United Nations Regional Preparatory Conference on UNISPACE III
For Africa and the Middle East
(Rabat, Morocco,26-30 October 1998)

Warmware issues in Education

Ron Beyers
St Alban’s College (beyers@school.za)

Powerpoint Presentation used at the Conference

Abstract

The greatest dilemma facing all educational authorities today is developing the paradigms of teaching and learning to prepare students for a high tech society while using low educational methodologies and technologies. In implementation any technological solution the hurdles are not the hardware or software issues but rather on the warmware issues. This paper expands upon some of these issues by looking a projects that are already being implemented together with issues related to the use of space in education.

INTRODUCTION

President Nelson Mandela, in his message to the Africa Telecom 98 Exhibition and Forum, stated: "We strongly believe that better telecommunications will enhance our ability to deliver improved quality of life, electronic health and learning services to all in the continent, especially to previously disadvantaged areas. It opens up great opportunities to train and equip our people with the skills necessary to improve our ability to innovate." and Rancho Cordova said "Students who graduate in the next few years will go to work in businesses that use the global communication system. If they don't know how to use it, they will be at a severe disadvantage."

As an educator, I am aware of the possibilities and implications of the introduction of new technologies, especially communication technologies into the classroom. If Christopher Columbus had to be present at this conference he would be over whelmed by developments, especially technology and communication, and the speed and efficiency of processes developed. If he enters any classroom, he will be very much at home and may even be able to continue where the previous teacher left off. The bottom line is, teaching and learning paradigms haven't changed much over centuries and definitely not in par with changes in technology.

The greatest dilemma facing all educational authorities today is developing the paradigms of teaching and learning to prepare students for a high tech society while using low educational methodologies and technologies. With the rapid advancements in technology there is very little that cannot be achieved today. Yes, the bottom line still remains the availability of funds in most cases - but the old saying that it cannot be achieved because the hardware constraints no long applies. The biggest stumbling block in the implementation of any technological solution is not based on the hardware or software issues but rather on the warmware issues. This refers specifically to the warm bodies that are associated with any project.

This paper will endeavor to explore some of these issues a little further by focusing more on the human interventions rather than the more technical issues. This implies focusing on the utilization of space technology in education.

CHANGES IN EDUCATION

The overall aim of any education system is to aid and assist learners in the process of constructing meaning, to help learners make sense of their surroundings, and to equip them with the tools to continue to do so long after the process of formal education.

In reality less than 50% of secondary school-age children (12 – 17 years) in sub-Saharan Africa are currently enrolled in schools. The number of girls enrolled when compared to the total female school age population is even lower, with the average being around 25%. The World Education Report (1995) predicts that these numbers will continue to decrease unless some serious, timely and effective interventions are carried out very soon.

Furthermore job prospects for school leavers are looking bleaker for those who are processed through those main stream educational systems that have not adapted to the changing modern world.

According to Boyett the world that the students will enter will be affected by the following trends:-

• The growing Contingent Workforce
• Flexi Place Work
• Upskilling of Jobs and Workers
• Self-managed Teams

These four trends represent forces of truly transformational change in the work place, destined to dramatically alter the day-to-day content of most jobs, as well as the traditional patterns of lifetime employment. These imminent changes, in turn, pose implications for every individual from kindergarten to the college campus.

Boyett further looks at the implications for education where life long learning will become the norm and educational institutions will become swamped. This will lead to an overwhelming of our traditional instructional systems and methods, requiring technology to play an increasingly important role in the delivery of education. As schools assimilate new technology, the delivery of education at all levels will become less labor intensive and more capital intensive. The majority of education resources will no longer be devoted to salaries, but instead to software, computers, multimedia equipment, and so on. Info-com-technology will, among other things, free educational institutions from their current geographical boundaries. He emphasizes the importance of knowledge entrepreneurs and pedagogical info-preneurship and students having a limitless variety of courses to choose from.

