People often ask me for specific examples of how technology is impacting global education. I suspect they are looking for super glossy examples of futuristic classrooms. They hope I’ll describe some design innovation or a revolutionary adaptive algorithmic trick. They expect video games, virtual reality, and robotics. But things often don’t look as shiny as you expect. The most significant impact can be inconspicuous. Consider, for example, Camfed’s pioneering partnership with Worldreader.
Worldreader is also an international non-profit. Founded in 2010 by former Microsoft and Amazon executive David Risher, and former Marketing Director at Barcelona’s ESADE Business School Colin McElwee, Worldreader uses eReaders and other mobile technologies to distribute books to places where they are scarce. They have already reached over 2.2 million readers, and plan to extend that reach to 15 million readers by 2018. Recognizing that information technologies have the potential to deliver content in ways that were previously impossible, they “work with device manufacturers, local and international publishers, governments, education officials, and local communities to bring books to all.”
Just consider what it would take to build first rate libraries all over the world, to guarantee that civilization’s archive is universally accessible. Then, realize that Worldreader has essentially provided the kinds of resources that philanthropists used to reserve only for elite Universities to some of the most impoverished parts of the world. Without plastering wealthy benefactors’ names on the facades of aesthetic wonders designed by famous architects, Worldreader has used the Kindle, the smartphone, and the simple flip-phones to provide the fundamental benefit of a sophisticated library to millions of readers.
You may think I’m being hyperbolic. After all, haven’t we seen these kinds of efforts before? Think: One Laptop Per Child (OLPC), which promised to bring the power of the internet and the personal computer to the developing world. Everyone was excited about the potential of OLPC’s sharply designed, yet remarkably inexpensive hardware. But years later, we’ve yet to see the kind of large-scale impact that was expected. Why? Because dropping technology from the sky is tantamount to missionary work from the Church of Technophilia.
Distribution without community buy-in just attempts to impose unfamiliar structures on people who never imagined they needed techno-deities with initials like CPU and HTTP. We already learned that this approach doesn’t work when well-meaning individuals and organizations tried to deliver industrial agricultural technologies to under developed communities in the mid-Twentieth Century. Where tech was introduced in a way that belittled, rather than empowering local cultural practices, rusty and underutilized tractors still sprinkle the landscape.
The genius of the partnership between Worldreader and Camfed is that it leverages the latter organization’s experience, knowledge, and infrastructure. Camfed’s network operates in a way that’s trusted. They put in the time and resources needed to make sure local communities, ministries of education, parents, women and girls understand how new structures and technologies can lift up rather than replace existing ways of life. This is a critical step that must come before trying to implement change. “It’s imperative that the community manages it itself,” Ann Cotton, founder of Camfed, told me when I called her to learn more about the partnership. She stressed how important it is that technical design be combined with emotional intelligence. And she explained that success comes where there’s synergy between the tech’s user interface and the epistemological interface through which a local culture understands and organizes its world.
Thus, equipped with Worldreader eReaders, Camfed alumni will introduce the technology to their network. They’ll start with 25 schools, distributing around 50 eReaders, each with 100 books, to each school. That’s the equivalent of 125,000 books being placed in the hands of girls who are at a very risky transitional age. The girls, however, get more than just books, they also get increased access to English language content. And considering that most schools switch from regional languages and dialects to English between primary and secondary education, the increased exposure is a necessity.
Access and distribution alone, without an adequate and empowering support infrastructure, does not actually create equity or opportunity. In fact, it often does the complete opposite. Alternatively, when the community’s and the individuals’ sense of self is affirmed, the impact is huge. “Determination and commitment is not in short supply,” Cotton reiterated before we say goodbye. I hang up the phone and reflect on the US education system and the familiar rhetoric of all the education technology conversations I have daily.
This week, the education community in the US will meet for ITSE, an annual conference, convention, and trade show that celebrates new classroom technologies with words like revolution, progress, and innovation. The press releases have been saturating my inbox for weeks—one embargoed futuristic product, platform, or service after another. Phrases like “paradigm shift” are thrown around willy-nilly. Technocratic prophets promise that their product will lead an Exodus out of the factory-model shackles that hold us back.
Perhaps the developers, writers, and edu-pundits are too quick to point to tech-aided pedagogical changes like blended learning and celebrate them as examples of radical change. While we’re right to celebrate all the fantastic changes taking place in nearby classrooms, we also need to make sure the socio-economic inequity in education can’t continue unchecked. Not at home, nor abroad.
The “an-aesthetic” school bells, standardized tests, and grade-level/subject-matter divisions which Sir Ken Robinson’s famous TED Talk so clearly identified, are not the only educational structures developed to reinforce and perpetuate the thought paradigms that fueled the industrial era. An economic paradigm that systematically exploits the less fortunate, while teaching everyone that it is ‘just natural,’ is also a fundamental component of 20th Century thinking. But by now it should be apparent that the growth mindset can always be flipped upside down, revealing diminutive consequences on the other side. As one profits, another loses. Knowledge is intellectual wealth that can and has been hoarded just like tangible resources.
To really innovate education, we also need to recognize that work like Camfed’s and Worldreader’s is as impactful, transformative, and revolutionary as the next new shiny object. Perhaps even more so.
