Educational Technology and Educational Reform: Lessons for South Africa

Dr Philip R. Christensen is a Gauteng-based human resource development specialist. A partner in several emerging business ventures aimed at transforming South African education and training, he also consults directly for clients including international donors, NGOs, and the private sector. His experience ranges from primary schools to tertiary education, from work with government ministries to work with business and industry, from community development to international foreign assistance projects. Although he has practised in Africa for almost two decades, Dr Christensen has also worked in the United States and Canada. He holds degrees in social psychology and education from Harvard University and the University of Massachusetts, respectively.

This paper focuses a new vision for South African education and some ways in which technology can help bring about that vision, in particular within the formal school system. It begins by examining the nature of the educational reform challenge facing South Africa. From the global perspective, it reviews major changes in the world of work that are already taking place and the problems that conventional education systems are encountering in trying to respond appropriately. It then returns to South Africa, detailing the particular challenges this country faces and proposing a way forward in light of them.

Having described the challenge, the paper turns to educational technology's role in addressing it. It suggests some of technology's significant potential for reform while cautioning against promising too much or ignoring equally real limitations. It describes two different types of educational technology for two different goals: low-cost, high-impact technologies (such as printed materials and radio) to deal effectively with redress, and future-oriented technologies (such as computers and the Internet) to support reconceptualisation. Finally, it proposes a two-pronged strategy for implementing technology-enhanced reform.

INTRODUCTION

How can an economically developing country such as South Africa plan an education system suitable to 21^st century global challenges? What role should educational technology in general, and information technology in particular, play in such reform? This paper argues that it is both necessary and possible for South Africa to leapfrog its current educational limitations and take its rightful place on the world stage. For such planning to produce successful results, however, it must be informed by a combination of bold vision and practical strategies, strategies that include educational technology.

At the outset, planners must recognise that a country such as South Africa actually faces two distinct challenges to educational reform. One is global, the other local. From the global perspective, South Africa must embrace the same paradigm shifts as the world's wealthiest countries, from an industrial-based educational model to a knowledge-based model. On the positive side of the ledger, this means that this country is no worse off than the established nations against which it must compete. No one has the answers; they are yet to be invented. On the negative side, it means that we face a huge task, beginning with changing public and professional perceptions and ending with changing educational practice at the coal face.

Taking a local perspective, South Africa must accomplish this paradigm shift in the face of severe resource constraints and the imbedded inequities that are apartheid's enduring legacy. No country on the continent has succeeded in moving from a high-quality, elite educational system to a high-quality, mass system. Time after time, efforts to expand the elite systems absent sufficient resources for all citizens have diluted effectiveness and produced precipitous declines in quality. This means that even if the old, white South African schools were adequate to 21^st century challenges, which they most certainly were not, it would be impossible to extend them to every South African. Instead, we must develop a new vision and new methods to implement it.

I would like to outline here some elements of that vision and some ways in which technology might serve as reform's handmaiden. This paper focuses in particular on the formal school system, although some of the same principles certainly apply to education outside of schools. It begins by examining the nature of the educational reform challenges facing South Africa. From the global perspective, it reviews major changes in the world of work that are already taking place and the problems that conventional educational systems are encountering in trying to respond appropriately. It then returns to South Africa, detailing the particular challenges this country faces and proposing a way forward in light of them.

Having described the challenge, the paper turns to educational technology's role in addressing it. It suggests some of technology's significant potential for reform while cautioning against promising too much or ignoring equally real limitations. It describes two different types of educational technology for two different goals: low-cost, high-impact to deal effectively with redress, and future-oriented technologies to support reconceptualisation. Finally, it proposes a two-pronged strategy for implementing technology-enhanced reform.