In essence, learners will need to acquire skills to be able to collaborate, communicate, evaluate, disseminate, apply lateral thinking, problem solving, and a host of other skills in order to succeed in a future world. One of the ultimate goals of introducing technology into the classrooms, especially information communication technologies, is to initiate students into becoming global citizens who are familiar with modern trends, especially in the use of such tools as the Internet and e-mail.

Phil Christenson, an educational consultant recognizes the need for a "mass quality education system" but at the same time warns of merely introducing a system that will perpetuate an old paradigm of education. South Africa has emerged from the dark years with an archaic behavioristic education system that was designed to reward only those students that could memorize the right facts to match the examiners memorandum. Even teachers were indoctrinated into believing that they were the only sources of knowledge which perpetuated a system of feeding a governmental system with people who were not allowed to think for themselves.

But what is most alarming, this applies not only to South Africa. On the positive side –globally we shared a common goal to change all this. The whole world shares the vision of:

• Improving the quality of life to all people
• Making future generations a knowledge based society; and
• Helping to create an information economy.

This put a huge challenge in the midst of the education and training system. In realizing this vision, South Africa has embarked on a transition to an outcomes base educational system - which has provided the fertile soil to sow the seeds of change.

There is a huge need to introduce a paradigm shift from one of instruction to one of learning as proposed by Boggs. This notion was also echoed in the middle of Mamelodi, a township on the outskirts of Pretoria, where students had posted a sign on the notice board - DON'T TEACH US, HELP US TO LEARN! These are very thought provoking words as it highlights the predicament that many students in previously disadvantaged communities find themselves in. The basic premise of the learning paradigm as described by Boggs is that the students are given greater responsibility for their own learning.

This should be embedded in a commitment to a flexible, learner-orientated approach that uses whatever combinations of strategies are appropriate to the needs, demands and circumstances of learners, education and training providers, interest groups from the community, industry and government.

This approach to education can also be encapsulated in a model which I term the business model of education. By changing to a business focus: the client, namely the learner, is placed at the center of all activities and all associated systems are there to ensure that the learner is given high priority. In such a model the teacher in the classroom will be assessed on how effective they are in meeting the needs of the client they are attending to. This implies that the institution must develop strategies for establishing the learning environment in such a way to support the learner. It should not matter whether these strategies are old or new, distance education or face-to-face, using 'high’ technology, 'low’ technology or no technology. It is however, essential that they are appropriate and will achieve meaningful outcomes effectively and efficiently in identified circumstances.

THE ROLE OF TECHNOLOGY IN EDUCATION

Prof Johannes Cronje of Pretoria University at the National Education Computing Conference in Michaelhouse, South Africa suggested that "good teaching and good learning take place independent of the technology being used."

In addressing this question, is it the technologist that provides the solution to educationist or is it the educationist that seeks solutions in collaboration with the technologist in meeting the educational needs?

There are three distinct types of technologies which might be used for different purposes in education.

• Technology to support the provision of course materials to learners
• Technologies to support other teaching and learning processes
• Technologies to support management and administration

In using technologies to enhance education and training, the following principles emerge from international and local experiences:

• Make learning needs and the desired outcomes from which learning objectives are derived the starting point for decisions about what to teach and how.
• Once the learning objectives are clear, plan for the appropriate use of technology in the learning system as a whole.
• Place people (learners and educators) at the centre of the learning process and ensure that the chosen technology serves their teaching and learning goals.
• Resist the tendency to see technology as a solution to education and training needs. The value of technology in enhancing learning depends on how people integrate it into the learning process.
• Do not introduce technological support unless the users are trained in how to use the resources appropriately.
• Plan for the development of appropriate infrastructural networks if technology is to be used effectively. These include roads, electricity, web sites, software that is flexible in its application, and adequate maintenance back-up.
• Provide learners with choices about learning routes.
• Help teachers and educators develop their own ability to learn. Help them develop higher order skills for example,. how to manage resources for learning, how to question learners and how to meet special learning needs.
• Integrate evaluation and impact assessment into the learning system from the start and adopt a learning orientation to the use of technology in education and training.
• Ensure that the technological resources are affordable and cost-effective.

