ICTs and Development

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Contents

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ICT and Development

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Resources and Best Practices

ICTdorDevelopment.wordpress] is a blog that is dedicated primarily to podcasting. Its aim is to gather multimedia content from around the Internet and post it in such a way as to be 'listenable' in iTunes or any other podcatcher. This blog is among the first to offer multimedia content to those willing and capable of sharing best-practices in a multimedia format. Users are encouraged to submit multimedia content (ictfordevelopment @ gmail.com) that they feel will benefit their community as a whole. Does anyone else think that podcasts are the least useful (OK, outside of LonelyGirl15 style YouTubecasts) way to disseminate Dev info?

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Studies and Statistics

Stats


Studies

Edited by Maximo Torero and Joachim von Braun Foreword by Muhammad Yunus. The IT revolution made some glorious promises to the world’s poor: instant access to far-flung markets, political empowerment, greater growth, even the possibility that countries could leapfrog entire stages of development. But when none of that happened in a hurry, the promises gave way to concern that rather than closing the wealth gap, IT was exacerbating it.Yet for all the debate, very little systematic empirical research has been done to confirm claims and counterclaims and to guide policymakers on how information technology actually affects the development of low-income countries. In this volume, Maximo Torero and Joachim von Braun address that omission with a collection of case studies exploring the relationship between telecommunications and development in Bangladesh, China, India, Ghana, Laos, Peru, and East Africa.

  • UNTCAD's approach to measuring the Information Society
  • UNTCAD's Digital Divide Stats person in a high-income country is over 22 times more likely to be an Internet user than someone in a low-income country. Secure Internet servers, a rough indicator of electronic commerce, are over 100 times more common in high-income than in low-income countries. In high-income countries, mobile phones are 29 times more prevalent and mainline penetration is 21 times that of low-income countries. Relative to income, the cost of Internet access in a low-income country is 150 times the cost of a comparable service in a high-income country. There are similar divides within individual countries. ICT is often non-existent in poor and rural areas of developing countries." The report contains: the information and communication technology diffusion index (ICTDI) for 2004; a demonstration that the digital divide is evident in many indices; case studies from China, Chile, Botswana, Singapore, India and the United States; a reviews the history and success and limitations of telecommunications and its privatization, competition and independent regulation; appendices on the methodology used in computing the ICTDI and annexes showing the national ICTDI values for 2004 and the ranks for 1997-2004. UNCTAD, 10/05/06. 82 pages.
  • OECD Measuring Info Economy
  • A Causal Relationship? : "The authors of this paper investigate the causal relationship between information and communication technology (ICT) investments and foreign direct investment (FDI) flows, with regard to the relationship's implications on economic growth. They find that higher level of ICT investment leads to a greater inflow of FDI in developed countries, and the inflow of FDI may cause increases in ICT investment and production capacity in developing countries."
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Digital Divide/Inequality Issues

"BRIDGING THE TECHNOLOGY GAP BETWEEN AND WITHIN NATIONS" : Report of the Secretary-General of the United Nations to the Economic and Social Council. UN Commission on Science and Technology for Development

Policy and the Digital Divide: "The liberal-market model for telecommunications regulation is designed to promote access to voice telecommunications and is unlikely to improve internet access. As such, the liberal-market regulatory model will not enable countries to bridge the digital divide. The application of this model in least developed countries is widening the global digital divide by increasing the inequality of access to the information society in those countries compared with developed countries. The paper quantifies the scope and extent of the global digital divide by way of comparison of access to the internet in member states of the OECD and those states defined by the United Nations to be least developed countries (LDCs). The paper shows that the regulatory policies disseminated improve access to voice telephony services but access to the internet (and the information society) has not increased nearly so significantly in LDCs. The particular kinds of solution imposed by international financial institutions reinforce some of the inequalities that they are intended to reduce. The paper advances some policy alternatives which are designed to remedy some of these problems."

Social Reproduction and its Applicability for Community Informatics by Lynette Kvasny: "Digital divide rhetoric is generally utopian, touting innovative models for collaboration, economic activity, learning, and civic engagement. However, as information and communication technologies (ICT) become more widely available, we cannot naively assume that historically underserved communities are reaping these benefits. Social reproduction theory provides a basis for understanding how ICT may in fact serve to reproduce, rather than alleviate, inequality."

