Hello Ilan Tsekhman It is very nice of you to bring this report on ICT4D.
As I read it, I felt a sense of frustration as I read about the problems that faces ICT4D in the developing world. Many of the problems raised can actually be solved once they know the real reasons for their failures. Reading it, you would notice that almost every speaker is talking about 'failures" and what should be done rather than the success stories of using ICT in Mass Education. Why is this so? Why is there no real success story after decades of ICT4D? I quote from the report a few of the main areas of concern:- 1.Enhanced training and education are required to enable citizens to make effective use of established ICT facilities and services, which have to be accessible and affordable. Equipping a society with the relevant skills to address the challenges of the changing world economy also requires educational approaches that bring problem-solving to the core. All UN agencies and international organizations active in the field of education, including UNESCO, UNDP, the World Bank, UNITAR, and others, should take this focus into account when devising assistance to Member States. Given the focus of its mandate, UNESCO should take the lead in this respect. This is not a local problem. It is a global problem everywhere where ICT4D is concerned. Their objective is to reach the poor excluded part of the society. The problem is how are they able to reach out to the poor with rich men's tools and platforms for delivery? The word is "impossible" and hence failure stories from local to International levels are the norm and we have been hearing lots of "shoulds" this and that but no solutions. In conclusion, he observes that the digital gap constitutes the single most important obstacle for ICT4D, followed by the cultural gap. Most often, organizational cultures resist the implementation of new technologies, since it often means a flattening of hierarchies and a change of established structures. This shows that the digital divide is the main obstacle to progress for effective ICT4D. How then can we close this digital divide which we all are trying so hard to overcome? CT policies needs to be devised in a way that they alleviate poverty and create opportunities and employment. If ICT allows “the rich getting richer, but the poor staying poor”, it will have failed. The discussion therefore has to focus on regions in most urgent need, such as Africa. If ICT does not create employment, the economy will not follow. As new techonologies are introduced into ICT in Education, the rural poor would be even more excluded. The urban rich would grow by leaps and bounds but the rural are left behind as currently there is no way to reach out without costing too much for the government. It is getting worse and no can do anything about it. A global study that evaluated what has been achieved in the past ten years was suggested during the discussion. Others thought that the reasons for failures are sufficiently known: the inability to see and apply ICTs as tools for a higher purpose, and the inability to create employment through ICTs. Here we can conclude the failure of ICT as tools for closing the digital divide. The inability of ICT to reach out to the other 5 billion unconnected people. It is not the money nor the inabilities of implementers but rather the wrongful adoption of relevant technologies to reach out effectively to the rural poor that is the cause of all global failures.. using rich man's tools to reach out to the poor man. You would very surprised if we are to tell you all that most of these failures can be overcome overnight by just being able to reach out ICT to rural areas on a practical basis using the right practical platform? The undersigned have the privilege of being in Malaysia where these rich men's tools were/are applied on a national scale and knows the dismal end results of these two platforms for ICT in Mass Education ... the CDs and the online flash platforms at huge cost in terms of hundreds of millions spent. Until today they are still trying... We do have a solution, because our solution has been recognised internationally by Stockholm Challenge 2008 as being able to reach out to the rural areas for pennies. See the press release by the Stockholm Challenge on our project http://www.paperlesshomework.com/stockholm/agepressrelease.pdf We are frustrated because we tried our best to reach out to these International bodies but find very limited success. If anyone here in digital divide can help us to reach out to these bodies, we would appreciate it very much to put our message across. We look for partners all over the world to push this message to all Ministries of Education Currently we are only doing this in Malaysia and slowing introducing it to China, India and Indonesia and probably in Zambia to reach out to other African countries under our own steam. Imagine what we can do... seconds of download of a module, one can use that animated module for hours /days. Sounds impossible? Try it at www.paperlesshomework.com Regards Alan Foo our site is at www.paperlesshomework.com AGE Paperless Homework for a greener world. --- On Wed, 7/16/08, Ilan Tsekhman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: From: Ilan Tsekhman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: [DDN] ICT4D 2.0: Defining a Way Forward To: [email protected] Date: Wednesday, July 16, 2008, 10:40 AM All, I thought you might be interested in reading a recently published UNITAR report on ICT4D. It is the result of a recent meeting held by UNITAR, UNGAID, and Microsoft. As an aside a representative from TakingITGlobal was there as well. Since 2006, DDN has been generously hosted and maintained by TakingITGlobal. TakingITGlobal is an international organization - led by youth and empowered by technology, connecting young people around the world to find inspiration, information and get involved in improving their local and global communities. Unfortunately I could only find the report as a .doc file but hope that UNITAR will publish it in other formats sometime soon: http://files.tiggroups.org/68493/SummaryReport_5_6MayRetreat_Final.doc.word Best, _______________________________________________ DIGITALDIVIDE mailing list [email protected] http://digitaldivide.net/mailman/listinfo/digitaldivide To unsubscribe, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of the message. _______________________________________________ DIGITALDIVIDE mailing list [email protected] http://digitaldivide.net/mailman/listinfo/digitaldivide To unsubscribe, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of the message.
