Can ICT teachers, or teachers who use ICT, or indeed any educationalist concerned with ICT in education do anything about poverty? It may seem implausible or even impossible, but I would say the answer is a resounding "yes". In this post I outline some possible action points.
Action 1: Respond to inequity
When I was in a very senior position in a local authority, nursery schools in England were not entitled to any government funding for ICT. I thought it was unfair that children of that age, and their teachers, should miss out on the potential benefits of technology just because of what I regarded as an anomaly in the funding arrangements. This also happened to be one of the most deprived areas of the country.
I approached my boss and made a business case for giving the nursery schools in the area a substantial grant, ring-fenced for spending on technology. He approved, and the schools were able to buy in some great hardware and software.
Action 2: Don't accept the status quo
Even in the most deprived areas, you can try to "think out of the box". For example, 17 years ago I kitted out an entire room in the school I was working in at the time with cast-off computers from a large corporation. Large companies have tended to replace their computers every couple of years, and there are schemes to enable schools to take advantage of the fact if you don't want to go it alone as I did. For example, Tools for Schools specialises in making refurbished computers available to schools at a relatively low cost.
That was back in the days when a laptop seemed to cost the equivalent of a small car. These days, I'd be trawling the companies for mobile devices rather than desktops, but the principle still holds.
Other options include working with companies by way of borrowing a class set of devices and giving lots of feedback to the company on its product. There's a lot of this going on now, so it's not as easy as perhaps it was in times past, but it does still go on and is worth thinking about.
Another option, again in the UK, is to work with the E-Learning Foundation on getting a computing device into the hands of every pupil. The basic idea is that parents actually buy the devices at a subsidised rate, for a low cost over a period of time.
Action 3: Support well-intentioned Government schemes
For example, here in England there is a Home Access initiative that is intended to get a computer and a broadband internet connection into the home of every family with children. There seems to be no end of people complaining that kids will have to share such equipment with their siblings, and even their parents, and that other socio-economic factors will mean that the equipment will be unused, damaged, or sold in the nearest pub.
Well, maybe we ought to find ways of dealing with, or avoiding in the first place, such scenarios, but surely the initiative itself is bold, brave, and something we should be proud and supportive of?
Action 4: Use what you got
Forgive the ungrammatical headline, which comes from the title of a song by Sugar Pie de Santo. For example, in a fascinating talk at the Handheld Learning Conference today, Adele Botha described how in South Africa and other parts of Africa most people either own a mobile phone or have access to one, and so their societies are by-passing the desktop computer age because they cannot afford to build the necessary infrastructure. Instead, a new form of infrastructure, one that supports mobile phone use, has emerged and is emerging.
Conclusion
These kind of actions won't eradicate world poverty, and they won't eradicate poverty in England. But they may, perhaps, help to make a dent in the status quo.
As one of the learned rabbis in the Jewish tradition once said:
"The work is not yours to complete, but neither are you free to desist from taking part in it."
This post is part of Blog Action Day 08 - Poverty
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