[iDC] Deinstitutionalization?

[Diego Ernesto Leal Fonseca]

Hello there everyone,

Thanks to Trebor and Ismael for the invitation to share some thoughts 
about education and ICT from a Latin American perspective.

I've been traveling the last few days, so just now i get the chance to 
try and introduce myself to the list.  My name is Diego Leal, i'm from 
Colombia but at the time i'm living in Rio de Janeiro.  Until 2008 i was 
project manager for the National Program on Media and ICT Use in Higher 
Education at the Colombian Ministry of Education, where I was in charge 
of leading/coordinating several initiatives (including some work on 
learning objects, teacher and administrators training -more info here: 
http://bit.ly/9yJJZu -, online communities for teachers and the 
development of institution-wide strategic plans for the use of ICT). 
Then I left for Brazil, and for the last year I've been working with 
several universities in Colombia, exploring the issues involved in the 
local offering of open online courses (in the line of the recent work 
developed by David Wiley, Alec Couros, Stephen Downes and George Siemens 
-more info here: http://bit.ly/cVcO3Y - ).

Based on my experience, even though i agree there is a huge potential 
for learning supported by ICT  (which is always recognized and, let's 
say, advertised at the government-level), we still have a long way to go 
in order to make real that potential.  I'd like to go back to some of 
the issues mentioned by Ismael.

I'd like to begin by saying that i'm not that sure there is a trend 
towards de-institutionalization, at least in my country.  As a matter of 
fact, i'd say at the government level there is an interest to go in the 
opposite direction.  In Colombia there is a lot of work on policies (see 
http://bit.ly/bkAiir ) aimed to articulate secondary education, 
vocational/technical programs and professional programs to help students 
to stay into the formal system (something locally called "propaedeutic 
cycles" - http://bit.ly/9GTyYn , http://bit.ly/9rs2TC ), and the goals 
regarding competitiveness involve getting more students into masters and 
doctorate programs.  For a detailed discussion of some trends in Higher 
Education in Latin America (Spanish), see http://bit.ly/dsviQu .   So it 
seems to me that "lifelong learning" starts to look like "lifelong 
schooling".  To be honest, i don't see a real challenge to educational 
institutions, at least in terms of their role certificating learners.

In Colombia, as well as in many other third world countries, online 
learning holds the promise of bringing quality education to places where 
historically there has been a lack of it.  Just as everywhere else, 
there are concerns about quality and there is a great diversity in the 
kind of educational experiences provided by formal institutions, mostly 
focused on resource management and content delivery.

Even though most institutions talk about the importance of 
pedagogical/andragogical design, and many of them are moving to 
competence-oriented curricula (and it's open to discussion whether this 
makes sense or not), when you get to see the actual use of technology 
reality looks quite different.  For good or worse, a lot of attention is 
still on technology by itself (that is, the hardware). Whether it's 
smart boards, clickers or LMS, some institutions seem to think that 
having the hardware guarantees results.

Even though there are several higher education institutions 
participating in OCW, discussion about legal issues, openness and open 
licenses is still incipient.  Even though there are a lot of teachers 
interested in ICT (and using it), I'd say there is a lot of confusion in 
this area at the local level. Sometimes hype seems to be stronger than 
research.

Take, for instance, the whole digital natives debate. The international 
research contradicting those claims seems vastly ignored, and regional 
studies seem to take a non-critical approach.   The language divide is 
not helpful, either. Recent publications in English reach a small number 
of people, and there is a strong dependence on bloggers and other 
sources that translate or comment some of these resources. However, the 
analysis required to bring that research to our local contexts is 
usually overlooked and, as a result, conclusions that are valid for a 
completely different context are presented as facts of our particular 
reality  (Of course, this doesn't mean there is not local research being 
done, but still)

As you would expect, the discussion quickly involves more and more 
perspectives, taking us to political, economical and ideological 
issues.  I just wanted to point out that reality, at least from my 
perspective, looks extremely complex, and maybe technology is not having 
yet the impact many of us expected.  It remains to be seen whether or 
not it will.

Gee, looks like i got carried away with this rambling. :-)  It is clear 
there are a lot more to be discussed, but I guess I'll leave it here, so 
we can start a conversation around some of these issues.  I'd say is 
definitely worth it making visible the differences between our contexts, 
so we can recognize opportunities to improve them.

Thanks again, and I'm looking forward to the discussion.

(By the way, please excuse the language mistakes. I'm still improving my 
English ;-) )

Best,


---
Diego Leal
http://diegoleal.org