ICT and education beyond borders

Abstract

This paper sets out to explore what ICT and Education Beyond Borders is and some of the areas where it has been actualized. The purpose of this exploration is to show what has been achieved in provision for Education for All in the areas of conflict in selected areas and the lessons learnt for future improvement in endeavour to achieve Education For All goal. The study is a desk review on related literature on what Education Beyond Borders is, The Vision and Mission of Education Beyond Borders, Open education and best practices. Education Beyond Borders [EBB] as a non-profit Non Governmental Organization [NGO] is devoted to closing the global education divide through teacher professional development and community education. The major focus mainly being advancing and supporting movement of education especially for students in disadvantaged regions in different parts of the world. There are 59 million teachers worldwide and 30 million more are required to achieve the goal of United Nations "Education for All" [EFA] initiative by 2015. It is on record that 104 million children in the world do not go to school at all and 50 per cent live in countries facing conflict. It has been observed that in many countries teachers seem lethargic about ICT integration especially in curriculum delivery and prefer the outdated mode of notes. As a panacea to this scenario the ever changing technology space and the philosophy behind ICT in education programme in training has been activated [Otedo,2010]. Findings from a study on analysis of assessment opportunities of learning spaces, online versus face to face methodologies, indicate that continuous assessment methodology based on ICT have a positive impact on the learning process as well as the obtained grades in the final exams. Review from a study investigating the role of open and distance learning in improving access to higher education in Kenya indicate technology related devices are more widely preferred to print by students and that e learning has a positive effect to higher education. Review has shown that traditional educational approaches to teaching are outdated and irrelevant and online education gives students a broad and diverse access to many educational opportunities. Though the concept of Education Beyond Borders is very noble, a lot still needs to be done to motivate the teachers to be more receptive to ICT and achieve the post 2015 education agenda. Keywords: e learning, Computer Based Instruction, Virtual Learning environment