Dangerously Irrelevant

I previously posted about wireless technologies in less developed nations. Kofi Annan supported this view nearly 4 years ago! One cool indigenous Wi-Fi innovation, is the Cambodian motoman. Here, motorcycle drivers equipped with with Wi-Fi contraptions, drive past schools and health centers to download and retrieve email.

"As they pass each school and one health centre, they transmit the messages they have downloaded and retrieve any outgoing mail queued in the school or health centre computer, also equipped with a similar book-sized transmission box. They then go on to the next school. At the end of the day they return to the hub to transmit all the collected e-mail to the Internet for any point on the globe."

Less developed nations are indeed making strides to leapfrog old technologies. This leapfrog effect can be seen in education, health care, information, energy, economies, and more. Thomas Friedman wrote how globalization has essentially created a ‘flat’ world. The globalized processes Friedman refers to have really made possible the leapfrog effect.

The question remains, how will these nations tap into digital possibilities and genuinely leapfrog industrialized nations?

The National
Association of Elementary School Principals (NAESP) has chimed in on the U.S. Department of Education’s
recent study comparing the effectiveness of different educational software
packages:

Are you considering upgrading educational software in your building?
Before you do, consider the Department of Education’s recently released report
on the impact of educational technology on student
learning.

Please note the absence of any critical analysis or commentary
whatsoever. (sigh)

The secrets to a successful life? Wow. I’m hesitant to put myself anywhere
near the top of that list. But since Pete
Reilly tagged me, I’ll share a few things that seem to be working pretty
well for me right now…

1. Persistence. Over time, water, ice, and wind created the
   Grand Canyon. I try to be that persistent on matters that matter.
2. Patience. Of course persistence requires patience and the
   ability to hold a long-term goal in my head for, well, a long term. I also work
   very hard to remain calm when life, people, and other bumps in the road occur.
   It’s a lot less stressful when I can say, “Let it flow over you. Be patient. It
   will all be fine in the end.”
3. Finding something I care about. Once I’ve identified
   something I care about deeply, I try not to let anything or anyone stop me from
   doing it. If it requires ignoring people, taking a new job, moving to a new
   place, so be it. Excellence requires passion.
4. Listening. Genuine listening – truly being in the moment
   with people and hearing what they have to tell you – is extremely powerful.
5. Good cheer. I’m an optimist. I’m happy. I try to have a
   smile on my face as much as possible. People like happy people. I like being a
   happy person. I strongly believe in the power of personal choice. It’s not the
   situation; it’s how we respond to the situation that dictates our
   happiness.
6. Joy in little things. Children’s giggles. A crisp sunny
   winter morning. A positive blog comment. The twinkle in my wife’s eye. I make it
   a point to find the joy in little things. The accumulation of a multitude of
   little delights sustains me when more challenging times arise.
7. Spending time around little children. I’m a huge advocate
   of spending as much time around 2– to 9–year-olds as possible. Their laughter is
   infectious, their joy de vivre is catching. Preschools and elementary
   schools are happy places. Soak in the joy.
8. Technology helps. Spreadsheets, a shared online calendar
   with my wife, mail merge, the ability to type fast, etc. I wouldn’t be nearly as
   productive without my mastery of some basic technology skills. I am both more
   effective and efficient because of digital technologies.
9. Keep it simple. Simplicity helps bring clarity. For
   example, we have only two family rules for our kids: be nice and be safe. So far
   we haven’t come across anything that doesn’t fall under one of those
   two.

Thanks
for the invite, Pete. I hope this is what you were looking for. Although I
typically don’t forward these kind of things along, in this instance I’ll tag a
few folks to hear what they might have to say. FYI, this meme
started here.

• Eric Hoefler
• John Pederson
• Scott Elias
• Chris Lehmann
• Kimberly Moritz

Wired magazine ran an interesting story in their April 2007 edition about an entrepreneur in the Ivory Coast who bought a cell phone, rigged up a ‘telephone booth’ and earned $200 the first month charging community members 80 cents per minute. The same man bought a PlayStation and charged 10-20 cents to play a game earning him $20 in the first three days!

I mention this story because with ICT in international development, there is much promise and a lot of the best solutions are indeed indigenous (Thanks John). A main role for ICT4D planners and policy makers is localizing technology to the needs of the community. This is evident from my experiences in Cambodia where outside experts were not in touch with the needs of the teachers yet some teachers simply found applicable ways to use the skills that were outside of the scope of the training.

ICT has promise in the less developed world. However experts from more developed countries have the onus to not just plop ICTs into a nations without thinking about localization and sustainability. After all, development is not about giving fish, it is about teaching others to fish for themselves!

