ICTworks by Inveneo

At an ICT4Edu conference in Kyrgyzstan, I was treated to a yelling match between technologists and educators on the brilliance or foolishness of installing Linux-based computers in the Mega Билим project. All the usual arguments for and against Open Source came up.

Ubuntu Linux is free, virus resistant, and Open Source, which means volunteers could translate the user interface into Kyrgyz language. Yet teachers were trained on Microsoft Windows and students need to know Microsoft Office to get a job.

It doesn't matter

Typically, the hard-core software developers demanded that schools should use Open Source so that students could learn how the software works and the developers could customize it, all without paying royalties to Microsoft or run afoul of intellectual property rights violations.

None of these reasons are worthy to choose Linux. If students are interested in software code, they can always go to the DOS prompt in Windows or run Scratch. The Kyrgyz Windows 7 Language Interface Pack was released over a year ago, and Windows 7 PC's are competitively priced in the local computer stores.

No, it really doesn't matter

Educators stressed that teachers already had extensive training on Windows software and would be confused, even lost, in the Linux environment. Students who learned Linux and LibreOffice would be at a disadvantage in the job marketplace as employers would only hire staff that are fluent in Microsoft applications.

Neither of these are valid reasons to choose Microsoft. All of the adults in the conference learned how to use computers back when Windows 98 was in vogue, some even started with Basic, yet no one complains they cannot use an iPhone, iPad, or even MacBook without training. By the time a elementary or middle school student graduates high school, there may not even be "computers" - iPads didn’t exist 3 years ago.

For students in high school, overall attitude and aptitude matters more than specific applications. No employer is going to turn away an energetic, motivated employee because they didn't study Microsoft Windows 7 in school. In fact, a truly smart student would seek out experience with multiple software environments (operating systems and applications) regardless of the school's computing infrastructure.

A better debate is...

Rather than wasting time in Microsoft vs. Linux, we should be focusing on what does matter and what is actually a harder question to answer: how can we create (and show) real educational outcomes with ICT? The big challenge is engaging teachers and students to learn math, language, history, etc, better and more efficiently using technology, not which code base we employ to do it.

So please stop debating proprietary or Open Source software. Let us start debating pedagogy, curriculum, and content, and the technology approaches that will help schools the most.

Agriculture and Food Security in Africa: After watching USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah on the PBS NewsHour discuss the goal of lifting 50 million Africans out of poverty and hunger in 10 years, this article about the role of mobile technology in agriculture jumped out at me. In 2011, Vodafone commissioned a report to identify opportunities for mobiles to address productivity and sustainability challenges in agriculture, and also how technology can help emerging markets play a critical role in feeding a growing population. Get the full report here to learn more about how technology can and will ensure food security.

UNESCO Working Paper Series on Mobile Learning: The ninth and tenth papers of this series have recently been published. The first paper, "Turning on Mobile Learning in Africa in the Middle East: Illustrative Initiatives and Policy Implications," describes a range of mobile learning programs in in these regions and explores how these programs address educational needs. It also surveys national and local policies related to mobile learning and analyzes their impact. The second paper, "Mobile Learning for Teachers in Africa and the Middle East: Exploring the Potential of Mobile Technologies to Support Teachers and Improve Practice," examines how several programs have employed mobile devices to support teachers and enhance their professional development. Click here to learn more about this series and what is being discussed on infoDev's Educational Technology Debate.

eLearning Africa Conference in Benin: If you're in Cotonou this week, don't miss Africa's most important gathering of high-level policy makers and practitioners in education, business, and government as they discuss the development of eLearning capacities across the continent. Click here to learn more.

Mobilizing Knowledge Networks in Development: The World Bank is sponsoring this workshop in Washington, D.C. June 19-20. The goal of the workshop is to explore ways to become better providers and connectors of knowledge in a world where the sources of knowledge are increasingly diverse and disbursed. Another goal is to engage research communities and civil society organizations through an Open Development initiative that makes data and publications freely available. Click here for details.

Textbook Policies in the Digital Age: Read what World Bank ICT and education expert Michael Trucano has to say about the Bank's revision of its "Operational Guidelines for Textbooks and Reading Materials." Some of the questions he poses: "How might, or should, a new World Bank 'textbook policy' be relevant and useful in such a world going forward? How narrowly – or expansively – should it consider its guidance related to learning materials? To what extent should such a policy attempt to … highlight the potential relevance or importance of certain trends, approaches, or perspectives – especially as they relate to the emergence of a variety of new technologies?" Click here for the answers and more.

To get these links faster, follow me on Twitter: @SabinaBehague

Back in 2009, a few MIT students started "Fab Labs" in Afghanistan to teach Afghans how to fabricate small-scale projects, one of which was wireless WiFi antennas. From this humble beginnings, grew JLink, a DIY Wi-Fi network, free for Afghans to use, covering the city of Jalalabad, Afghanistan.

