha that illustrates some of the things that it will do.

National standards in the US - No way out?

In the newest issue of Time Magazine there is a curious (mostly for its remarkably one-sided treatment of the issue) article on national educational standards in the US. The author, Walter Isaacson, is a clear advocate of the most rigid forms of standards and assessment, i.e. "this" is what should be learned and we test to the gills to assess it.

Included with the article is a brief interview with education secretary Arne Duncan. He has some interesting ideas about how to solve the US education problems. First, he thinks students should spend more time in school; lots more time. He wants longer school days, a longer school week, and a longer school year. One might even be led to believe that he would like most for children to simply move into schools at a tender young age and stay there until they're ready to graduate. Secondly, he supports "alternative routes" for teacher training, i.e. suggesting that current teacher certification requirements are too rigid.

The comical part of all this is that on the page before the Duncan interview is a table ranking countries by their outcomes in international student surveys in math and reading (not included in the online version of the article). Topping both lists is Finland. In Finland, students start school later than in the US, their school days are shorter, and the school year is roughly the same. There are national curriculum guidelines but not the incessant standards based testing we find in the US. Teacher certification requirements are very demanding. Master's degrees are required and only the best of the best are accepted.

So, here it is, sitting right under Duncan's nose, that more time in school need not make a difference. Rigid standards and assessment need not make a difference. What makes a difference is that teachers are highly qualified and have the flexibility to do what is needed to help their students learn (Duncan suggests that "teachers give students knowledge" - I don't think so).

The Finnish example suggests that there are other, potentially more effective, ways of achieving the educational goals we strive for. For example, one way would be to standardize around teaching processes. Rather than testing the students to death, we could use a sort of "total quality control" formative evaluation to ensure that teachers do everything they can to meet students' learning needs.

Before anything like this can happen in a country like the US, there needs to be significant change in the underlying system. In the US it seems like education officials have become so engrossed in standards and standards based assessment that they can't even entertain the notion of even slightly more radical change. But, I think there's another reason for this. US educational institutions (and this probably goes for many other countries as well) are so resistant to change that the only possible reforms are incremental. They've launched themselves onto the standards and assessment path and can't change course. To get around this hindrance we need firm and decisive leadership. I'm getting the sense that Arne Duncan might not be it.

Encyclopedia Britannica will open up - just a little bit.

Encyclopedia Britannica (EB) seems to have decided that the general public might just be a useful resource for gathering the knowledge of the world. Several years ago they were none too happy with Nature's evidence-based claim that Wikipedia was no less reliable than their expert authored and peer reviewed encyclopedia. At the time they outright rejected Nature's claims and demanded a retraction of the article on Nature's study.

EB's approach will be very different than Wikipedia's. Hardly surprising since EB is not Wikipedia and does not want to be Wikipedia - and rightly so. It will certainly be interesting to see what sort of effect this has on EB.

Meanwhile, more and more educators are finding ways to use Wikipedia. Here's an interesting article on one educator's experience. A lot of the experiments of this type that I've been coming across involve higher education students. I see no reason why this couldn't be done with others, including elementary, upper-secondary students, and especially students (at all levels) in developing regions. This is an exceptional and very real way to develop an understanding of the social aspects of information and knowledge development.

Opening Up Education - Free collection of excellent articles

Opening Up Education: The Collective Advancement of Education through Open Technology, Open Content, and Open Knowledge is a timely and relevant collection of articles about the need to, and ways to, integrate formal and informal learning. The book has been released on the web, in its entirety, under a Creative Commons license. Although the book focuses on "openness" in a general sense, there is a strong emphasis on the impact and role of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in facilitating the open environments and processes that affect today's learners.

Given the emphasis on the impact of ICTs on learning and education, some may question the relevance of this book for educators in parts of the world where access to ICTs is limited, if it exists at all. In fact, I think it may be even more relevant for educators in those parts of the world because the authors approach education from a very non-traditional point of view. We have learned that development of education is most successful when it conforms to the needs and expectations of those whom it is meant to serve. The approaches covered in this book do just that by looking at the ways that learners learn in their daily lives and what formal educational institutions can do to support those activities.

In his foreword titled "Creating a Culture of Learning", John Seely Brown covers a wide range of topics, as do the articles included in the book. His case for open approaches to education hinges on what is to be expected given the book's title, free-flowing information, learners' engagement in communities of practice and the socially constructed nature of knowledge. He also highlights some interesting novel issues that should be of concern to the modern educator. One is the concept of "immersion":

"Immersion comes from being surrounded by others talking and interacting with us and is furthered [sic] facilitated by our deep desire to interact, be understood and express our needs."

As we see more and more deeply engaging activities supported by ICTs, such as role-playing games, this is a very interesting and relevant point.

