Social justice, teacher education and technology

Gary Motteram and Eljee Javier

Increasing use of technology to deliver teacher education in the developing world

• There are a range of projects happening all over the world

• We see increasing links between what is happening in the north and the south, and south south

• … 87% of Pakistani households own mobile phones (Express Tribune, 2014 quoting The Pakistan Demographic and Health Survey)

• Difference between urban and rural is 94.7% and 83%

• Network is currently mostly 2G, although 3G has arrived in Karachi

• Difference in internet connection: 17.4% urban; 1.3% rural

• 60.2% of households countrywide own a TVhttp://tribune.com.pk/story/666965/87-of-pakistani-households-own-cellphone-only-6-8-have-internet-connection-survey/

Pakistan technology background

• Data similar to an opportunistic survey conducted in 2013 with in-service Pakistani teachers:• 96.5% own mobile phone (70% basic Nokias)• 85.3% own a TV• 55.2% have access to a computer

• Most common use of the mobile phone is for making calls (93.7%); 50% use them for texting

• We don’t currently know anything about student access

• It would be good to get more of this background data

ICTs can “… open[…] up prospects and opportunities for promoting democracy and prosperity in poor parts of the planet …” (Zembylas, 2009, p18)

•Materials can be provided for teachers who don’t have access to any resources•These materials can be localised based on existing materials/ models being used by the British Council in other parts of the world supplemented with our own ideas and ideas from other development projects •Aim is to enhance teachers knowledge and skills and enable them to be more effective as teachers in the classroom (Key theme related to the success of Millennium Development Goals)

If some teachers don’t have the necessary mobile technologies, they can be given them, thus dealing with another issue of equity of access

Reducing the digital divides in a country

...whether ICT is useful for development or not depends on overcoming the same social structures that contribute to inequities and the unjust distribution of wealth (Zembylas, 2009, p19) Access to ICT can be seen these days as a basic human right (Power et al., 2009, p96)

“productive model” (Zembylas, 2009, p20)

ICT tools can also be used for other parts of the community, so that mobile technologies can be used in the promotion of health, can be supportive of the local economy in a variety of ways, there are plenty of examples of micro businesses, advice on crop prices for farmers, and selling on mobile phone air time to people who don’t own a mobile.

This is the domain of more mainstream ICT 4 Development http://ict4dblog.wordpress.com

I would argue with Power et al (2009, p90) that:

“... one of the most important contestations around ICT for rural education and development is to strengthen the voice and power of educators and their communities over the discourse of technicians and global capital.”

We also need to avoid the “... [f]our barriers to educational ICT interventions in rural schools… Poor intervention design … Costs … Social conditions … Disempowering educators”.

Power et al. (2009, p96-97)

Leveraging low-cost mobile technologies in Bangladesh for teacher professional development

and ELT

• Collaboration between The Open University (UK), The BBC and locally UCEP and FIVDB

• Project Phase 2: Mobile phone kits w/ pre-loaded resources and audio on SD cards

• Aimed to foster a more communicative approach to ELT

Mobile developments based on a variety of different projects and other ideas

UNESCO and Nokia to Use Mobile Technology to Improve Education in Nigeria

General UNESCO reports on Mobile learning

Mobile phones supporting women’s literacy in Pakistan

Job seekers – British Council India

English language teaching in Ethiopia

http://lifelineenergy.org

http://lifelineenergy.org/our-technology/

Solar Aid and Mobile phone charging

https://solar-aid.org/buy-a-light/

ELT through video conferencing in primary schools in Uruguay

• Plan Ceibal and Plan Ceibal on Ingles (British Council)

• Collaboration between experienced lesson plan writers, remote and regular classroom teachers

• Fibre optic cable based video conferencing

• In conjunction with an online training course for the teachers

School in Pakistan using Schools Online

On-going teacher development in Pakistan

Working with the Dept for Schools Development (DSD)

Skype is being used to manage teacher development interventions in resource centres

Using mobiles, teachers can also be part of the dialogue around education in their contexts, making a contribution to the on-going debates. These can be conducted using text and can feed back into the development of further materials that are developed with them during workshops

Extensions could include access to MOOCs, connections with other teacher groups in Pakistan and other countries: https://www.coursera.org/course/ictinprimaryhttps://www.futurelearn.com/courses/explore-english-language-culture

ReferencesBanegas, D. L. (2013). ELT through videoconferencing in primary schools in Uruguay: First steps. Innovation in Language Learning and Teaching, 7(2), 179-188.

McNally, P. (2014). Case Study: BBC Janala. London: Mobile for Development Impact.

Powers, T., Porteus, K., Ramadiro, B., Tshume, N., Makalema, S. and Thomas, R. (2009). Is there a role for ICTs in the education and development of disadvantaged rural communities? In C. Vrasidas, M. Zembylas, & G. V. Glass (2009). ICT for education, development and social justice. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing.

Walsh, C., Shrestha, P., & Hedges, C. (2011). Leveraging low-cost mobile technologies in Bangladesh: A case study of innovative practices for teacher professional development and communicative english language teaching. In R. Kwan, C. McNaught, C. Tsang, F. Wang, & K. Cheong-Li (Eds.), Enhancing learning through technology - education unplugged, mobile technologies and web 2.0. Berlin: Springer, pp. 152 - 166.

Zembylas, M. (2009). ICT for education, development and social justice: Some theoretical issues. In C. Vrasidas, M. Zembylas, & G. V. Glass (2009). ICT for education, development and social justice. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing.