Criterios de Evaluación

The Internet has been extremely important for the development of the Maldives due to its geographic isolation and archipelago structure. Ahmed (2004) argues that the Internet penetration in the Maldives ranked as number one among South Asian nations. Galpaya (2008) argues that though the Maldives has seen significant growth of subscribers to technologies, broadband is still patchy, with only the major islands having a choice of broadband providers (Galpaya, 2008). However, a recent study indicated that the uptake of the mobile telephone, computers and the Internet by people of the Maldives has grown tremendously relative to other developing countries (Riyaz & Smith, 2012).

Due to the improvement in telecommunication and the Internet facilities, the Maldives became more open to the global communities during the last few decades (Hoque et al., 2012). The Maldives taken the lead in terms of e-government readiness, ranking among South Asian countries (Rahman, 2010). These arguments indicate that digital technology affordances for people of the Maldives have increased during the recent years. Table 2.2 below provides limited information about the technology infrastructure in the Maldives during 2001 to 2013, which was available mostly on the Internet. There is little

information published or readily available about the technology infrastructure in the Maldives.

Table 2. 2. Technology infrastructure timeline in the Maldives

Year Computer-technology movements and status Source

1980 - Computer was introduced (Minges &

Gray, 2004; Reddi & Sinha, 2004) 1999 - Introduced a national project for making all students computer

literate

2001 - Internet connection provided by Dhiragu2

2002 - Computer for personal use 21.9%(the capital city) and 1.3% (the atolls)

- 10,000 computers were imported to the Maldives 2003 - The start of establishing e-government

- Introduction of ISP through several internet providers such Dhiragu & Internet provided by Focus Infocom

(telecommunication providers)

- Installed infrastructure across all government sectors

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Year Computer-technology movements and status Source 2004 - Broadband subscribed to by government offices, large

companies and schools

- Dial Internet packages introduced to personal computers - Public Internet cafes introduced

- Mobile phones, computers, and Internet use have become part of everyday activities among people

- UNESCO has many resources for improving use of technologies - Introduction of Maldivian local language support in Windows

XP

(Minges & Gray, 2004; Reddi & Sinha, 2004)

2005 - Wataniya3 _{entered the business of telecommunication and the} competition between Wataniya & Dhiragu made the mobile service reasonably less costly for Maldivians.

(Rahman, 2010) 2006 - Fibre-optic cable connecting Maldives to other countries

installed

- 80% penetration of telecommunications services achieved across all islands 27.9% of Maldivians have computers, 7.9% have an Internet connection

2007 - 100% mobile phone coverage across all islands of the Maldives 2008 - Internet users were approximately 33000

2009 - Third generation (3G) service launched 2010 - Broadband users were approximately 36,549

2011 - Fixed line services provided by Dhiraagu to all inhabited islands

- Wataniya mobile services covered 158 out of 200 inhabited islands; 7 industrial, and 73 out of 89 resorts

- 24,084 fixed lines in the Maldives

- Broadband users were approximately 76, 439 people

(Zuhyle, 2012)

2012 - Fourth generation (4G) service launched

Table 2.2 illustrates the growth of technology affordances and its penetration into the Maldives. Maldives is an example of a country with a national policy for improving the use of technologies in education and other sectors. Ahmed (2004) explains that the Maldives has undertaken several activities for promoting digital technology use among Maldivians. These include introduction of ISP in 2003 through several Internet

providers, such as ‘Dhiraagu’ and Focus ‘Infocom’; discounts being offered for telephone lines in order to increase the affordability of Internet among local communities; a number of events to increase awareness among the public, such as Internet fairs and web-design competitions; provision of computer labs at schools for enabling computer literacy, and to

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increase affordability to access computers, the import duty for computers was reduced significantly. This was important since the Maldives has no local companies creating computer hardware. As a result, the last few years have seen a noticeable growth in digital technology users, as illustrated in Table 2.2.

The Ministry of Communications, Science and Technology (MCST) is the controlling body of the policy level issues associated with technology and its penetration across different parts of the Maldives (Rahman, 2010). The telecommunication sector of the Maldives is operated by two national companies and one international company. These three licensed providers are Dhiraagu (a national company operating fixed line, mobile services and the Internet) Wataniyya (an international company operating mobile service only), and Focus Infocom (a national company providing broadband service only) (Zuhyle, 2012). Two submarine cable systems connecting the Maldives with the rest of the world, one operated by Dhiraagu with Sri Land Telecom (SLT), the other, operated by Wataniya, links the Maldives to India (Zuhyle, 2012).

Although technology infrastructure is established in the Maldives, the use of technology in the education sectors is still limited. Hoque et al. (2012) claim that technology infrastructure designed in schools is mostly used for administrative work purposes such as preparing reports, lesson plans and searching for teaching resources. These tasks are related to teachers’ use of computers, but not necessarily for their teaching in classrooms. Though the country has a technology policy for implementation within the education sector, the technology capacity in the education system does not help teachers to manipulate technologies for their everyday pedagogical practices. Moreover, the use of technologies for searching materials is difficult due to slow Internet speed and the lack of technical support for helping people to use digital technologies (Riyaz, Rijal, Shrestha, & Nashfa, 2012). They further highlight many future challenges such as infrastructure issues, difficulty of using local language for searching, copyright issues, establishing electronic libraries, and cost efficiency. This means that digital technology use by teacher educators in this research ought to be understood in the light of these factors in the Maldives.