In addition to these basic principles, there are several lessons drawn from the use of technologies internationally. These include:

• There is a need for investment in flexible and sustainable infrastructures that will support educational applications in a variety of contexts.
• Sound information and understanding of the available options is imperative for good decision-making.
• International technical standards and protocols must be adopted if wastage is to be avoided.
• Resources need to be set aside for two critical components: initial investments as well as for recurring costs of technology-enhanced learning.
• There is a need to identify and set aside resources both for the systems and hardware of technology-enhanced learning and for the software, programmes and, possibly most importantly, the course materials to be used on the systems and hardware.
• Planning and implementation needs to be infused by principles of effectiveness and efficiency.
• Appropriate partnerships need to develop within the educational sector, between educational and non-educational organizations, and between the public and private sectors.
• Appropriate balances need to be forged between national, regional, and local coordination.

In reality emerging communities are demanding 'computers'! They want to become computer literate because of the perceived job potential and intellectual superiority that ‘computers’ offer. Far too many institutions spend enormous amounts of time and resources teaching pupils word processing, spread sheeting and data basing in the hope that they may use it one day.

What is needed is a transition to a just in time scenario rather than a just in case scenario. This implies that learners are exposed to technology in their day-to-day learning experiences and become computer literate when the need emerges. A learner becomes more computer literate if they learn how to use technology in context rather than in isolation.

Coupled to this is powerful concept of peer learning. The teacher does not always have to be the source of all knowledge. Learners themselves can often teach each other more effectively than the teacher can, especially where they work in groups on a common project or problem. This brings me to one of the most important points in teaching

and learning. Teaching and learning is a human endeavor, a group sport. Learning can not take place without human intervention and participation.

The process of learning in the classroom can become significantly richer as students have access to new and different types of information, can manipulate it through the use of technology in ways never before possible, and can communicate their results and conclusions in a variety of media to their teacher, students in the next class, or students around the world. Properly used, technology increases students' learning opportunities, motivation and achievement; it helps students to acquire skills that rapidly becoming essential in the workplace, and it breaks the barriers of time and place, enabling students in any community, no matter how remote or impoverished, to have access to high quality instruction. This places a huge challenge on technologists to provide these opportunities to learners in every corner of the globe.

SPACE TECHNOLOGIES IN EDUCATION

"Digital satellite technology is bound to have as similar an effect on people's access to information and entertainment as the introduction of CD's had on the music recording industry", says Jim Volkwyn, Chief Executive Officer for Sub Saharan Africa of MultiChoice.

From this and all the elaboration's from the conference we can only get to one conclusion:

Space technologies have a definite role to play in Africa's Education and Training System.

Lets look at Africa - the vast expanses that have to be covered between small settlements and large cities and coupled this to the fact that there is no existing infrastructure to depend upon existing terrestrial based communication systems. The option of using space technologies to enable communications becomes a viable option. It is also highly unlikely that any government is going to invest in terrestrial based system given the cost factors of linking such sparsely populated areas. Radio and microwave technologies are an option but they too need a complex infrastructure in order to be deployed.

Given the digital footprints that can be used to cover whole continents it make sense to investigate these options as a means to get countries connected. Within the right costing structure, the real challenges are to introduce innovative ways to utilize these technologies firstly as a two-way means of communication, but secondly, and for us much more important to use it to answer educational needs.

The lack of resources is not the primary constraint of any technological interventions. The real constraint is the lack of vision to guide the effective use of resources - a vision embedded in the educational needs.

Again it gets back to the warmware factor mentioned earlier. Technical solutions can be offered, software can be developed and people trained to do the job, but it is the lack of

vision amongst policy makers and educators that is holding us back. It is partly our short sightedness and technology push that fails to produce the innovative strategies and vision to make countries on our continent competitive in the global market place. I therefore challenge the decision makers to seek out the visionaries and to task them to take us into the future.

