Critical Technology

This paper is a technology plan for a critical technologist assisting in community education through the use of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) in the developing world. Two of the UN’s Millennium Development Goals (MDG) focuses on providing education. To meet these MDG educational goals between 14 and 22.5 million teachers need to be recruited, trained and provided with the right incentives in the next ten years (GCE, 2006). This paper introduces the theory of critical technology and the role of a critical technologist to help meet this huge need. Due to this paper being mostly theoretical it was important to define the learning and curriculum required within the community. A number of documents were reviewed to build what is believed to be the required learning and curriculum. An important step in the development of this technology plan would be to formally review the learning needs of the developing country targeted. To identify the resources and requirements of technology planning within the developing world the existing infrastructure of Telecentres and Community Learning Center (CLC) were drawn upon as reference. These resources and requirements were confirmed with review of ICT development reports and case studies.

In bringing an end to extreme poverty there is agreement by many leaders (Lewis, 2005; Sachs, 2005; UNDP, 2006; IIEP, 2004) that having a community focus rather than a region or nation focus is better suited for success. The idea that the community knows best and that every community has its differences is shared by many of these leaders. Jeffrey Sachs calls it clinical economics, IIEP calls it decentralization, UNDP calls it community ownership… Combine this with the incredible need for teachers and you create the role of the critical technologist. The critical technologist understands education, educational theory, international development and ICT. Their role is to assist in identifying the learning needs of the community, assist in building up the ICT infrastructure, and assist in teaching the community to become a technically savvy self sufficient community of learners and teachers.

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References

GCE. (2006). Teachers For All: What governments and donors should do. Global Campaign for Education, Policy Briefing. Retrieved on April 23, 2006 from http://www.campaignforeducation.org/resources/Mar2006/GCE%20Teachers%20For%20All.pdf

GCE. (2006). Campaign Briefing: Every Child Needs a Teacher. Retrieved on May 3, 2006 from http://www.campaignforeducation.org/documents/action_week_downloads/2006/GCE%20TEACHER%20CAMPAIN.pdf

IIEP. (2004, October). Decentralization – can it improve schools? IIEP Newsletter, 22(4). Retrieved on May 9, 2006 from http://www.unesco.org/iiep/eng/newsletter/2004/octe04.pdf

Lewis, S. (2005). Race Against Time. House of Anansi Press. Toronto, Canada.

Sachs, J. (2005). The End of Poverty. Retrieved on May 12, 2006 from http://www.ag.ohio-state.edu/~hcrd/people/staff/Sachs-End%20of%20Poverty.pdf

UNDP. (2005). Community-based Networks and Innovative Technologies: New models to serve and empower the poor. Retrieved on May 12, 2006 from http://www.undp.org/poverty/docs/ICTD-Community-Nets.pdf

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