My interest is in development education, such as in sub-Saharan Africa, where penetration of ICT to support education is low. The challenges here are:

• Low IT skills for teachers
• Poor/expensive internet access
• ICT taught as a subject rather than used as a curriculum tool

These problems require a managed, local ICT solution because the skills and/or access are not sufficient just to access open tools on the internet.

For a remote primary school in a development environment, I would invest in:

1. An internal solution with the external internet used for extra information, not as the prime source. This internal solution would comprise a server equipped with a Learning Management System to organise access to learning materials. These learning materials would include:

• Navigation and skills learning packages to help teachers become competent in operating computing equipment and navigating the LMS.
• Pedagogic guides to illustrate how educational software can be used to support teaching and learning. These would be linked to specific areas of the local curriculum.
• Educational software to support local curricula. Because of language issues this software may need to be developed or amended specially e.g. by a local tertiary education establishment. The software would include dictionaries and encyclopaedia to allow search and enquiry.
• Educational games to allow skills to be developed in an informal way

2.  It is unlikely to be economically feasible to provide tablets or laptops to all teachers and
pupils (constraints of electricity and internet access means such personal machines would
not be used effectively). I would equip one or more “teaching rooms” which subject teachers
could book to include ICT in their teaching. The equipment would comprise:

• Projector/Interactive whiteboard, connected to the server/LMS
• Individual access equipment. Depending on the local environment (power, security etc) these could be desktops, laptops or tablets.

This equipment would not be useful without support – both start-up and ongoing. Part of the investment would be in initial training both of support staff and teachers and in ongoing support (maybe regionally) to provide maintenance and guidance.