Given the opportunities I am sure that regions can share resources and collaborate on developing long-term strategies to cope with our changing world. The focus of any visionary approach must certainly have an educational pull and not a technological push. The technology and the business models are there to support the educational drive. If this is the case then educators who have their feet on the ground should be the ones driving the initiatives and not the policy makers and politician.

IMPLEMENTING TECHNOLOGIES

There is growing concern that not sufficient progress is being made in terms of issues of policy and regulation, access, capacity building, financing and partnerships. These were the main issues to emerge from the Global Connectivity in Africa Conference held in Addis Ababa in May 1998.

Moving to the question of implementing technology in education, there is a lot that has to take place both at the policy level and on the ground. Education principles and issues should form the foundation of decision making in technology. It is important to not place a financial mill-stone around the necks of a whole community and plunge them into greater despair by not considering the hidden costs of electricity, security, maintenance, consumables, telephone costs, trainers, furniture, and so on. Another issue is the total disregard to the wants and needs of the community. Far too often "parachute drops" are performed into a community without having any idea of what is on the ground. In implementing any technological solution communities and countries must guard against a techno-dump. There are far too many examples of technology driving the decision making process with the result that the outcomes have not met expectations.

There is also a need for the investment in flexible and sustainable infrastructures that will support educational applications in a variety of contexts. Sound information and understanding of the available options is imperative for good decision making. Planning and implementation needs to be infused by principles of effectiveness and efficiency.

The last but centrally to this is to forge appropriate balances between national, regional and local coordination. I therefore propose that policy makers and educators need to make the decisions and then get out of the way for the nation builders, in the form of the youth, to move in. This does not imply that they are left entirely to their own resources but that we need to search for new education paradigms that will allow the youth to flourish, given the right opportunities.

1. SCHOOLNET SOUTH AFRICA

Schools in South Africa are joining forces to develop provincial structures consisting of practicing teachers. SchoolNet South Africa is an organisation established in November 1997 to assist all South Africans in preparing for the Information Society. It is drawing on the strengths of people and organisations that share the common vision of implementing ICT in schools. The vehicle of this structure is to focus on email access and getting all schools connected to the Internet. This serves as the basis for collaboration and dissemination of information relating to educational issues.

It seeks to support educators and transform education through providing leadership, expertise, resources, coordination and developing effective partnerships in the areas of:-

• Internet connectivity and appropriate technology
• Content and curriculum development and management
• Human resource development and capacity building
• Advocacy

This organization is making a difference in a country where issues of access and equity need to be resolved as a matter of urgency.

These same issues must surely be universal to the whole continent where there is a desperate demand for technology to transform education systems and build nations into becoming globally competitive.

The message that I bring today is one of assistance to help build parallel structures on this continent. Let us join hands as educators and policy makers to place the needs of education on the table and then to look for technological solutions to meet those needs. Strong provincial, national, regional and international collaboration has the potential to induce rapid growth in the use of all technologies but they must be needs driven. If the drive is focused exclusively on technology then these resources will remain in the hands of the elite and will not filter down to the youth on the ground.

SchoolNet South Africa has attracted the attention of many large organizations including the World Bank. The WorldLinks for Development Project has the objective to harness ICT to open a world of collaborative learning for thousands of teachers and students around the world. In South Africa eighteen provincial computer centers in three provinces have been established with intensive training programs and is taking place as we sit here. They are fully functional, self sustaining community centers and will soon be expanding even further.

A clearing house for the development and management of local content is in the pipeline which will provide quality curriculum material and pathways via a flexible and resource based learning model to all schools in the country. There is no reason why this model could not be replicated in all countries on the continent using the national and regional school networks.

