Comercio Electrónico

In February 1996 the Ministry of Education commissioned a group of experts to develop a national framework and strategic plan for technology-enhanced education.

The result of the commission’s deliberations was a report called Technology Enhanced Learning Investigation in South Africa (TELI Strategic Planning Committee, 1997). The main thrust of the TELI report was that technology as such would not contribute to the quality of education. It should become part and parcel of the whole educational system, which meant that changes would have to take place at all levels of the system. The Ministry and the sector broadly welcomed the TELI report, even though it would not be developed into a concrete policy document.

Nonetheless, it resulted in the establishment of the National Centre for Educational Technology and Distance Education in early 1997.

TELI identified 6 ‘lead’ projects which can serve as an effective platform to create a

‘technology-enhanced learning network’. These projects are as follows:

•

•

•

•

•

•

Supporting curriculum development and delivery in three key areas at Grade 8 level;

Delivering technically oriented vocational education in three areas of national priority, combining on and off the job training;

Developing a generic information literacy course for use in schools, community centres, industry-based training sites and other appropriate sites of teaching and learning;

Professional development of educators in the use of technologies in education and training;

Training and supporting managers of learning centres of different kinds; and

Running a pilot provincial project to test new strategies for introducing technology to support the management and administration of education and training.

A study in 1996 showed that only 2,000 (out of 27,000) South African schools had the electricity, telephone lines and computers necessary even to contemplate the use of IT in their educational processes (EPU, 2000). Current estimates suggest that of the 28,798 schools in South Africa, only 5,000 have computers, and of these only a fraction have Internet access (DoE, 2003). Deployment remains patchy, uncoordinated and constrained by cost and support barriers. Table 5.7 provides a snapshot of the uneven diffusion of computers in schools in the nine provinces.

Table 5.7: Computers in schools by province (2000) Provinces Schools with

KwaZulu-Natal 18.6% 10.0% 228:1

Mpumalanga 8.7% 8.7% 298:1

To address this challenge several initiatives are underway in South Africa.⁵⁸ The most important are Gauteng Online and the Khanya Project of the Western Cape government. Further, the national Department of Education (DoE, 2003) is planning to construct a national education portal. In the foreword to the Strategy for Information and Communication Technology in Education, the Minister of Education states emphatically:

“Advances in information and communication technology (ICT) globally are rapidly expanding the learning opportunities and access to educational resources beyond those immediately or traditionally available. It is therefore critical that our education and training systems takes advantage of these technological changes. The programme for improving the quality of education cannot be based on ‘whether we should introduce ICT in teaching and learning’ but ‘how we can successfully introduce ICT in schools’” (DoE &

DoC, 2001:3).

58 However, there is a lack of a coherent and systematic plan for implementing ICTs in South African schools.

This assumes that there are teachers with the enthusiasm to take on new technologies and perhaps even change their pedagogic process. Also, the effort is not yet co-ordinated and lack of basic data means that policy decisions do not have a strong grounding. Moreover, the cost of implementing ICT infrastructure (computers, connecting to the Internet, etc.) in all South African schools, with the concomitant training and maintenance costs, is likely to be enormous.⁵⁹ The estimated cost of bringing access and connectivity to all schools in South Africa, over a 5-year period, lies in the range of R40-50 billion (Moodley & Kahn, 2003). These figures are based on the total cost of ownership of the electronic systems, i.e. hardware, software, space, security, connectivity, upgrades, training, etc. It is for this reason that the Minister of Education calls for public-private partnerships to pave the way for investment in the provision of ICT in education (DoE & DoC, 2001). Whether the private sector will be willing to make such large investments in rolling-out ICT for schools is of course a moot point.

Against a background where upwards of 30% of schools lack the most basic amenities, universal access to Internet and computers remains a long-term goal (Moodley & Kahn, 2003). Even where free hardware and software have been provided, experience shows that the ongoing cost of connectivity remains a barrier.

