18/01/2013

IDG Connect Dan Swinhoe (South Am erica) - IT & Education in LatAm

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Dan Swinhoe (South America) - IT & Education in LatAm

Posted b y Dan Swinhoe Company IDG Connect 01/18/2013

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What you're Saying Dan Swinhoe (Global) - IT New Years Resolutions

place everything into hard assets rather than holding credit issued b y governments. start living 50 yrs. into the future now!

Where perhaps in places such as the UK it may b e linked with paperless' workspaces, IT & Education in Latin America revolves around the greater social prob lem of the digital divide. While the large majority of the Western World has access to the internet, whether from mob ile, laptop, lib rary or school, things are very different in countries such as Mexico. The Mexican Internet Association estimates that around 70% of the population has no access to the internet. At one end, the rise of tech hub s in cities across LatAm means compananies are looking for coders and social media gurus, while the other end sees thousands of people who have never even touched a computer. Though governments are trying to address the imb alance, it's not enough to simply hand out laptops - also known as "Dump hardware, hope for magic to happen". There needs to b e a concerted effect to educate children in their use - there's no real b enefit from simply typing out an essay instead of writing one - and support the infrastructure around them; ensuring access to the internet and promoting the right portals that provide access to e-learning and information. Proof of this was in a report pub lished last year looking at the results of a One Laptop per Child (OLPC) program conducted in Peru. It that showed while the ratio of computers per student increased from 0.12 to 1.18, no effects were seen on Math & Language test scores, though positive effects were seen in general cognitive skills and verb al fluency. As one of the researchers noted, there's very little information on how the computers were integrated into everyday learning, and access to the internet was very limited. Without adequate computer literacy (or efforts to improve it), adding computers to education is as effective as adding b oard markers to classrooms using chalkb oards. In the schools that do have access to computers, studies show that although teachers know how to use them, translating this into b etter education is more difficult, often b ecause computers are installed in lab s rather than individual classrooms, making it more difficult to integrate ICT into regular lessons. The OLPC programs are trying to fix this with a 1:1 child/computer ratio, and have distrib uted devices in the millions, b ut as the ab ove study suggests, it's far from a fix-all, and also very expensive. One way around this is mob ile learning. Estimates put mob ile phone ownership among 10-18-year-olds at over 80% in the region, and many schools are implementing initiatives around the concept. Another advantage of b ringing IT into education is that it enab les remote learning. Enrolment and attendance in LatAm schools has risen steadily in recent years, especially in rural areas, b ut there is still a disparity b etween urb an and rural figures. This is often due to socioeconomic reasons such as poverty levels - the people are poorer, the schools are often far away and lacking resources. Introducing technology helps overcome some resource issues, and for children too far away, enab les the possib ility of remote learning. Though technology in education is an enab ler, it doesn't solve all prob lems. As the Council on Hemispheric Affairs

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01-11-2013

Dan Swinhoe (Global) - IT New Years Resolutions

Hi Dan, Thanks for a great set of ideas. I often advise clients to shift the processing of their email in-b ox from the morning to the late afternoon. They... Bob 01-11-2013

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IDG Connect Dan Swinhoe (South Am erica) - IT & Education in LatAm

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put it; "the digital divide is not a prob lem that can b e fixed b y having more desktop computers in homes." Better infrastructure, addressing poverty, and ensuring technology is woven into, along with a concerted push to improve education, b oth in terms of access and quality is what is really needed. By Dan Swinhoe, Editorial Assistant, IDG Connect

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