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Is there equity of access to ICTs in education?
Given the wide disparities in access to ICTs between rich and poor countries and between different groups within countries, there are serious concerns that the use of ICTs in education will widen existing divisions drawn along economic, social, cultural, geographic, and gender lines.
Ideally, one wishes for equal opportunity to participate. But access for different actors - both as users and producers - is weighted by their resources. Hence, initial differences are often reproduced, reinforced, and even magnified. A formidable challenge, therefore, continues to face planners of international education: how to define the problem and provide assistance for development.
The introduction of ICTs in education, when done without careful deliberation, can result in the further marginalization of those who are already underserved and/or disadvantaged. For example, women have less access to ICTs and fewer opportunities for ICT-related training compared to men because of illiteracy and lack of education, lack of time, lack of mobility, and poverty. Boys are more likely than girls to have access to computers in school and at home. Not surprisingly, boys tend to enjoy working with computers more than girls. As the American Association of University Women reports, "Girls have narrowed some significant gender gaps, but technology is now the new ‘boys’ club’ in our nation’s public schools.While boys programme and problem solve with computers, girls use computers for word processing..."
In an evaluation of its programme in four African countries, Worldlinks,67 an organization that promotes project-based, international telecollaboration activities among secondary school teachers and students from developing countries, it was found that despite efforts to make the programme gender neutral, gender inequalities in access persist in Uganda and Ghana. Furthermore, while girls benefited more from the programme in terms of improved academic performance and communication skills, boys were able to hone their technological skills more. A complex of economic, organizational, and sociocultural factors account for these differences: "High student-to-computer ratios and first comefirst serve policies do not favour girls (typically heavily outnumbered by boys at the secondary level), girls have earlier curfew hours and domestic chore responsibilities which limit their access time, and local patriarchal beliefs tend to allow boys to dominate the computer lab environment." Measures proposed to address this gender bias include encouraging schools to develop "fair use" policies in computer labs, conducting gender sensitivity sessions, and advocating for reducing the after-school duties of girls to give them more time to use the computer lab. Girls also need to have female role models to inspire them to participate in technology-related activities.
Providing access to ICTs is only one facet of efforts to address equity issues. Equal attention must be paid to ensuring that the technology is actually being used by the target learners and in ways that truly serve their needs. An ICT-supported educational programme that illustrates this wholistic approach is the Enlace Quiché: Bilingual Education in Guatemala Through Teacher Training programme. The programme seeks to establish and maintain bilingual education technology centres for educators, students, teachers, parents, and community members in Quiché and neighboring areas. The technical teams for each centre are composed of three students, two teachers,and the centre administrator, with at least one female student and one female teacher. Another objective of Enlace Quiché is the creation of multimedia bilingual educational materials that are anchored on the Mayan culture and that reflect a constructivist approach to learning. As the project website notes, this "demonstrate[s] that the technology can be used to know, to conserve, to disclose and to value local knowledge." The project thus illustrates a model for bridging the digital divide arising from the monopoly in Internet content provision by Western and English-speaking groups and from uneven capacities to make purposeful, relevant and critical use of digital resources.
Another example of a wholistic approach to ICT integration in education is a radio instruction project in Mongolia called the Gobi Women’s Project. It seeks to provide literacy and numeracy instruction built around lessons of interest to around 15,000 nomadic women, and to create income opportunities for them. Among the programme topics are livestock rearing techniques; family care (family planning, health, nutrition and hygiene); income generation using locally available raw materials; and basic business skills for a new market economy.