The dissemination of ICTs in support of teaching, learning and administration is complex and depends critically upon the people involved: learners, teachers and administrators are central to effective use of the technologies (Moodley & Kahn, 2003). The highest returns on ICTs in education appear to come when ICTs are seen as part of a strategy for solving an important problem rather than as an end in itself.

The desired ICT infrastructure for schools should be defined in terms of pedagogical goals, translated to types of ICT usage desired rather than to physical terms such as student/computer ratio or number of classrooms connected to the Internet. Moreover, pre-service education of teachers should include lessons on evaluating electronic materials for pedagogical value as well as content. Both infrastructure and teacher competencies are required for successful implementation of ICTs in schools.

59 SchoolNet South Africa estimates that just under 6,000 schools, out of the 27,100 schools in the country, have one or more computers (SchoolNet South Africa, 2003).

Successful implementation of ICTs, however, is not simply a technical issue. It requires a vision for education and the specific educational goals that ICTs are to support. For instance, the biggest challenge confronting Gauteng Online is not the creation of computer networks, which is being supported with equipment and skills by major South African and international ICT companies (GDoE, 2002). Rather, the real challenge will prove to be the incorporation of a common web-based set of curricula and the development of a curriculum development methodology, including organisational mechanisms and technological tools. The aim is to facilitate curriculum revision and adaptation vis-à-vis the integration of ICTs in learning, teaching and assessment. Another substantive challenge will be teacher training at two levels: (i) introduction to the technologies and preparation to operate and manage the hardware; and (ii) training in the pedagogical use of the technologies. The latter poses a particular challenge, since it remains a relatively new area of teacher education with further research needed into the most effective ways of using ICTs to promote learning.

The Computers in Schools document produced by the Education Policy Unit (EPU) of the University of the Western Cape (2000) sketched the magnitude of the challenge in the context of extreme variation in ICT infrastructure and skills induced by apartheid policies. No miracles derive from the mere presence of ICTs in a school. Years of research on school change show that the implementation plans that work best for any school are a function of the attitudes and abilities of the staff, the quality of leadership, the role played by parents and the community, and the resources available (Elmore, 2000; Fullan, 1999). Further, successful implementation of ICTs in schools is not simply a technical issue. Quality education does not need to change to accommodate the particularities and power of technology. Instead, technology needs to change to accommodate good educational practices.

Even for schools in the highly industrialised countries, the front-end costs of developing a high-tech classroom are often prohibitive. Investments in hardware, operating platforms, applications and connections to Internet Service Providers (ISPs) must be weighed against existing infrastructure requirements such as facilities and books. Further complicating the issue is the speed at which technologies become

obsolete. Educators face difficult choices in ensuring that ICT investment is both appropriate to the needs as well as self-sustaining. As one observer notes:

“Care should be taken to avoid allowing the novelty of technology to drive decisions regarding the most appropriate delivery mode…If a country’s conventional education or teacher training program is not effective, using a new technology to deliver that education or training will not make it any more effective” (Potashnik & Capper, 1998:45).

In the South African schooling system the long-term challenge for government is to:

•

Introduce ICTs into the curriculum, assessment and learning environments, and in teaching practice;

Roll-out infrastructure – including connecting schools to the network, providing internal infrastructure within schools, i.e. local area networks (LANs), hardware and software, and technical support including maintenance, planning and logistical support;

Make learning material available including software, pedagogical tools and online content;

Emphasise initial and ongoing teacher training in the pedagogical use of ICTs;

Develop innovative funding opportunities and collaborative opportunities;

Develop an evaluative and monitoring framework, and undertake a process of ongoing assessment and evaluation;

Develop a strategic framework/model for co-ordinating and implementing ICTs in schools on a provincial and national basis;

Strive for sustainability through: capacity building, continued financial support, government ownership and informing policy and curriculum;

Develop needs-driven applications. There is a need for more and improved interactive educational software, including software which evaluates the learners’

strengths, weaknesses and learning personality, and adapts the tuition accordingly;

and

Use ICTs for teacher pre- and in-service training. In interacting with ICTs, teachers will gain experience of learning with ICTs and be more prepared to integrate it into their teaching as computers start to be diffused into schools.