THE CHALLENGE OF EDUCATIONAL REFORM

The global challenge

The future is a harsh mistress. She punishes, usually severely, those who refuse to recognise her demands. In his presentation to this conference Prof Arnold Packer of Johns Hopkins University in the United States echoed this truth when he evoked economist Joseph Schumpeter and his doctrine of creative destruction. Schumpeter studied dynamic, innovative, and interrelated systems. He noted that as new industries and new occupations appear, they consign old ones to history's infinitely-spacious dustbin. Schumpeter's proposition holds equal validity for education and training systems. New content (what we intend to teach) and new methodologies (how we intend to teach it) arise naturally. Those who do not recognise and respond effectively to these trends pay a heavy price. Prof Packer used statistics from the US labour market to emphasise this point in the context of what he called "the end of algorithmic work." American males with only a secondary school qualification earned 27 percent less in 1993 than they did in 1979.[1] The jobs that traditionally awaited such workers are diminishing in number and remuneration, as technology replaces unskilled labour. Yet expanding employment opportunities await those whose education has prepared them for humanistic or analytic work.

School systems world-wide still struggle to respond effectively to this challenge. They clutch obstinately to an industrially-based education model: teacher-centred training suitable for passive learners. Designed to prepare students for the very industries that are already disappearing from the world economy, these systems continue to lurch forward, zombie-like, unaware for the most part that they have already died. Already global realities require an information-based model: leaner-centred education producing active learners. Soon the world economy will accept nothing less than knowledge-based education, centred on learners plus their multiple communities, and aimed at creating adaptive human beings.

Prof Packer spoke of the growing requirement for Darwinian learning in tomorrow's, even today's, world of work. A Darwinian system, he explained, takes risks, makes frequent changes, generates many mistakes but avoids reproducing them, replicates successes, and phases out the previous version as rapidly as possible. Modern business increasingly pays homage to evolution. For example, he quoted the man who built Warner Brothers as saying that the people who get fired now are the ones who do not make mistakes. Yet schools persist in the "one-right-way" fallacy. When did you last hear of a student being praised for having produced the wrong answer? While non-algorithmic work becomes more and more common, educational systems still teach learners to follow narrowly defined rules in the artificial quest for predetermined solutions.

The African challenge

Beyond this global challenge of educational transformation for the future, this continent faces an equally daunting regional challenge: catching up to the present. This takes nothing away from the extraordinary achievements of the past thirty post-colonial years. African nations have managed to educate hundreds of millions of people to become literate within a single generation. They have developed entire education systems where virtually no modern schooling existed prior to the sudden onset of national independence in the 1960's.

Yet so many hopes remain unrealised. Despite an overall primary school enrolment rate of over 60% by 1985, the majority of people in sub-Saharan Africa receive little or no schooling. Excluding South Africa itself, the average resident of the region had attained a mere 1.6 years of schooling by 1990. School systems remain generally inefficient, with governments paying for between eight and 12 years of schooling for every successful six or seven-year primary graduate. On average teachers consume 93 percent of recurrent educational expenditures, leaving few resources for textbooks, maintenance or management. Although nations spend proportionally vast sums on tertiary education, fewer than one person in 500 from the region graduates from a university. As the population grows at frightening rates, the money available for each pupil diminishes correspondingly. In 1985 the countries of the region spent an average of $458 per year on each primary school pupil; by 1990 this figure had declined to $315 per pupil. The gap between sub-Saharan education and education in the industrial nations, always large, continues to grow.[2]

These figures exclude South Africa because this country's relative strengths would otherwise distort the picture for the continent as a whole. Unfortunately, for the most part this strength is illusory. Two facts severely undermine it: dramatic inequalities in the distribution of education and training across different South African demographic groups, and equally dramatic inadequacies in even the best South African schools when faced with 21^st century demands. If we do not act carefully, the current state of education in other countries on this continent could become the future state of education here.

Most observers inside and outside of this country now recognise the first problem, that of inequity. The promise of "separate but equal" education could no more be achieved under the apartheid regime than it could be under the de facto and de jure segregation of the 1950's in the United States. Perhaps fewer understand the magnitude of the distortions that persist, however.

