Futurelab is a UK-based and apparently well-resourced educational charity that develops "innovative resources and practices that support new approaches to learning for the 21st century". It spun out of the National Endowment for Science Technology and the Arts a year or two ago.
Two recent publications will be of interest to Fortnightly Mailing readers.
Beyond the digital divide, by Neil Selwyn (whose "Adults Learning @ Home" project I covered in May 2003) and Keri Facer, provides a timely and well referenced review of "why the digital divide remains a complex and entrenched social problem", and calls for "policy responses that go far beyond simply increasing levels of hardware provision and support". Within the report itself, or as a separate document [67 kB PDF], is "Beyond the digital divide, a charter for change", which proposes four entitlements for citizens, and six challenges about the digital divide "which should inform future discussions and action". You can get a flavour of the line taken in the report itself from this interview (?) with Selwyn and Facer from the 18/6/2007 eGovernment Monitor. You can order a free hard copy of the report, or download it as a PDF from the Futurelab web site.
Handhelds - learning with handheld technologies, by Fern Faux, Angela McFarlane, Nel Roche, and Keri Facer, results from school-based research by Bristol University. As well as a directory of nearly 40 handheld projects and resources, the report includes a page of coherent and practical summary recommendations, anddetailed "case reports" from four handheld learning projects:
- The Dudley Handhelds Initiative (~300 students using wifi- and network-connected Palm PDAs);
- Learning2Go Phase 2 - Wolverhampton Local Authority (1000+ students using wifi-connected Fujitsu Siemens Pocket PCs);
- Warren Comprehensive School, London (50+ students, using wifi-connected Dell Axims and Palm Tungsten Cs);
- Stiperstones School, Shropshire (~50 students using Dell Axims with no connectivity).
You can order a free hard copy of the report, or download it as a PDF from the Futurelab web site.
Reading the report I was struck by the fragmentation in the implementation of these kinds of projects: different technology platforms and different content partners; uneven funding; dependence on champions in a Local Authority of school; focus on individual schools rather than on doing things "on an industrial scale". Reports of this kind contain plenty of useful insights; but you cannot help thinking that the One Laptop Per Child project (with its emphasis on technology that has been designed for children, for mass-manufacture, and for genuine ubiquity) illustrates a more realistic and sustainable approach to putting ICT into the hands of children. To the extent that the price of OLPC will fall as the number of units made rises, why shouldn't the developed world throw its lot in with OLPC, if OLPC will let it? And, speculating wildly (naïvely?), if there remains a digital divide in the developed world, you could imagine that OLPC-like devices could play an important part in bridging that as well.
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