No description available.

There has been a substantial level of investment in ICT in education over the last thirty years, but it has failed to have a proportionately large impact on learning. The purpose of this research was to identify ways of enhancing the impact of future investments in ICT in education. A proposition about one way to do this emerged from the literature. Empirical examination of this proposition highlighted deficiencies in the model and suggested that developing a framework for describing computer use in education would be a more productive approach. Existing frameworks were examined in the light of the data from the first three case studies, revealing significant weaknesses with them. This analysis resulted in the development of a set of criteria for evaluating frameworks for describing computer use in education. A new framework, the Computer Practice Framework (CPF), was then devised, based on key dimensions evident within the first three case studies. The CPF was evaluated against the criteria through further fieldwork in schools and higher education. This led to the refinement of the CPF and indicated that using it as a conceptual framework for thinking about computer use in education could help to create shared visions of the purposes underpinning investments in computer use in education. Using the CPF to support vision building, school development, curriculum planning, communication and shared understandings can enhance the likelihood of such investments having their intended impacts. The development of the CPF thus represents an original contribution to the field, which has the potential to enhance the impact of investments in ICT in education.

No description available.

No description available.

This research explores issues encountered by academic staff in their adoption of technology within the teaching and learning environment. The context of this research is set within a global environment; where technology is seen as both underpinning and enabling the current period of rapid change. Both the literature and University documents purport that the use of technology is instrumental in the delivery of positive economic, educational and social change. The researcher identified a dissonance between administrative policy and practices, and academic practice in relation to the use of technology. Consequently, the purpose of this study was to explore the experiences of academic staff in their adoption of technology within the teaching and learning environment. The literature review generated following research questions: 1. Why do academic staff use information communication technology (ICT)? 2. How do academic staff use ICT? 3. What are the barriers to the use of ICT that have been identified by academic staff? 4. How do academic leaders promote the use of ICT in teaching and learning? As the adoption of technology is essentially a social process, the epistemological position of constructivism, using an interpretative perspective, was adopted for this research. The methodology of case study is utilised as it allowed detailed exploration of self-perceptions and lived experiences of the participants in relation to their use of technology within their professional practice. 21 participants were initially selected for this study. From this group of participants Rogers’ Theory of Diffusion was used to select those participants who could provide the most useful insights; resulting in the seven case studies documented in this thesis. Participants within the case studies ranged from those who were highly innovative, to those who were late technology adopters.This research concluded that for the academic mainstream, the deployment and availability of technology had reached a stage where hardware, software, internet connectivity and projection capability were no longer seen as impediments to their use of technology. All participants, ranging from the highly innovative to the late technology adopters, used technology for email, the world wide web (WWW), administrative tasks, and the preparation and presentation of their lectures. While the use of various technologies was universal among the participants, the predominant use of technology was to support the transmission mode of instruction. The research concluded that a constructivist educational approach was not closely linked to early technology adoption, but to the participants’ individual educational beliefs. The educational beliefs of the participants were in conflict with their experience of the University’s practices, which reflected a lack of instructional leadership in relation to the use of technology

Published Article / This research is an attempt to verify certain myths surrounding the causes for the low numbers of women participating in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) education and careers through both qualitative and quantitative analyses. The paper approaches this issue through the experiences of women in an ICT workplace in comparison with those of men in the same workplace. This investigation was conducted in the form of case study at South Africa's Advanced African Institute for ICTs – the Meraka Institute. The research found that the ICT environment was engendered, with women representing only a small percentage of the staff. This is because of a weakness in the school curriculum which does not expose large numbers of girls to ICTs at an early age, and does not give adequate support at university and college levels to learners who have come out of such an environment.. Although women are just as capable as men in the ICT workplace, building self-confidence in their abilities to perform well on the job could help in retaining them. The research found that those women who are already in the ICT market are happy and do perform as well as their male counterparts irrespective of their family commitments, long working hours and the demand for networking opportunities. Happiness in the ICT workplace among female employees is determined by a combination of factors such as levels of remuneration, output potential and management style. To improve women's participation in this workplace, there is a need to improve policies for recruitment and on-the-job training and sometimes even adopting affirmative action to provide better-balanced gender representation.