The challenges of redressing the digital divide: a tale of two US cities by Kvasny: "In this paper, we examine efforts undertaken by two cities – Atlanta and LaGrange, Georgia – to redress the digital divide. Atlanta's initiative has taken the form of community technology centres where citizens can come to get exposure to the internet, and learn something about computers and their applications. LaGrange has taken a very different approach, providing free internet access to the home via a digital cable set-top box. Using theoretical constructs from Bourdieu, we analysed how the target populations and service providers reacted to the two initiatives, how these reactions served to reproduce the digital divide, and the lessons for future digital divide initiatives. In our findings and analysis, we see a reinforcement of the status quo. When people embrace these initiatives, they are full of enthusiasm, and there is no question that some learning occurs and that the programmes are beneficial. However, there is no mechanism for people to go to the next step, whether that is technical certification, going to college, buying a personal computer or escaping the poverty that put them on the losing end of the divide in the first place. This leads us to conclude that the Atlanta and LaGrange programmes could be classified as successes in the sense that they provided access and basic computer literacy to people lacking these resources. However, both programmes were, at least initially, conceived rather narrowly and represent short-term, technology-centric fixes to a problem that is deeply rooted in long-standing and systemic patterns of spatial, political and economic disadvantage. A persistent divide exists even when cities are giving away theoretically ‘free’ goods and services."

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On Leapfrogging

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Funding and Programs

  • UNESCO New Media Project : " UNESCO’s International Programme for the Development of Communication (IPDC) allocated over US$ 850,000 to 41 media projects in developing countries at the 49th Meeting of its Bureau which took place at UNESCO Headquarters on February 27 – 1 March 2006.

Projects in as many as 30 countries received support in areas varying from the development of a community radio for women using media for peace in Burundi to the creation of a Mayan communication network in Guatemala. Eighteen projects concern Africa, fifteen deal with Asia and the Pacific, six focus on countries of Latin America and the Caribbean, and two concern Palestine."

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ICTs and Education

UNESCO ICT Curricula (PDF) - This UNESCO book specifies a curriculum in information and communication technologies (ICT) for secondary schools in line with current international trends, and outlines a programme of professional development for teachers necessary to implement this curriculum successfully. The book aims to give a practical and realistic approach to curriculum and teacher development which can be implemented in secondary education throughout the world according to available resources. It also aims at facilitating the tasks of governments and schools in determining their position within the ICT development process and, hence, help in the formulation of sound policies.

Moodle is a free and open-source online course management system, not unlike WebCT or Blackboard. This white paper "summarizes a PhD research project that has contributed towards the development of Moodle - a popular open-source course management system (moodle.org). In this project we applied theoretical perspectives such as "social constructionism" and "connected knowing" to the analysis of our own online classes as well as the growing learning community of other Moodle users. We used the mode of participatory action research, including techniques such as case studies, ethnography, learning environment surveys and design methodologies."

Report on ICTs in teacher education : * What is the impact of ICT use on the pedagogic knowledge and practice of teachers and the communities in which they live and work? * What is the impact of ICT-enhanced teaching on student achievement and motivation? * How can teacher education and training be developed to ensure teacher capacity to exploit the potential for ICT? IJEDICT (International Journal of Education and Development using Information and Communication Technology) is an open journal from UWI on, uh, ICT and Education.

Managing ICTs in South African schools: a guide for school principals

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F/LOSS and Non-Profits

The Non Profit Open Source Initiative provides papers and guides to help bridge the gap between the open source world and the non profit world. Similarily, NGO in a box provides "a set of peer reviewed and selected Free and Open Source software (F/OSS), tailored to the needs of NGO's. It provides them not only with software, but also with implementation scenarios and relevant materials to support this."

The Open Internet Driver's License is a F/LOSS version of of the training materials used to ready students for the International Computer Driving License certification (an international qualification in end user computing). The project is supported by the Go-Open Campaign and the ICDL Foundation Africa. As an open project everyone is free to participate in the project. We need your help to develop quality ICDL courseware.

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Technical Considerations

Low Power ICT

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