Another interesting, and somewhat provocative, point that Seely Brown makes is that, "... no one pedagogical or technical approach is the answer to ensuring that students are engaged and prepared." (pg. xiv). The alternative is then a shift of focus to the ways that individuals learn in various informal and formal settings, or what is referred to in a broad sense as "learningscapes".

I don't know why Seely Brown chooses to use the term "learningscapes" (and elsewhere "learning landscape"). I don't think this term captures the emphasis on processes which, nonetheless, I think is his main point. His concept of "learning ecologies" would have made much more sense here.

Lastly, Seely Brown tells a very thought provoking story of his exchanges with an associate provost of the University of Michigan. He suggested that, despite offical enrollment of approx. 40,000 students, UM teaches approx. 250,000 students each year because of students' involvement in widespread social networks.

I think the Finnish systemic approach to education is illustrative of at least some of what the authors of the articles in this book are talking about. See for example:
Interesting video about how ICT is integrated in the Finnish classroom
Robert B. Kozma's very informative paper on ICT & education in Finland, Singapore and Egypt (note how Singapore is following Finland's lead)

"Digital Youth Project" - Youth and knowledge development networks

The MacArthur Foundation has published a report on the "Digital Youth Project". This is a fascinating report on the findings of a research project that looked at young people's informal use of information and communication technologies (ICT) and what they learn from it. This project is a significant contribution to the growing literature on the way ICT contributes to learning outside of formal educational settings. The major finding, that young people use ICTs to establish and communicatively participate in networks to develop and share knowledge, on their own initiative, suggests that educators have to start thinking very differently about the ways that they integrate ICTs in education. I think the general tendency is to look for ways to use ICTs to support what goes on in the classroom, but these findings suggest that it would make more sense to look for ways to use classroom practices to support communication and networking activities that young people already engage in. This is something that I have suggested in the past, but without the concrete evidence that this research provides. The authors of the report suggest the same,

"New role for education? Youths’ participation in this networked world suggests new ways of thinking about the role of education. What would it mean to really exploit the potential of the learning opportunities available through online resources and networks? Rather than assuming that education is primarily about preparing for jobs and careers, what would it mean to think of it as a process guiding youths’ participation in public life more generally? Finally, what would it mean to enlist help in this endeavor from engaged and diverse publics that are broader than what we traditionally think of as educational and civic institutions? "

The implications of these research findings are fairly obvious for those parts of the world where we can pretty much assume that young people are able to access ICTs in one way or another, but what of the developing regions where this is not as much of a given? I think there are obvious implications for them as well, because I believe that these findings should be taken as not relating specifically to education for the ICT savvy, but as an orientation for education in an increasingly globally connected world in general. In the case of developing regions, however, we probably need to dig a bit deeper to uncover appropriate educational practices than in the case of developed regions.

"Gold farming" and ICT4D

Salon (via Boing Boing) had an article about Richard Heeks' interesting economic and developmental analysis of so-called "gold farming", titled "Current Analysis and Future Research Agenda on "Gold Farming": Real-World Production in Developing Countries for the Virtual Economies of Online Games". Gold farming is the fairly common (albeit unethical and in some circumstances even illegal) practice of playing online video games for the sole purposes of collecting in-play money and valuables to sell for real-world money. Heeks claims that this has become a very lucrative activity for developing countries especially with several players involved, including individuals all over the world (often sending remittances to developing countries) and even enterprises whose primary business is gold farming.

Heeks sees this as an important issue for many fields including economics and the ICT4D (ICT for development) field. Heeks claims:

"Gold farming presents two things [for ICT4D]. First, a current model for earning money via an Internet-connected PC. Second, an example of a possible future model in which Internet-connected workers in developing countries produce a wide range of virtual goods and services. For both these reasons, the ICT4D field should be taking a keen interest in gold farming."

I certainly agree with Heeks that this is something that the ICT4D field should be aware of, but I do not see this as being something that the ICT4D field should be especially occupied with. First of all, as far as I can tell, gold farming is merely about making money and has little, if anything, to do with the types of impact the ICT4D agenda hopes to achieve in terms of the advancement of the knowledge economy, education and encouraging equal access to, and distribution of, the fruits of globalization. Tying up scarce computers in schools and telecenters in developing countries with dubious activities in online virtual worlds is something I hope that few would condone, no matter what the fiscal returns might be. Heeks does address some negative sides of this development, ex. when he compares it to the exploitation of Chinese immigrant workers in the US in the 19th century (hence the "quaint" title given to some Chinese gold farmers, "playbourers").

Is the mobile web all good?

