Available tools and approaches, and their strengths and weaknesses

Regarding the planning of ICT in education policies, UNESCO, InfoDEV, and other partners have developed a toolkit aimed at providing educational policy-makers, planners, and practitioners with a systematic process to formulate, plan, and evaluate education development programmes enhanced by ICT (see http://www.ictinedtoolkit.org). In addition, there are other resources that describe, from different perspectives, the elements to be considered in an ICT in education policy, such as Kozma (2005), Pelgrum and Law (2003), Kugemann (2002), and Hepp, Hinostroza, Laval, and Rehbein (2004). In general terms, although these publications provide very good guidance for the planning stage, especially for teams that are starting in the area of ICT in education policy, they are not self-explanatory; therefore external expert support is required for effective use by the teams in charge of planning the ICT in education policy.

From a management perspective, there are many techniques and tools described in the literature that can be used for planning and management of ICT in education policies, such as the Logical Framework Approach, which is a tool for objective-oriented planning (see, for example, Norad, 1999), or other more traditional project planning tools such as the Critical Path Method, the Precedence Diagramming Method, or the Programme Evaluation and Review Technique.

Regarding M&E of the policy, authors have tried to defi ne frameworks that can be used to follow the implementation of the ICT in education policy, and thereby be used as management tools. One example is the framework for monitoring and evaluation of ICT in education projects developed by Wagner et al. (2005), which identifies the different components of the policy (see Figure 7).

As can be observed in Figure 7, this framework considers the development context of the intervention (including national economic and social development and educational context, as well as ICT development expressed as ‘ICT use in home and community’) that needs to be taken into consideration during the planning phase; the ‘target ICT intervention’, which includes the products and services that will be delivered to schools; ‘local support’, which means services to be provided locally; as well as ‘digital educational contents’, which are resources that need to be available for the implementation, which in turn describes the expected use of ICT. Finally, the ‘ICT outcomes’ and ‘student impact’ describe the variables that should be monitored to register possible results and impacts of the initiative.

A different approach is proposed by Scheuermann, Kikis, and Villalba (2009), which presents a framework for understanding and evaluating the impact of ICT in education (Figure 8).

ce Management

National Economic & Social Development

Economic development strategy

Social development strategy Infrastructure development Poverty reduction strategy WB, NGO, other assistance

ICT Outcomes Students: ICT skills ICT attitudes Information skills Communication skills Teachers: Tech skills Pedagogical skills Implementation Use of computers Use of Internet Pedagogical strategies Student/learner products Education Context Currriculum reform instructional reform Assessment reform ICT master plan Teacher develoment School organization reform Decentralization Community participation Digital Education Content Better jobs Higher income Higher life satisfaction Improved health Reduced gender gap Connection to global economy

ICT Use in Home & Community

Local Support Administrative support Support from other teachers Protectional development Technical support Community support Teacher Training Equipment operation software use Instructional Interaction Infrastructure Equipment Software/Content Networking Intervention Design Curriculum Pedagogy assessment ICT use

Conceptual framework of ICT

monitoring and

evaluation

et al.

, 2005: 9 (R

eproduced as in the original).

International Institute for Educational Planning www.iiep.unesco.org

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Planning and Management of ICT

: Education Sector Framework for evaluating ICT in education et al. , 2009: 9. Institute for Educational Planning www.iiep.unesco.org

In this case, in addition to the set of indicators grouped in the areas of policies, resources, curriculum, organization, teaching, and learning classifi ed as belonging to macro, meso, and micro levels of intervention, this framework also includes the idea of ‘stages’ of policy implementation (i.e. emerging, applying, integrating, and transforming).

7.5 Sources of supply/support for capacity development

Approaches for capacity development include the following:

• Study tours to selected countries to visit concrete experiences and see the implementation of ICT in education policies in schools. Generally in these tours, a group from the MoE in charge of the policy travels to visit and learn from other countries’ experiences. It is important to consider that the choice of country to visit is of paramount importance. The target country needs to be one that, having similar social and cultural aspects to those of the origin country, has been able to make signifi cant progress in this area. For example, during the late 1990s and early 2000s in Latin America, Chile was considered an example of ‘best practice’ in this fi eld, and therefore other countries in the region, such as Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia, visited and learned from the Chilean experience. Currently, Uruguay’s ‘one laptop per child’ initiative is considered as ‘best- practice’ and is therefore attracting a great deal of attention to the country. In other regions, Singapore is considered an example of best practice in the introduction and use of ICT in teaching and learning, and Korea is considered exemplary in ICT-related innovations. Jordan has also become an example in its region in this area.

• Some country teams can also decide to visit more developed

countries. However, in many cases, due to the cultural, social, and economic differences, transferring these experiences is not feasible and/or demands signifi cant local adjustments (which can be fi ne for teams that have already accumulated experience in this area). • In practical terms, these visits last approximately one week, and a

typical group would consist of at least the director of the initiative and the professionals (usually technical staff) in charge of infrastructure, teacher training, and digital educational resources, who meet with their respective counterparts. Additionally, the visit includes visits to schools as well as some hands-on experience.

• Seminars and conferences for policy-makers organized by

international institutions and/or private companies. These conferences are usually very useful for discussing general strategies at policy

level and to learn from other countries’ general strategies. However, they do not provide enough information at an implementation level.

• Formal programmes, including general or ad-hoc postgraduate

courses and diplomas. These programmes are available from a range of institutions and are quite heterogeneous in their quality and applicability to particular contexts. However, if well selected, they are useful as part of a long-term capacity building strategy.

It is very common for institutions to collaborate in the design and implementation of ICT policy in their country to offer capacity building opportunities. Therefore, depending on the aims and type of strategy to be implemented, countries should to identify other countries that have gone through similar processes and have achieved some success in this area. The most relevant criteria to select an institution seem to be cultural and social similarities, since what can be learned needs to be adapted to the local conditions and context.