Transcript Towards Knowledge Society for All

Our background:
GeSCI’s Foundation
WSIS
UN ICT
TaskForce
GeSCI as a
Global Programme
 Developing countries are placing ICT and
Education at the centre of their
development strategies.
 However, developing countries are less
equipped in terms of human capacity
and financial resources to successfully
and effectively harness the potential of
ICT.
 With this in mind, GeSCI was founded by
the UN ICT Taskforce in 2003, and began
operations in 2005 working initially with
Namibia, Ghana, India, Bolivia and later
Rwanda. GeSCI is now operating also in
regional forums and programmes in
Africa, Asia and Latin America.
Context of our work:
Knowledge Society
 In the globalized world , knowledge is
“World of Knowledge”
“World of Money”
increasingly the key factor of production
as well as a raw material for economic
development (= poverty eradication).
 Information, knowledge and innovation
based businesses are taking over many of
the traditional sectors of commerce and
industry.
 While the transition to knowledge-based
economies and societies is progressing, the
gap between developing countries and
developed or industrialised countries can
be widening due the lower investments in
ICT, education and innovation processes in
developing countries
Field of our work:
Transitioning Education for a
Knowledge Society
 It is acknowledged that transitioning
successfully to the knowledge society requires
investment in education, innovation
systems, ICT infrastructure and
implementation of those policies that support
such a transition.
 A coherent Knowledge Society policy
requires collaboration across the relevant
ministries, especially between ministries of
education, S&T, industry and finance.
 Education ministries are in key role in this
development. Therefore GeSCI’s mission is to
work together with MoEs empowering their
policy making and strategy capacity.
Our challenge in
Developing Countries
 While the importance of education is
commonly accepted the developing
world faces severe challenges with
regard to education. Some of these
challenges can be addressed with ICT
 These challenges can be summarised
as:
 a lack of universal and inclusive access
INCLUSIVE ACCESS?
MANAGEMENT ?
QUALITY ?
RELEVANCE ?
to education;
 poor quality of education;
 poor management of the education
system and
 the increasing irrelevance of the current
education system in the knowledge
society.
GeSCI Outreach
2009 - 2011
1. Country programmes involving direct
advisory engagement with developing country
MoEs to provide high quality strategic advice
and support to the countries’ own plans,
policies and efforts to deploy and integrate
ICTs in education.
2. Regional programmes involving knowledge
sharing between GeSCI and the partner
countries and between the partner countries,
at the regional level in Africa, Asia and Latin
America.
3. Knowledge products and research through
the identification of major knowledge gaps or
common challenges related to ICTs in
education.
4. Promoting partnerships and facilitating
global policy dialogue with a diverse
number of partners, globally, regionally and
locally.
The way we work:
Knowledge Sharing
This requires
multi-stakeholder
partnerships
Science
GeSCI
Donors
Business
At the heart of
GeSCI’s mission is
the concept of
Knowledge
Sharing
MoE’s
Workshop on North/South Research
partnerships for ICT in Education

Background

General N-S research programmes remain easily isolated from
development practice and policy making processes

Multi-stakeholder approaches must be developed jointly by
researchers, policy makers and practitioners
 Goals of this seminar
 Bring together researchers, policy makers and practitioners in CT4E
 To identify emerging issues, challenges and demand areas in ICT4E
 To share experiences on existing models/ projects in ICT4E
 To initiate dialogue on joint opportunities for north/south partnership
in ICT4E
Workshop : Research themes GeSCI is
interested to develop further
 New models and processes to integrate of ICTs in teaching
and learning
 Sustainable deployment models for infrastructure, connectivity
and accessibility;
 Broader institutional issues related to ICT in education like
educational management and M&E.
 Capacity issues related to ICT4E, especially teacher education
and ICT
 Broader issues related to relevance of education as well as ICT
and educational content
Outcome of the workshop: Connecting research
to policy making and development
 New joint research
projects
 New models for
integrating research
to education
development and
policy making
 New capacities in
South and North
Research
GeSCI
Policy making
Education
Development
Thank you for your attention!
Jyrki Pulkkinen
CEO, GeSCI
[email protected]
http://www.gesci.org