There has been both good commentary and handwringing in the education
blogosphere over the
recent decision in A.B. v. State (Ind.App.2007). For example, see
the following:

• Tim Stahmer
• Dave
  Sherman
• Wesley
  Fryer
• Mark
  van ‘t Hooft

For those of you who are interested, here’s my comment on Dave Sherman’s post:

Dave, please see

http://tinyurl.com/2abg58

and my online presentation at

http://tinyurl.com/2ynpvz

In the case you cite,
A.B. v. State (Ind.App.2007), the Greencastle Middle School student
posted the following message on MySpace:

Hey you piece of greencastle sh-t. What
the f-ck do you think of me [now] that you can['t] control me? Huh? Ha ha ha
guess what I’ll wear my f-cking piercings all day long and to school and you
can['t] do sh-t about it! Ha ha f-cking ha! Stupid bastard! Oh and kudos to
whomever made this ([I'm] pretty sure I know who). Get a
background.

Here’s what the court said:

A.B. openly criticizes Gobert’s imposed
school policy on decorative body piercings and forcefully indicates her
displeasure with it. While we have little regard for A.B.’s use of vulgar
epithets, we conclude that her overall message constitutes political speech.
Addressing a state actor, the thrust of A.B.’s expression focuses on explicitly
opposing Gobert’s action in enforcing a certain school policy.

The
court also found insufficient harm to result from A.B.’s speech

the State failed to produce any
evidence that A.B.’s expression inflicted particularized harm analogous to
tortuous injury on readily identifiable private interests as required to rebut
A.B.’s claim of political speech.

One of the key aspects of libel is
that you have to prove harm to your reputation. It appears that the court in
this case viewed this as a student spouting off on a school policy issue, which
was well within her rights, and found insufficient harm to the principal’s
reputation to warrant a finding of libel.

Dave, you say that you’re
worried about this happening to you. Is this any different than a post that
said, "I disagree with Mr. Sherman’s policy on piercings? Who does he think he
is? He can’t control me. I’m going to do whatever I want and there’s nothing he
can do about it. I hate you, Mr. Sherman."?

As you know, you need to
have a thick skin when you’re a principal!

Finally, I’ll close with some quotes. My favorite school law quote of all
time is the one from the Barnette case:

• Without debate, without criticism, no administration and no country can
  succeed and no republic can survive. – Pres. John F. Kennedy
• If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led,
  like sheep to the slaughter. – Pres. George Washington
• That [schools] are educating the young for citizenship is reason for
  scrupulous protection of Constitutional freedoms of the individual, if we are
  not to strangle the free mind at its source and teach youth to discount
  important principles of our government as mere platitudes. – West Virginia
  v. Barnette (1943)
• If we don’t believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don’t
  believe in it at all. – Noam Chomsky

Jeff Brenman’s adaptation of Karl Fisch’s Did You Know? presentation is currently the most popular slideshow at SlideShare’s World’s Best Presentation Contest. If you haven’t seen it, Jeff’s version is awesome. Go watch it, and then vote for it in the contest!

The mission of the One Laptop per Child initiative begins:

"Most of the nearly two–billion children in the developing world are inadequately educated, or receive no education at all. One in three does not complete the fifth grade.

The individual and societal consequences of this chronic global crisis are profound. Children are consigned to poverty and isolation—just like their parents—never knowing what the light of learning could mean in their lives. At the same time, their governments struggle to compete in a rapidly evolving, global information economy, hobbled by a vast and increasingly urban underclass that cannot support itself, much less contribute to the commonweal, because it lacks the tools to do so."

I have been talking with collegues lately about the future of education and technologies that will fuel change. The question is usually how will advances in technology such the Nokia N800, a Wi-Fi Internet tablet which includes VoIP support and WiMax which enables long range wireless broadband access change society in less developed nations? Will these tools along with initiatives like the One Laptop per Child change education in less developed nations?

I read a lot of work by naysayers who claim that less developed nations simply do not have the capacity to embrace such technologies. I agree if we restrict our discussion to a physically tangible ICT environment…but wireless technologies change the game. For starters, simply look at how many developing nations now have more cell phones than landline telephones. When I was recently in Cambodia I had cell phone access everywhere! Even in rural areas 6 hours away from any major town I always had good reception and never had a dropped call. There is promise if planners and policymakers think outside of the box.

The Networked Readiness Index measures how prepared countries are to tap into the power of ICTs by focusing on the readiness of the environment and stakeholders as well as measuring the usage of stakeholders. You can read parts of the 2006-2007 Global Information Technology Report here.

