Bridges to the Future Initiative: About: Background

The UN estimates that there are still about one billion illiterate adults in the world today, with nearly 2-3 times that number who would be considered "technologically illiterate." Even so, the use of new information and communications technologies (ICT) continues to expand exponentially across the globe, and raises unprecedented opportunities for achieving greater educational and economic access and success. At the same time, there is a real and growing gap between "haves" and "have-nots," across and within developing countries. It is also increasingly clear that what resources are available for educational applications of technology are being primarily reserved for school-based programs, with scant resources reaching poor, rural, youth and out-of-school populations. To bridge this technological and education gap – what some term the global digital divide – will not be easy. In the developing world, disadvantaged in-school and out-of-school youth and adults are actually composed of many diverse groups, such as women, ethnic and linguistic minorities, refugees, and migrants. This diversity is one of the most important features in understanding why narrowly focused, and "one size fits all" education programs – especially when complex technology is introduced – have often met with poor results and lost resources. Fortunately, the benefits of ICT are well-matched with the problems of basic literacy and technological literacy:

Poor people in developing countries tend to live in dispersed geographical contexts and are comprised of diverse populations of youth and adult learners outside of formal educational programs; ICTs encompass distance education methods that can be tailored to diverse populations.Qualified and trained teachers represent the key to quality teaching and learner motivation, and professional expertise is limited and thinly distributed for adult literacy; ICTs for teacher education has been found to be very effective. Access to appropriate linguistic and cultural content has been an impediment to the development of practical and effective materials for multi-ethnic populations which make up the most disadvantaged youth and adults in many countries. Often, there are few teaching materials in the native language of target groups or devoted to achieving transfer of literacy skills into languages commonly used in a commercial context; with today's ICTs, it is relatively easy to adapt materials to other languages and use multimedia methods.

Finally, the use of ICT in literacy and basic education can leverage both information retrieval and dissemination, as well as context dependent and learner-centered instruction; ICT use enables the development of "technological literacy skills," essential competencies in societies undergoing change.

Bridges to the Future Initiative

About the Project: Background