The BBC News site ran an article yesterday about the spread of the mobile web. Nothing surprising about that, it is the big buzz these days. I guess what is noteworthy now is that the "big" corporations (in this case Intel) are finally starting to take this seriously. The shift to mobile web is very interesting because it can both be seen as a reaction to the changing role of the web in people's daily lives while it also would seem to herald a new direction for the web. The overall result is that the amount of information that goes on the web and the interaction between people is exponentially greater than before. This changes a lot for the web as a "knowledge repository" since the nature of the communication facilitated by the web changes significantly. I think all this has some pretty serious implications for education and development that need to be taken into consideration sooner than later.

A large part of what is driving the spread of the mobile web is the increase in social web services, ex. blogs, twitter.com, digg.com, etc. In the early years the web was something that you sat down with and worked on, whether you were looking for information, making a web page or just cruising. Now, the web is a place where people share their daily experiences, not with summaries of a few days or so or pulling together a number of experiences into a coherent narrative, but with instantly communicated little tidbits. These are posted as they happen so it has become important for people to be able to access the web wherever and whenever people feel the need to communicate something.

This has some obvious consequences for the web as a knowledge repository because much of what is posted is presented in a limited context and/or is very subjective. Before these services became available, effective searches for specific topics were very likely to yield entire websites full of relevant information and references to supporting information. The type of communication that we see increasing on the web today with mobile services yield a very different set of resources - often simple "this is what I saw..." or "something I picked up somewhere" communication with little if any reference to supporting information to back up any conclusions drawn or suggested. With the spread of the mobile web this is very likely to increase. Things start to look a little more like a rumor mill than a knowledge repository.

I'm not suggesting that real valuable objective information is going to disappear off the web. Nevertheless, it seems reasonable to suspect that it may become somewhat separated from the information that web users will increasingly interact with on a regular basis. There are probably several ways to address this. I think the semantic web could make a big difference if it makes it possible to evaluate and tag information contextually. But, most important is educating users about the impact that their actions are likely to have when they interact using information through a public medium like the web. I think one of the most important elements in this is that web users be aware that information always travels in a chain, i.e. source and context are as important, if not more, than the information being conveyed. To illustrate:

I think that, in general, we consider our assumptions to be strengthened if we can point out sources to back them up, i.e. "I know that ... because of ..." This needs to be turned on its head such that our assumptions are first shown to be directly derived from sources, i.e. "[Source] says that ... therefore ..." This is a very simple and almost too obvious distinction, but makes all the difference in how we communicate information. Consider this, if in both of these cases you neglect the latter part of the equation, the first (I know that ...) really says nothing other than conveying a personal opinion that we may have no reason to believe while the second ([Source] says that ...) conveys a truthful and useful statement.

The spread of the mobile web is a good thing. But, it does have the potential to considerably change the nature of the web-user experience and there there is a mix of potential good and potential bad. Attitudes toward the mobile web seem to be very positive and very little attention has been given to potential downsides. There's more of a "It's coming, it's coming!!!" anticipatory excitement but now is the time to start thinking very seriously about what this really means.

The end of the OLPC project?

OLPC is making a big mistake by considering including Windows on its laptops. In this BBC News article, Negroponte is quoted as saying,

"We are in the learning business and what the operating system is underneath is less germane"

Hogwash! The openness of the underlying system is an extremely important factor given what we have been told about the aims of the laptop project. The whole project was supposed to be firmly based on Papert's constructionist theory. Running a closed proprietary system (and the inevitable software that goes with it) entirely defeats this purpose. If Windows is an included OS on the OLPC laptop the nature of the project completely changes.

The problems that OLPC are facing are not because they don't have Windows. They are due to the fact that they have utterly failed to get potential buyers to buy into the theoretical underpinnings of the project and the goals that they suggest (hardly surprising - I don't think they've really tried). People that ask for an OLPC laptop with Windows are asking for something entirely different than what OLPC initially set out to produce. If OLPC goes through with the Windows-ization of their laptops, it's just not the same project as they set out with.

Then there is the matter of cost. Microsoft may be willing to donate Windows to OLPC so that OLPC's selling price isn't effected but only because they hope to recover it elsewhere. That's just how business in the proprietary software world works. The cost of computing in general (e.g. upgrades and future choices resulting from computing=Windows indoctrination) will be higher in the long term.

Finally, a couple of links to interesting articles on the BBC web by a reporter that had his child try out an OLPC laptop running open source software and an Intel Classmates laptop running Windows. I think this speaks for itself.

