Tag Archives: IT

Reflections on Castells and Kellner

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Both these paper are dated – Castells  from 1999, Kellner from 2002.  They both take a broad philosophical sweep over the changing world as a result of IT and network technologies.

Castells focuses on networks – power being in the network, isolation if out of the network.  He identifies the opportunity for slower adopters to leapfrog the early stages and go straight to fully networked access. He identifies the transformation of relationship between capital and labour when labour is remote and invisible in an information society.  He identifies cost lowering as the thin end of the wedge for poorer countries in a globalised world.    However, he lapses into idealism “The  disassociation between economic growth  and social development in the  information age is not only morally wrong, but also impossible to sustain.”  “It will take a dramatic investment in overhauling  the  educational system everywhere, through co-operation between national and local  governments, international institutions and lending agencies, international and  local business, and families.”  I wonder if he really expected that to happen?

Kellner is even more idealistic.  He focuses on the need to gain new literacies rather than on the acquisition of IT and networks.  However his conclusions are simplstic and impractical.  ” The disconnect and divides can be overcome, however, by more actively and collaboratively bringing students into interactive classrooms or learning situations in which they are able to transmit their skills and knowledges to fellow students and teachers alike.”  ” In much of the world, the struggle for daily existence is paramount and meeting unmet human and social needs is a high priority. Yet everywhere education can provide the competencies and skills to improve one’s life, to create a better society, and a more civilized and developed world.”  “The time is ripe to take up the challenge and to move to reconstruct education and society so that groups and individuals excluded from the benefits of the economy, culture, and society  may  more  fully  participate  and  receive  opportunities  not  possible  in  earlier  social constellations “.  Again one wonder if he is really serious regarding this as a possibility>

Both papers are comprehensive and analytically sound.  However their conclusions either reflect the misplaced optimism of the dawn of networked society or are just academically tidy ways to end their papers!

Reflection on Leach

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I enjoyed Leach and found the evidence of value-added from ICT in rural education convincing in subjective terms.  However, the paper raises many issues and resolves few.

  • The primary problem is the eternal question ‘what is education’.  Leach’s research is mainly qualitative and while value is described in subjective terms, there is little objective evidence (except anecdotal reports of better exam marks).  The evidence seems to reinforce other studies which show that online learning provides more engagement and deeper understanding but little better performance in summative assessment (particularly of the ‘fill in the answer’ type typical in Africa).  Many would argue that this deeper understanding reflects improved pedagogy but it doesn’t pay the bills or convince politicians the way exam results do.
  • Some of the answers seem oblique to the challenge.  The challenge that food and penicillin were more important than ICT was answered by evidence that reading and writing were improved.  Well not for the kids who had starved to death or died of infection first!
  • The cost benefit challenge is similarly answered illogically.  Value was described as the production of posters and notices which could just as easily have been written by hand.  The use of the printer as a photocopier does not provide much evidence of the power of ICT in education!

There was however, a lot of good information.  Certainly the evidence that people, however unsophisticated, could use and get value from technology was useful to rout the Luddite arguments.  The evidence that goods would be protected from theft and damage if they were sufficiently valued was also interesting.

The most convincing argument seemed to be the last – that technology was shrinking the world, so making these remote people less remote and enabling them to access education otherwise unavailable to them.

Overall, the paper is convincing that ICT in education, if done well – with the right equipment, the right content, the right pedagogy and some access to support – can produce improved educational results.  However, with all those qualifications I am not sure the arguments would convince the doubters.  There is so much alternative evidence of technology-led initiatives which have failed to have much impact that these beacons of isolated good practice may be seen as only that, not evidence of general opportunity.