JLink had good press for a while, and rightly so. Rolling out a city-wide WiFI network is no easy task, and in Afghanistan a doubly hard challenge. Wired has now published an update on JLink and the news isn't good:

JLink is not something the Taliban destroyed. Its impending collapse illustrates what happens when grand ambitions lead to grand achievements that ultimately prove unsustainable — perhaps because they proceeded from unstable, utopian premises. And like the war itself, the group that created JLink is out of time to salvage its project.

“The demise of the JLink is going to be a huge blow to Jalalabad’s nascent community of tech entrepreneurs — creative, dedicated young people who are pushing innovation in their own communities and creating well-paying, skilled jobs for their peers,” says Una Vera Moore, a development worker in Afghanistan who’s part of a last-ditch effort to save JLink. “What kind of message will we, de-facto representatives of the international community in Afghanistan, send when the network finally goes down? A message of fatigue and abandonment.”

I really admire the JLink team for deploying a municipal network in Afghanistan, its certainly a technical challenge to get multiple nodes up and running even with professional equipment, much less homebrew electronics. Yet in reading the article and reflecting on Inveneo's work deploying WiFi in Haiti, there are two aspects of JLink which may be key factors in its impending downfall - neither of them technical.

Financial Sustainability

First and foremost, it seems that there wasn't a reliable income stream to pay for the Internet backhaul. And satellite bandwidth in Afghanistan isn't cheap - between $5,000 and $15,000 per month per the article. The JLink founders were paying that bandwidth bill themselves, which isn't a long term solution.

Now its always hard to get individuals to pay the real cost of connectivity, especially expensive satellite bandwidth. Another option may have been charging local organizations, though any practical level of bandwidth may have also been too expensive for them. It sounds like the JLink team did look for donor support to keep the link up, but it may have been too late in both the JLink project lifecycle and in donor support of Afghan projects.

A lesson to learn from this is to think about financial sustainability from the start. Here's a helpful primer on financial sustainability.

Stakeholder Buyin

I am sure that the users of JLink appreciated the free Internet access - connectivity in Afghanistan is rare and expensive - so there was certainly grassroots buyin with JLink. But what about the decision makers who may have been a step or two away from direct usage?

The hospital and university administrators who could allocate staff and resources to JLink? Or the government functionaries who support both types of institutions with annual budget allocations that could be increased for Internet bandwidth provision? Did these people have personal buyin to the network? Were they also reliant on JLink for Internet access?

One way to ensure long-term survival of a project is to make sure that everyone has a vested interest in making sure the project continues, especially traditional power centers who may not be apparent at first glance. Its these influencers who can support or sabotage a good idea purely on how it may benefit them.

An Open Invitation

Looking from afar, and with only press accounts to go by, its very hard to know what may have gone wrong (or right) with JLink. My thoughts above are rudimentary at best. Better would be a deep dive into the JLink experience with one of their founders or operators. So I hereby issue an open invitation to Todd Huffman, Peretz Partensky, Una Vera Moore, or any other member of the JLink team to present at Fail Faire DC 2012 (sign up to get invited).

Fail Faire DC is a celebration of risk taking and innovation - attributes that JLink certainly earned - and I invite them to share their experience so we can all learn from failure. Failure is no reason to be ashamed. Failure shows leadership in pushing the boundaries of what is possible in scaling ideas from pilots to global programs. There is great value in examining our mistakes as we go beyond the easy and the simple.

And I dare anyone to say that JLink was either simple or easy.

In The China-Africa partnership: effective for education?, Stephen Haggard argues that, up to now, China’s presence in Africa has had disappointing impacts on learning. As in no impact at any scale.

What's your thoughts on China's impact on ICT4D?

I know Chinese companies have done much on the commercial side to introduce low-cost technologies and make IT investments. But I am not talking about ICT components - I am talking about systematic change.

What have Chinese companies or the Chinese government done to increase school or teacher educational use of ICT? Or community health worker efficiency or effectiveness via technology? Yes, all now have cheap handsets, and that's laudable but also commercial. Have they done anything altruistic?

Tim Unwin says:

Within China itself, a very considerable amount has been done on using ICTs effectively for education - and there is much good research on subjects ranging from the use of electronic whiteboards to mobile phones for students and ICTs in teacher training. The energy and vitality there - where electricity and connectivity are very extensive even in marginal rural areas - is impressive. There is a challenge in sharing this expertise more widely across the world.

Michael Trucano says:

While comparatively few representatives from Chinese firms and organizations participated at eLearning Africa 2011, after engaging in a few dozen informal discussions with many MOE staff, vendors and consultants, it is clear that Chinese support for the purchase of ICT infrastructure for schools will most likely increase greatly in the coming years.

Scattered existing examples of small cooperation were cited by many people as a harbinger of things to come. Almost every ministry of education official with whom I spoke mentioned that they had contact of some sort with Chinese officials or partners around the use of computers in schools, and expected this to increase in the near term (many remarked on how this contrasted with their dialogue, or lack thereof, with most 'traditional' donors on this topic).

Now what do you say?