October 29th, 2008 by Learning Systems
ICT learning systems have the potential to strengthen organizational skills, improve access to information and social services, and promote economic opportunities and political participation. Having said this, it’s essential to investigate and understand the communities you’re trying to help. This goes for educators all across the board and across national and financial sectors: understand your target learners, or accept that your efforts may fail.
If you’re establishing a nonprofit ICT learning system in an indigenous community in Bolivia, you’ll need to find out everything there is to know about the context in which the training course will function. Only when an ICT learning system is fully integrated into the broader community framework will marginalized groups reap meaningful benefits. Successful mediation between groups, local appropriation, and the strengthening of existing social and organizational community structures are also key elements of community empowerment.
October 29th, 2008 by Learning Systems
Computer skills educators working in free or cheap computer learning systems act out of a deep conviction that better access to information and ICT skills, just like improved reading and writing skills, can enhance poor peoples’ abilities to make strategic life choices and create the lifestyle they want for themselves.
One computer skills learning system initiative was made by UCLA Extension to reach Los Angeles residents, some of whom had never clicked a mouse or looked at a monitor. The Extension team set up a cyber café, with 16 computer stations and a small snack bar. The course fee was $95 and covered 36 hours of hands-on instruction over 12 weeks. Upon completion, students of the Extension learning system received a certificate of technical expertise and could choose electives in personal finance, advanced computer skills and resume writing. Job interviews and internships were also offered.
October 29th, 2008 by Learning Systems
The current discourse around the “digital divide” is often focused on technology rather than the human impact of the gap. However, the poverty problem isn’t due to a lack of technology, but a lack of resources, among other factors like inadequate or inaccessible local learning systems. Lisa Servon argued in 2002 that the digital divide is “a symptom of a larger and more complex problem–the problem of persistent poverty and inequality.”
Besides those in developing countries, what about computer skills learning systems right here, in the United States? The digital divide and lack of computer learning systems is certainly not just a global phenomenon, separating countries into technological haves and have-nots. The gap exists in the richest countries in the world–and it’s often a big one. According to research firm Parks Associates, roughly 20% of Americans are disconnected from the internet and have never used e-mail.
October 29th, 2008 by Learning Systems
In India, learning systems like the Project SITA computer skill training program enable the disadvantaged to create a better life. One of SITA’s tenets, increasingly understood among nonprofit social learning systems and organizations worldwide, is that the disadvantaged do not want charity; they want an opportunity to learn and practice suitable skills.
In the computer skill learning system, women are given the opportunity to experience hands-on computer training based on real life exercises. Whenever possible, each trainee is attached to a potential employer. Unlike Project Rising Women which operates only in the city, SITA provides computer skills training courses to women living in urban, suburban, and rural areas. The learning system SITA provides is absolutely free, but every trainee is required to offer part-time services as a trainer’s assistant after completing the course.
October 29th, 2008 by Learning Systems
The saying goes: “Educating a man is educating an individual. Educating a woman is educating a family.” Social projects offering computer skills learning systems to disadvantaged women foster the empowerment of impoverished people worldwide. One such organization is Project Rising Women, an Argentine nonprofit that works with a women’s shelter on the edge of the largest ghetto in Buenos Aires, providing a computer technology center and ICT learning system to the women in the shelter.
The project provides the women–often teenage, lower-class, under-educated, abused and/or homeless single mothers–with valuable computer skills that help them gain employment and provide resources to plan a life outside the shelter. The shelter’s learning system volunteers are computer skills teachers from high schools and universities. Additionally, Project Rising Women trains and employs other structurally impoverished women from the ghetto as caretakers in the shelter’s child care center.