This thesis explores how locally-constructed agency, based on what we really care about, can be developed within and thence beyond localities. At issue is the need for new forms of connectedness and belonging in the globally-based network society. Globally-based communications and media technologies create new networks and mobilities that stretch and fragment existing socio-economic, administrative and ecological systems and with this, older, local and national forms of sociality. Such social upheavals are apt to drive people into defensive and divisive "us" against "them" forms of belonging. Local communities are then called on almost daily to fix these problems, but scarcely exist as connected effective agents on their own account. The thesis examines how official institutions (policy and academic) can help undo one-way global-local flows, by supporting new forms of local-local and local-through-to-global agency. A transdisciplinary methodology, developed in this thesis, performatively demonstrates productive, new local-academic-policy connections. Research included a fully participatory process that blends theoretical concepts (social, aesthetic, literary and film), with film and interactive technologies. A microcosm or simulation of locality was created through DVD film and an interactive research website. Through the shared use of screen interfaces, over one hundred co-detectives or co-researchers from hugely diverse backgrounds collaborated to search for, help reveal, and test out ways that local inhabitants could more effectively connect and co-create a filmed narrative of the kind of place that all would like to inhabit. A "network locality" development narrative is here piloted as a counterpoint to the global network society. Based on inclusive co-construction of locally grounded technology - and aesthetic-based communities - new possibilities of belonging around engagement in locally grounded civic-cosmopolitan projects are demonstrated.

This paper investigates whether there is a correlation between broadband use and econom-ic growth by using an endogenous growth model along with previous studies of broadband use and theories for its spread an equation was developed accordingly. The estimation was done using data from the World Bank and ITU for the years 2002-2008, with minor imbalance in the dataset. Moreover, the estimation was done using two-way fixed effects and heteroskedasticity and autocorrelation robust errors, given tests for heteroskedasticity and autocorrelation in the regressions. The result from the regressions showed that broadband spread has a significant effect on GDP growth, while the signifi-cance of the coefficients for human capital do vary with education stage. In the analysis of the subject it was also shown that there are more underlying matters to be dealt with to give a fair estimation and conclusion, such as the difference between markets and difference in speed of broadband which may could have given slightly different results. Also that the range of time for broadband is relatively short, a longer range could have giv-en a better estimate. Furthermore, the analysis shone light on that there are both weakness-es by spread of broadband as exacerbation of poverty and strengths as possibility to savings in healthcare and increase spread of education via broadband. In addition to this there is possibly reversed causality and the fact that all ICT technology are general purpose tech-nologies has the impact that one should see the results with somewhat scepticism. In conclusion, the positive effect from broadband spread on economic growth is stated-with an addition, that more data and taking account of broadband differences globally would be needed in a future research to fully establish the effect, as well as mentioned limi-tations to result should be taken into account.

This thesis explores how locally-constructed agency, based on what we really care about, can be developed within and thence beyond localities. At issue is the need for new forms of connectedness and belonging in the globally-based network society. Globally-based communications and media technologies create new networks and mobilities that stretch and fragment existing socio-economic, administrative and ecological systems and with this, older, local and national forms of sociality. Such social upheavals are apt to drive people into defensive and divisive "us" against "them" forms of belonging. Local communities are then called on almost daily to fix these problems, but scarcely exist as connected effective agents on their own account. The thesis examines how official institutions (policy and academic) can help undo one-way global-local flows, by supporting new forms of local-local and local-through-to-global agency. A transdisciplinary methodology, developed in this thesis, performatively demonstrates productive, new local-academic-policy connections. Research included a fully participatory process that blends theoretical concepts (social, aesthetic, literary and film), with film and interactive technologies. A microcosm or simulation of locality was created through DVD film and an interactive research website. Through the shared use of screen interfaces, over one hundred co-detectives or co-researchers from hugely diverse backgrounds collaborated to search for, help reveal, and test out ways that local inhabitants could more effectively connect and co-create a filmed narrative of the kind of place that all would like to inhabit. A "network locality" development narrative is here piloted as a counterpoint to the global network society. Based on inclusive co-construction of locally grounded technology - and aesthetic-based communities - new possibilities of belonging around engagement in locally grounded civic-cosmopolitan projects are demonstrated.

Tesis (maestría en ciencias)--Colegio de Postgraduados, Escuela Nacional de Agricultura. / eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Bibliography: leaves 135-137.