Monitoring and Evaluation, and Revision of the Strategy, Courses and Materials:
Running concurrently with many of the items above, M&E should collect experiences and feed recommendations into a continuing process of revision and improvement. It is a good idea to consider your M&E strategy prior to any development, in order to evaluate the effectiveness of planning and development phases, as well as professional development deployment.
The Guyana M&E Strategy is included in the toolkit as a starting point for devising local variations. |
Readers of the above list will in all likelihood comment that in their context, some — or perhaps many — of the activities described above have already been commenced or completed, so the purpose here is to identify a set of free and open tools that can be adapted to support those key activities still to be concluded.
Below are three scenarios in which different needs necessitate the use of different combinations of the key activities and tools.
4.1 Scenario 1: Need for Education Authority Frameworks
This first scenario might arise when the ICT in education professional development initiative is being driven by individuals from within the education ministry or the state or provincial education authorities. This type of personnel would prioritise the identification of tools that would allow the authority to coordinate activities and initiatives. They would place value on tools that provide frameworks for others to conduct their specific ICT in education responsibilities.
In Guyana, for example, many of the key activities described above were already in place. There was evidence that tertiary education students were bringing their own laptops to class. Both the University of Guyana’s Faculty of Education and the Cyril Potter College of Education had different ICT in education curricula that were being implemented. The government was piloting a number of ICT “success maker” laboratory installations at various primary and secondary schools.
What was required was a “blueprint” to align and mesh these ICT in education initiatives. Existing initiatives were often working in isolation and on occasion counter-productively. Arising from this need was the Guyana ICT in Education Professional Development Strategy. This document acted as a much-needed implementation plan. The strategy, developed by the government with support from COL and ComSec, focussed principally on the professional development of teachers at both the pre- and in-service levels but also acted as a framework identifying key activities. For example, it proposed a review of existing ICT in education curricula in order to establish a new set of courses to coordinate activities across both HE institutions. It also established a need to develop new teaching and learning materials to suit the different complexities required by different levels of study. Finally, the strategy identified a need for training key personnel, monitoring and evaluation, and ongoing communication and advocacy. Within this strategy, the UNESCO ICT-CFT provided a structure for rethinking the ICT in education curriculum.