In 1979 81 percent of white pupils completed primary and secondary school; only 29 percent of black pupils made the distance. In 1988 there was one teacher for every 14 white students, but only one for every 38 black students. Government spent more than four times as much money on educating a white child as on a black child. Coloured and Indian students fell in the middle, always doing better than blacks but never as well as whites.[3] Urban black students faced a period of increased politicisation, culminating in the late �70�s in the infamous township uprisings that cut off so many of that generation from schooling altogether. Rural black children faced difficulty even finding schools to attend. When they did obtain a place, it was likely to be in conditions so harsh (a one-teacher school with 169 children, for example) that effective teaching and learning became almost impossible.[4]

From these roots grew an education system in which access and quality were directly determined by a child's skin colour. Blacks faced large student numbers with inadequate supplies of classrooms and teachers, producing huge class sizes and high pupil/teacher ratios. Many non-white students were retained in lower grades through failure. Dropout rates for African learners were especially high relative to whites. Almost 100 percent of white students passed the matric secondary-school leaving exam, while at best only about 50 percent of African students finished successfully.[5]

Today South Africa's 354,000 primary and secondary teachers serve almost 12 million students.[6] This produces an overall pupil-teacher ratio of 34:1, a very acceptable norm by international standards. Again, however, apartheid's legacy complicates the picture with a maldistribution of teachers across racial groups and between urban and rural areas, as well as a net oversupply of white teachers, especially in urban areas. For instance, the African primary level in the Eastern Cape, a largely rural province, counts a pupil-teacher ratio of 56:1, compared to 19:1 in the largely white schools of the Free State and the Northern Cape. Some provinces, such as Gauteng and the Western Cape, enjoy an overall teacher surplus, while others, including KwaZulu-Natal and the Eastern Cape, suffer a net deficit. Overall, the country faces an absolute shortage of qualified teachers in critical subject areas: mathematics, science, technical and vocational subjects, and English.[7]

The recently completed National Teacher Education Audit (NTEA) revealed similar problems in the South African teaching force. One-third of the country's teachers fail to meet the basic qualification of matric plus three years training. Most teachers are young, with more than half under 35 years of age, and a large number are relatively inexperienced, with a third of the teaching force having worked fewer than five years.[8] Almost all unqualified teachers, as well as 87 percent of under-qualified teachers, are African.[9] In other words, the majority of South African pupils and their teachers still do not enjoy access to quality education.

Many South Africans also fail to recognise the second problem, the inadequacy of even the best of the country's education system in the face the global village and its global marketplace. For example, the most recent world competitiveness report gives South Africa an overall ranking of 44^th out of 53 countries studied. In investments in people South Africa stands only 46^th, and in skills and productivity a dismal 52^nd, just ahead of Russia. Like their counterparts in many industrialised countries, those who benefited from the best schools here generally remain secure in the belief that they are ready for the future. Unfortunately for them, and for many other South Africans previously excluded from these schools who now seek admission to them, they are wrong.

Part of the reason goes back, in fact, to apartheid. Under the old regime formal education was largely based on the conservative values espoused by Christian National Education. Its underlying philosophy included the "moulding" of good citizens to "fit into ordered society" and to be obedient to the state. This emphasis on conformity served to reinforce didactic theories of knowledge and authoritarian teaching practices, emphasising "facts" with little concern for insight or application.[10] It certainly left no room for Darwinian practices that would welcome failure on the way to a non-algorithmic model of education and the workplace. A common complaint from university faculty about the white graduates of the country's elite secondary schools was that they first had to be taught to think.

The rest of the explanation can be found in the fact that all of the world's education systems, in developed and developing countries alike, are struggling with the transition from industrial models to information and knowledge models of learning. South Africa could not hope to avoid its own struggle with the same challenge. Like its sister nations, it must invent new answers to new questions. Until it does, it will continue to risk permanent consignment to the backwaters of world influence and commerce.