The top ten nations are:

1. Denmark
2. Sweden
3. Singapore
4. Finland
5. Switzerland
6. Netherlands
7. United States
8. Iceland
9. United Kingdom
10. Norway

The bottom ten nations are (position 113-122):

• Cameroon
• Paraguay
• Mozambique
• Lesotho
• Zimbabwe
• Bangladesh
• Ethiopia
• Angola
• Burundi
• Chad

Take note that the U.S. is seventh while European nations dominate the top ten. Eight out of 10 of the bottom entries actually lost positions and fell in their rankings while six of the top ten entries gained ground and improved their NRI.

The nations that gained 10 or more position are Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, Croatia, Guatemala, Ecuador, and Guyana. The nations that lost 10 or more positions are Cyprus, Pakistan, Jordan, Botswana, South Africa, Egypt, Kazakhstan, Armenia, Uganda, Cameroon, Mozambique, and Zimbabwe.

Since nations in Europe are dominating this list with regard to the NRI, some nations in South America are making great strides upward, and some African nations are falling further behind, what does this mean for educational development?

I give you this background data because I am often asked about the future of ICT4D and the ability of less developed nations to really embrace ICTs. In general the pressing issues for the near future of ICT4D as I see it are:

• Professional development and technology leadership issues in South America (showing the most promise for Web 2.0 advances);
• Infrastructural development issues in Africa; and
• A balance of infrastructure, professional development, and technology leadership issues in Asia and the Middle East.

Over the weekend, I had the thought, “Who owns the comments on
this blog?”

The Reasonable Man blog has a
nice summary
of copyright law on this issue and I think Charles’ interpretation of the
law is a well-reasoned one. While I already had a Creative Commons copyright
notice on this site, I added the following sentence:

Note that when you leave a comment on this site, you are agreeing that your
comment also falls under the terms of this Creative Commons
license.

Remember, just because the blog comment was posted in public view doesn’t
mean it’s still not copyrighted. The commenter doesn’t give up ownership of her
post just because she left it on your site. Now, do I agree with the law on this
one? Absolutely not. But that’s the way it stands right now…

Have you ever thought about technology issues facing less developed nations? Well…that is my perspective for this week. To begin my guest blogging week, I would like to share some of my experiences working in Cambodia on an ICT in education project.

First off, let me say I address the issue of technology leadership from an ICT4D (Information and Communication Technologies for Development) perspective. My focus is how less developed nations can address social, political, and educational issues through ICTs. An awesome source for grey literature on ICT4D can be found via the Washington Post. The grey literature is a great source for current and relevant pieces on this topic. If you are interested in reading only one piece, you can download ICT4D – Connecting People for a Better World as a good resource.

I could ramble on endlessly about how great my experience in Cambodia was or how amazing the Khmer people were to me. I did keep a blog about my time in Cambodia that included many cool pics but was unable to make entries regularly due to issues of time and technology. But today I would like to focus on challenges of actually implementing an ICT in education project in a less developed nation.

Imagine an expert training you how to ride a motorcycle by using a stationary bicycle. The stationary bike is great, but you do not know how to balance or turn the motorcycle; you do not know how the motorcycle will help you get to work faster when you cannot even start the contraption; once you figure out how to start the beast, you have no idea how to troubleshoot or repair when issues arise; the motorcycle given to you is old, breaks often, and it is difficult to find replacement parts; the only repair guide you have is in another language; and your trainer had little experience riding a motorcycle in your neighborhood and is thus uncertain of traffic rules and road conditions. This analogy aptly describes my experiences:

1) Experts were brought in without knowing the job demands of the teachers. Additionally, the training was focused on skills acquisition versus skills utilization. The skills were not localized to the needs of the teachers.

2) The computers donated to the country were used units. The Ministry had to literally piece together parts to build Frankenstein units.

3) There is no software support for languages such as Khmer. Thus, using drop-down menus to help figure out software was not possible.

4) The keyboards had Roman keys whereas the Khmer language uses Pallava script. Thus, teachers had learn to type using a Roman script QWERTY keyboard with a paper cutout of a Khmer keyboard taped beside the actual keyboard.

5) Donated computers are often old and slow. It was difficult to find replacement parts and find software that worked well together given hardware limitations.

6) The training was not ongoing. The lack of opportunities to practice, seek help, correct misunderstanding, and apply learnings hindered the adoption of ICTs.

Don’t get me wrong…this project did some amazing things like training every teacher trainer in the country, making ICT in education a national issue, creating a national ICT in education policy, providing colleges with over 800 computers, and generally raising the ICT awareness in the country as a whole. However, I see there is still a lot of work yet to do.