During today's morning keynote at the Baramati Education Technology
conference in India,
Microsoft India CEO Ravi Venkatesan offered his company's latest thinking
on information and communication technologies (ICTs) in education.
India graduates two million students each year, he said, yet 60 million
children don't even go to school, and overall literacy is below 60%. "Sixty
million is roughly the entire enrollment of the US school system," he
noted. There are also about 400 students per computer in Indian schools.
"Only a small fraction of educators have basic ICT literacy," he added,
noting there are approximately 250,000 trained teachers amongst a total of
five million teachers. In the general popualation, there are also around 10
PCs per thousand people overall.
"I find this interesting because there's a remarkable thing in India going
on today," he continued. "Middle class Indians now believe we can be an
educated, developed nation." Indians are starting to view their nation's
one billion people not as an obstacle, but as an asset, he said.
"It's the shortage of skilled teachers, high student to teacher ratios,
teacher absenteeism, student absenteeism" that are among India's greatest
educational challenges, he continued. However, there are ways ICT can
combat these challenges. For example, Venkatesan admitted that despite his
personal successes in business, he is illiterate in his own native tongue,
Tamil, yet he has been amazed how much of the basics he was able to pick up
by using multimedia training tools at an ICT kiosk he recently visited.
Beyond formal schooling, ICTs can help village women achieve financial
independence.
"You take women from self-help groups and give them basic ICT skills, and
you dramatically increase their opportunities," he said. In partnership
with an NGO working with agricultural workers, ICT access helped women
increase their salary from 500 rupees (USD $11.50) a month to 2000 rupees
(USD$ 45) a month.
Unfortunately, no major breakthrough has been achieved on a large,
replicable scale, he said. "I don't think anybody really knows; there is a
remarkable lack of information on what drives success and sustainability."
"When you look across all these projects, there is always a visionary,
passionate, committed leader," he continued. "Our problem is that we then
become over-reliant on this small group of leaders." There is no substitute
for this type of leadership, he said; how do we identify more people to
fill these roles?
It's quite common for a project's funding to dry up before it reaches
critical mass for sustainability, he pointed out. There are many
well-intentioned efforts, some led by the government, some by NGOs or the
private sector, but they're not coordinated. "I'm constantly surprised"
when you look at the projects of major IT companies, running project that
have very similar goals, in the same communities, "but we don't come
together, so there is a tremendous missed opportunity."
When developing an ICT project, he said, very often you get consumed by a
particular goal, like wiring every village, or putting a kiosk in all of
them. But unless you put in all the building blocks, "things fall apart."
He then identified some of these building blocks, including local
connectivity and affordability. "It's the affordability of everything:
hardware, software, the cost of connectivity," he said. "I don't think any
one company can solve the issue," he added; Consortiums organized by
government are a positive step in the right direction.
Language and illiteracy is also a major challenge, particularly when
content isn't available in the local language. "It's incredibly important
for us to make sure that the user interface is in the local languages."
Microsoft is working to put its software into 14 Indian languages by the
end of the year, he said, "but it's not enough.... because of the 40% of
people who are illiterate."
A lack of content also stifles well-meaning initiatives. "There is a
tremendous diversity in the kind of information needs that people have; it
even varies from district to district." So just because you offer access
doesn't mean you're given access to the local crop information that would
be vital for a village's farmers.
He then noted the need for education and training. "It's training,
training, training - it's the single biggest differentiator between success
and failure." When looking at the success of kiosks, the most important
factor is having kiosk managers who are well trained and able to train
others. "We are very conscious of the fact that we are just beginning to
scratch the surface."
"All of these building blocks must be in place if we are to have
sustainability," he concluded.
Venkatesan then described a visit President Clinton paid to a village in
Rajasthan that was using VSAT technology for Internet access. Many months
later, journalists returned to see how they were maintaining the program.
"It was quite sad," he said; the VSAT terminal wasn't working, no one else
was trained. The project had collapsed.
To move forward, he said teachers and students must be at the center stage
of ICT initiatives. "Putting them center stage and using ICT to solve real
problems rather than perceived problems is an important step." Venkatesan
also noted the importance of state government being involved, particularly
since the majority of schools in India are state-run. You also must get the
community involved. He described an experience working for a diesel company
in the US during the 1980s. They worked there for three years, but as soon
as they pulled out, the project collapsed. "We hadn't involved the
workforce, they hadn't taken ownership," he said. "It's exactly the same as
that village in Rajasthan; we really, really need to have local ownership
of initiatives."
"I'm personally, passionately convinced that the reason people remain poor
is because they lack information access," he said. So Microsoft India hopes
to achieve the goal that all Indians have access to information though
ICTs by 2010.
Quoting Margaret Mead, he closed his presentation: "Never doubt the ability
of a small group of committed people to change the world; indeed it's the
only thing that ever has."
-------------------------------------------------
Andy Carvin
Program Director
EDC Center for Media & Community
acarvin @ edc . org
http://www.digitaldividenetwork.org
http://www.edwebproject.org/andy/blog/
-------------------------------------------------
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