The way forward

Much discussion about Africa's educational inadequacies, including many of the data reported here, centres on inadequate resources. It is worth emphasising, therefore, that the fundamental challenge to global educational reform is not lack of money. It is lack of vision. In the first place, we live in a time where the world boasts enough wealth to give every one of its citizens a decent standard of living. Never before in human history has this been true. In the golden age of Greece, seven slaves had to suffer in order to support one Athenian citizen in comfort. Even Africa, arguably the poorest of the world's continents, does not lie as far from its basic needs as many imagine. Some estimates place the total cost of providing basic infrastructure-education, health, communications-to ever African at around $80 billion. This might seem a large sum, but it represents less than the combined wealth of the world's eight richest men. Bill Gates could pay almost half this bill himself if he liquidated his personal fortune. As in South Africa's particular context, available funds do not create the barrier, but their highly-unequal distribution does.

Even while waiting in our imperfect present with the hope of a more perfect future, we are not impotent. To a large extent, even the poorly distributed resources already available to a country like South Africa could provide world-class education if they were used in new, appropriate ways. Yet instead of working to develop and implement new paradigms for education and training, too many in the professional and public communities wish merely to replicate outdated, ineffective, costly models. They ignore what research and common sense tell us about effective learning because it tends to take them (indeed, to take all of us) outside of the comfortable past into the uncertain future. Examples abound.

If we can escape such baggage from the past and design new educational models for the future, there is no reason why South Africa cannot compensate for the past inadequacies of its school system while providing first-world education and training standards to all of its citizens. For after all, what distinguishes a child in Soweto or Sandton from children in Seattle or Stockholm? There is no inherent difference, only differences in opportunity. If we give that child (or adult) in Soweto (or Sandton) a world-class education, she will be able to take her rightful place on the world's stage. To do any less is morally wrong and technically unnecessary.

In spite of the growing, and predictable, public criticism of the new South African government's policy responses to this challenge, embodied in frameworks such as the National Qualifications Framework and Curriculum 2005, its vision so far has been largely on target. These new policies reflect to a large extent best international thinking about moving towards a new educational paradigm for a new era. The problems lurk less in the vision and more in the overwhelming (and, as yet, inadequately addressed) challenge of effective implementation. What is still absent from the debate are creative, practicable strategies for helping all schools, all teachers and all children in the country catch up to the best that South African can offer, while simultaneously moving that "best" closer and closer to a broad global standard that will ensure that this country can succeed in the 21^st century.

EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGIES FOR SOUTH AFRICA

Educational technology's true potential

Educational technology can help make this implementation possible. It is not the complete answer, but it could most definitely become part of an effective solution. However, in the face of much fuzzy thinking and overstated promises we must see clearly and plan carefully if we wish to take advantage of its potential. Two broad types of technology present themselves: mass-delivery technology, such as broadcast television or general distribution textbooks, which offer the same input to large numbers of students at once, and supplementary technologies, such as the overhead projector or the chalkboard, which offer individual teachers additional instructional tools to use as they best see fit. Some technologies, notably computers, comfortably fit in both categories.

At the outset, we must struggle against the fact that for too many years too many educationists have oversold the benefits and misunderstood the difficulties of technology. From the introduction of the 16 mm movie projector (and, in fact, even back to the invention of the typewriter) enthusiastic supporters have breathlessly announced with every technological innovation the death of old systems, the imminent replacement of all human teachers, and the dawn of a new era. No such prediction has ever come to pass. Indeed, even when technology has made a contribution, it has sometimes been in spite of itself. One study in the 1960's found that merely wheeling an overhead projector into the back of a classroom could increase student achievement, even if it were never switched on. The researchers hypothesised that the poor, anaesthetised students became so excited at the prospect of novelty that their attention levels rose. Overselling technology already has affected South Africa, causing some potential domestic donors to reject out-of-hand any funding for such projects.