2. INTERNATIONAL STUDENT PROJECT

The introduction of any technology must be driven by means of a project based system which is highly coordinated. Educators need to be wooed into allowing their learners to use technology to the point where the technology becomes totally transparent and is merely one of many education resources available.

The introduction of satellite technology onto the continent can facilitate a process of local, provincial, national, and international cooperation on a scale that we cannot comprehend. The International Student Project, coordinated by the Australian Education Department for Gifted Children is one of many such projects that are operational today.

What is needed is similar projects to be implemented in our continent whereby learners and educators or actively drawn into a process of collaboration and cooperation across borders using asynchronous communications. The initial plans for this project have been conceived but need to be developed further given the necessary resources to do so. This project can be termed Technology Across Boundaries in Africa or TABIA.

3. TELISA

The Technology Enhanced Learning Initiative in Southern Africa (TELISA) is a project to initiate co-operation amongst countries in the SADC region in their renewal and expansion of education through the use of appropriate, available and cost effective technologies. This project has been developed taking cognizance of recent policy research on technology enhanced learning in South Africa and fully support the implementation of technology in education as planned by the Department of Education.

Beneficiaries are:

• learners throughout the region being able to gain access
• local teachers and lecturers who have been able to improve their skills through professional development programmes on the Internet
• communities through their improved skills and communication powers in the marketing of their products and services internationally.

Everybody participating will be able to gain from expert advice in other countries and offer advice on experience gained in their own areas.

The initiative aims to facilitate the establishment of a number of Information Communications Technology (ICT) Centres throughout the sub-region (SADC) and a series of Information Servers on the Internet structured to provide appropriate support material to existing institutions, lecturers, teachers and businesses. The infrastructure to be provided will facilitate collaborative learning and project development by people living in different cities and countries, reducing travel expenses while maximizing the development of education in the sub-region.

 The TELISA concept includes five major areas. If any one of the areas is neglected, the remainder of the picture will not be in balance.

These areas are:

• Development of an Information Clearing House to provide appropriate information via the Internet for capacity development in communities, business communities, schools and institutions of higher education,
• Institutional connectivity,
• Training including both technical and how to use the appropriate technology for educational purposes,
• Development of a network of community centres, and
• Collaborative projects of content that can be used collaboratively.

The aim is not to develop from scratch, but it is focusing on the use of existing resources.

The TELISA pilot projects currently being undertaken to start the initiative includes:

• Community ICT Centres (the first on is being implemented in Maseru, Lesotho)
• The information Clearing House (the initial servers will be placed in Johannesburg, South Africa and later replicated to other major cities in the region)
• Core Courseware Development (a pilot project to develop nine generic courses of a high priority in the region in being discusses with a number of stakeholders)

CONCLUSION

This paper has not focused on the technical aspects of space communication but was aimed rather at taking a realistic view of what is happening on the ground in terms of education. As has been stated previously, education and specifically educators must drive the initiative to introduce technology into classrooms and not the technologists, with all due respect to them. Let us join hands in the interest of our youth to make a difference.

Where there is a will there is a way. Let us entrust our future to the visionaries and

to the nation builders who will move in after the policy makers have created the opportunities.

Bogg, George R: President, Palomar College (http//horizon.unc.edu/horizon/online/6/1/default.asp "Accepting Responsibility for Student Learning")

Boyett, Joseph 1996: Boyett and Associates (http//horizon.unc.edu/horizon/online/6/2/default.asp "Twenty First Century Workplace")

Department of Education, 1996: Technology Enhanced Learning Investigation in South Africa. A Discussion Document.

Department of Education, 1997: Technology Enhanced Learning Initiative In South Africa - A Strategic Plan. (http://pgw.org/spc/chapter01.html)

Graff, Lois 1997: School of business and Public Management, George Washington

University (http//horizon.unc.edu/horizon/online/5/2/social.asp "Meaning in the

Context of Culture")

UNESCO, 1995: World Education Report

US Department of Education, 1996: Getting America’s students ready for the 21^st Century