OLPC laptop with open source software
Windows based Intel Classmate

Leapfrogging and technology diffusion

The focus of the World Bank's "Global Economic Prospects" this year is "Technology diffusion in the developing world". Not surprisingly, this has generated a lot of discussion about the "leapfrogging" concept, i.e. accelerating development through the adoption of cheap new technologies, as evidenced by recent articles in the Economist (and here) and on various blogs. Judging from these commentaries, the new report has cast a shadow of doubt on the whole leapfrogging approach to development. Although mobile phones remain the posterchild of leapfrogging development, they seem to be something of an anomaly. Other information and communication technologies (ICTs), especially computers, have not had as much of an impact (or maybe just not as noticeable an impact). This is largely blamed on the lack of communications and power infrastructure in developing regions which limits the useability of computers. I would suggest that many of these criticisms reflect an unfounded technological determinism and are based on a very limited view of the relationship between ICTs and society in that they overemphasize the "leapfrogging" and technology aspect and ignore the "leapfrogging" and development aspect.

Many efforts to introduce and diffuse ICTs, computers in particular, in developing countries assume that ICTs have become well-defined tools with well-defined roles and "appropriate" interfaces suited to those roles, and therefore, a "tried and true" "westernized" ideal of these technologies are promoted. In fact, there is little evidence to support such assumptions. In the past few decades computer interfaces have changed dramatically and existing metaphors (esp. the desktop metaphor) become increasingly unsuitable as computers have taken on roles that may have been somewhat unexpected by mainstream users ca. 10-15 years ago, ex. social networking, vehicles for personal commentary, media centers, etc. It would seem more reasonable to say that computers have served as a flexible platform that each generation of users has been able to shape to meet its own needs and expectations. What's more, these types of changes, or expansions, of the roles of computers have become increasingly rapid as their use has become more widespread. So, why the tendency to expect new users in developing regions to embrace technology presented in a manner so far removed from the experience of others? I think it may be, at least in part, due to a tendency to focus on anticipated general results of widespread diffusion of computers rather than focusing on the way things are done with computers and what is done with them.

From an educational point of view there are a few notable trends that can be identified where computers have achieved considerable diffusion (this is not to be taken as a claim that computers in education have been a raging success). Over the last four decades, the most notable impact that computers have had in a very general sense is obviously that the flow of information has increased, is more diverse, and has become more rapid. Over the same period, changes in thinking about education have corresponded with the impact that computers have had such that there is now a greater trend toward individual-based learning, constructivism and lifelong learning. This makes perfect sense when we consider the ways that use and manipulation of information flows has developed. For example, increased information flows have challenged existing notions of "truth" and we now generally accept that even seemingly well grounded scientific "truths" may be more relative to social and cultural norms than was previously assumed. This has become one of the primary justifications for individual-based and constructive learning, i.e. that "truth" is, at least in part, subject to individual conceptualizations and understandings of the elements involved. This in turn has underlined the importance of lifelong learning, which has evolved into a concept that not only encourages continuous learning, but also acknowledges that learning is an inherent aspect of human life, i.e. we are always learning and what, where and how we learn affects the way we internalise information that we receive in formal and non-formal interactions (I take this to be the gist of the Delors' report's definition of learning as "lifelong, life-wide and life-deep").

ICTs didn't change education overnight. We can identify trends, as I've done above, and in hindsight it may seem to us that the impact of ICTs was rapid and dramatic. But, I think that this is mostly because they have been very effectively rationalised, i.e. they have subtly changed whole conceptual frameworks, which in turn bounces back to effect ICTs. So, to get back to leapfrogging, do we introduce ICTs to promote novel forms of social interaction that may accelerate development or do we highlight the aspects of social interaction that may accelerate development and introduce ICTs to facilitate these? The ICT for development agenda is commonly referred to as ICT4D, but I'm going to make a distinction here and refer to the former path described above as ICT2D, i.e. ICT to develop - the assumption being that ICTs will spur on development, and the latter path I will refer to as ICT&D, i.e. ICT and development - ICTs can augment other development initiatives.

The question I raise above is not one that I am prepared to answer. But, I think that ICT2D carries a risk of introducing ICTs that are not relevant to the existing social fabric in the community involved because, at any point in time, technologies tend to reflect the societal values from which they emerge, and current ICTs have primarily emerged from western societies (obvious examples that come to mind are initiatives that are based on the "we need Windows" assumption). Therefore, outcomes ranging from total failure to diffuse the technology to cultural homogenization would hardly be surprising. However, ICT&D would launch ICTs in an environment where there may already be a perceived need for the types and levels of communication and information exchange that ICTs can provide, making for a more "organic" integration of the technologies into existing societal structures (examples would include initiatives in countries where they already have well educated computer scientists, like in Estonia and India). ICT&D is no less a potential "leapfrogging" path than ICT2D even though the diffusion of the technology itself may be somewhat delayed because it seeks to accelerate development in the same way as the former. The problem is that ICT2D is undeniably the easier to implement quickly and progress can be easily measured by simply counting cell phones and computers, measuring fiber optic cables, etc. (whatever that's supposed to tell us about levels of development...). I think it is this "easier" path that is usually envisioned in regards to leapfrogging development. In light of recent experiences we might want to take a better look at the other path.