It used to be that people contributed to or initiated policy debate through the media. Now it seems that Linked In or Facebook posts are the preferred medium. There is a shortcoming in this approach in that it is not truly public, but it may bleed into the public media through journalists who participate in these private fora. Something is better than nothing.
My eyes were drawn to one of the three points raised recently for the attention of Sri Lanka’s ICT Agency:
ICT is not another subject anymore. (For better or worse) it is the backbone of the 21st century world we live in. From Smartphones to Big data to Electric cars to Internet-of-Things the world runs on ICT. We need to change how our students learn, and teachers teach by ’embedding’ ICT into the core of our Education system. Going to a lab once or twice a week, and trying to learn the basics of computing using only 2 working PCs out of 10 is… (use any word you like). And you can’t keep selling unsustainable Nenasala’s anymore. Of course that requires a complete transformation of our Education system.
This drew my attention because I had recently prepared for a talk at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National U of Singapore where we pulled together the conclusions from several Systematic Reviews, including the one on “Strategies for training or supporting teachers to integrate ICT in the classroom.” The systematic review covered 11,419 studies in all, including 1,998 on technology use in the classroom. The lead researcher on the systematic review will provide more information shortly. We hope to organize an event for Sri Lankan education decision makers on this subject within the next few months. The study itself is under peer review and will be published as soon as that process is completed.
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