When educational technology fails, it generally offers high-cost solutions that do not deliver affordable learning gains and often represent unnecessary expense. The story of the "space pen" currently making the rounds on the Internet offers a cautionary note. The American space agency, NASA, spent millions of dollars developing a pen that could write in micro-gravity. They succeeded. One can even purchase the resulting product (at a hefty price premium) in South African boutiques. The Russians looked at the same problem. They solved it by using a pencil. Unfortunately, educational technologists have developed too many space-pen equivalents. Unlike NASA, however, they cannot afford the money so wasted.

Inappropriate usage presents a related type of problem. Mark Twain once said that to the man with only a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Sometimes educational technologists resemble Twain's hammer-wielding man, trying to force every problem into the shape of a particular technological solution. The use of expensive computer equipment to deliver linear, text-based instruction comes to mind. So does a videotape of a teacher lecturing in front of a blackboard.

Inadequate consideration of human factors, especially of the role and needs of teachers, often leads to low utilisation. Absent the performance blip created by the overhead projector standing idly at the back of the room, what good can come from a technology if teachers are afraid to use it, or don't know how, or don't care? Why would teachers even want to try if we tell them that they do work so simple that some machine can replace them? What limited conception of the complexity of human learning does such a position reflect?

Even when educationists use technology effectively, at reasonable costs, for appropriate problems, giving full consideration to human factors, unanticipated problems can arise. One of these is the exacerbation of existing systemic discrepancies: the Sesame Street phenomenon. Developed in the United States to help disadvantaged children catch up to their better-off counterparts before starting school, this ground-breaking television series represented a quantum leap in effective use of the medium. It worked very well. Children in the target audience improved their basic skills substantially. Unexpectedly, however, children at the top of the socio-economic ladder watched the same programs. Their basic skills improved, too-sometimes by a greater factor. So although Sesame Street helped disadvantaged children learn, it did not help them catch up.

None of this means that educational technology cannot deliver solutions, only that it must be used carefully and appropriately. When employed properly, mass-delivery technologies can actually lower unit costs, particularly if the expense of content development can be spread over large numbers of learners (as is the case with nationally broadcast media or large-market computer software). One inefficiency inherent in older schooling paradigms is that of the teacher isolated in his or her classroom, reinventing some of the same wheels that a colleague next door, or in the next school, or the next province, also must invent. When appropriate, content development can be accomplished centrally, delivering higher standards to large numbers of learners, giving classroom teachers more time to do what they are uniquely qualified to do (such as individualised instruction and assessment), and actually lowering per-pupil expenditures.

Mass-delivery technology can also provide better quality instruction to large numbers of learners. In systems such as South Africa's, where many teachers lack basic subject and pedagogic skills, this offers a crucial advantage. Note that this assertion is very different from saying that technology can replace teachers. On the contrary, when used well it becomes a highly effective tool for direct and indirect in-service teacher training. Nevertheless, effective educational reform must take into account the limitations in the teaching force. Failure to do so, even when motivated by the best intentions, creates sham education. Effective use of technology to offer high-quality content and instruction to many students in concert with the best contribution from each teacher can sunder long-endured chains of inefficiency and poor learning.

Finally, some technologies can break through systemic barriers that otherwise would threaten educational reform. Broadcast media, for example, can reach into classrooms that otherwise would be cut off by distance, or lack of qualified staff, of absence of printed materials, or even by poverty. Internet technology can give a learner in Guguletu access to the same libraries, the same knowledge base, as students in Europe or North America.

Two types of educational technology for South Africa

The dual nature of the educational reform challenge that South Africa faces, helping the weakest learners, teachers and schools catch up with the strongest while moving the entire system into the 21^st century, suggests a twofold approach to educational technology: using its power to assist the poorest parts of the system to catch up while helping the entire system leapfrog current barriers and thinking into new educational paradigms. Each of these goals demands different types of and different uses for technology.

The first reform goal is redress. The technologies it requires do not include the more expensive ones on which this conference largely focuses. Two-thirds of South African schools lack mains electrical power, a telephone line or both.[11] They cannot even dream of Internet access in their current circumstances. Most schools in this country lack the financial resources to purchase and sustain computer technology for instruction. Other high-entry-cost technologies such as television lie just as far out of reach for the majority of schools here.

Does this mean that the country must deny effective educational technology to most of its learners? On the contrary, the poorest schools need the most help from all quarters, including technology. To begin, however, they need the lowest-cost, highest-impact technologies: not computers, but more familiar and mature delivery mechanisms.

One of the best examples is one of the oldest: print materials. Textbooks provide the most common manifestation of this medium, one which international research consistently links to large improvements in learning at reasonable costs. Designing high-quality books, delivering them to all schools and ensuring that they reach the hands of every learner represents an urgent policy imperative for government. Yet books, like any other technology, have disadvantages as well as advantages. To be used effectively, teachers must be properly trained, and as has already been noted many South African teachers lack such preparation. Distribution, especially to remote rural schools, can pose further obstacles. And conventional textbooks represent still-significant costs per pupil, per year, at a time when provincial education budgets are already strained to the breaking point and beyond.

Production of low-cost materials, such as those distributed on newsprint, can help with the cost problem. In fact South Africa already uses such a delivery mechanism. For example, the Durban-based Media in Education Trust NGO works through the print media to help transform classroom practice, teach critical thinking and bring about real learning, particularly for educationally disadvantaged South Africans. The Trust develops education supplements and promotes the use of newspapers and magazines as up-to-date, low-cost, disposable learning tools for teachers and learners. It also trains teachers. Using periodical publications to lower costs also helps overcome distribution problems to some extent.

Nevertheless, even newspaper supplements need a trained teacher to unlock their learning potential. What good is a textbook or insert on maths in the hands of a teacher who never had the opportunity to learn algebra properly? Here an alternative print-based technology offers significant benefits: instructional posters. As used successfully in neighbouring countries such as Swaziland and Namibia, low-cost posters provide detailed guidance to classroom teachers even when their own subject skills are weak. Each double-sided sheet, which can be used for a single subject over the course of up to an entire week at an annual cost of just two or three rands, guides the teacher through the initial presentation of specified content, assessment of learners, and remedial activities where necessary. As teachers gain confidence and competence through using the posters, they can begin to rely on them less. Even then, the materials remain available to supplement the teachers' own efforts. Such posters, and other low-cost variations such as inexpensively-printed modules, have produced substantial learning gains in West Africa, Southern Africa and other parts of the developing world at a fraction of the cost of conventional print or electronic technologies.

Printed materials are not the only option for helping weaker schools and students catch up with the stronger. Broadcast media also have an important role to play. However, this does not necessarily mean television or video. The same infrastructural limitations that block access to computers for most South African schools also block access to television. Since the 1950's efforts to tap the instructional power of television in African schools have run aground on the same shoals that currently surround the effective use of computers: lack of funds to purchase equipment, electricity to power it,[12] technicians to maintain it, content to energise it, and trained teachers to unlock its potential.

Yet a tested alternative stands ready to broadcast high quality to large numbers at low costs. It is radio. When specialists design radio programs not to mimic classroom teachers, not merely to supplement "real" instruction, but to use the medium's power appropriately to deliver a large proportion of the curriculum to many learners at once, the results transcend "good enough" and "second-best," the usual perceptions of appropriate technology. For example, in Nicaragua during the 1970's a team from Stanford University, funded by USAID, applied principles of computer-assisted learning to this medium and created "interactive radio instruction" to teach primary-level mathematics. Children in rural schools benefited from daily 20 and 30-minute radio lessons which helped teachers cover virtually every curricular objective. In place of the passive-listener mode commonly associated with broadcasts, designers substituted a very active instructional method by having the radio ask questions or assign tasks, then pause every few seconds while children responded. Subsequent projects extended the innovation to other subject areas, such as science, environmental studies and teacher training, and other parts of the world, including Papua New Guinea and Nepal.

In the early 1980's I led a team that adapted the interactive radio instruction methodology to teach English to primary-school children in Kenya. We demonstrated achievement gains comparable to those being seen at that time in the United States using computer-assisted learning. Yet unit costs were extremely low, roughly one US dollar per pupil per year. In the late 80's we brought the same approach to Lesotho, where it still operates today.

Then in 1992 an independent South African NGO, the Open Learning Systems Education Trust (OLSET), adapted interactive radio instruction for South Africa. OLSET current broadcasts the "English in Action" series to just over 100,000 South African children in grades 1 and 2 in five provinces. It has also pilot-tested radio maths programmes. Evaluations have shown these language programmes to be highly effective, particularly among remote rural schools and in communities where English is not commonly spoken or taught.[13] Evaluators measured learning gains of 20%[14] at a current annual per-pupil cost of approximately eight rands.[15] One teacher from a black township outside of Pretoria put a human face on these statistics:

What about informatics? After all, it shares many of the same disadvantages of other solutions such as educational television. Computers and the Internet demand high entry and support costs. They require new approaches to content development, and substantial new training for both teachers and students. Educationists are still seeking proof that they offer compelling benefits for learners. If only rich schools can afford computers, informatics certainly risks worsening the gap between the haves and have-nots in this country. Finally, whatever the possible benefits of the Internet for South African education, for now they remain very much in the future. As of 1996, only 249 schools in the entire country (less than one percent of the total) were on-line.[17]

Does all this mean that countries such as South Africa must forgo applying informatics to educational reform? The unequivocal answer is "no." Not only should South Africa not eliminate information technology from its educational planning, it must embrace it wholeheartedly. But it must do so for the right reasons, with a clear understanding of what the country can and cannot expect from computer technology. What it cannot expect is help with redress objectives. Until the majority of this country's schools possess the necessary infrastructure to take advantage of computers, until their staff have received the required training, until funding models can be developed to finance the high start-up and support costs, only a relatively few schools can benefit from information technology.

On the other hand, informatics can offer immediate benefits to the second educational reform goal: reconceptualising the system. This is the goal of moving the entire system into the 21^st century, of leapfrogging past limitations (conceptual and material) to join the nations of the industrially developed world in their quest for new paradigms and practices in schools. Information technology can and must take its place in the mix of strategies for achieving this goal, both as a method for instructional delivery and as an educational outcome in its own right. We can use it in a mass-delivery mode to teach directly, the current computer-assisted learning model. Under this approach, it offers the same potential and problems as broadcast media. If we make the large front-end investments necessary to develop good computer-based instruction, and if we ensure that enough students have access to computers so that they can take advantage of these packages, we can gain the benefit of high-quality instructional delivery to learners across the country at reasonable costs.

That said, my personal view is that computer-assisted learning does not represent the best reason for putting computers in schools. This technology is simply too expensive compared to other mass-delivery options such as radio and even television. Although informatics certainly offers instructional options unavailable through broadcast media, these probably do not justify the additional investment. Schools that already enjoy computer access should certainly take advantage of this infrastructure to deliver instruction, particularly in areas where the technology excels, such as drill and practice at the low end of the cognitive scale or simulations and modelling at the high end. But this is probably not the best reason for purchasing computers in the first place.

What is? I believe that it is using computers, and especially the Internet, as a supplementary technology to support 21^st century educational paradigms. The computer represents an entirely new tool in the hands of teachers. If we train our teachers effectively, we can stimulate and support precisely the kind of educational changes that South Africa requires if it wants to be a world leader instead of a world follower. And with informatics, that goal becomes much more realistic.

For example, the Internet allows South African schools to leapfrog the geographical barriers that have isolated the African continent for so long. Students here can use email to connect with students around the corner or around the world, getting to know each other and even co-operating on joint projects. They can use the World Wide Web as a "cybrary," taping into a huge (and confusing and sometimes even dangerous) mass of information resources. The Internet (when used properly) puts students in charge of their own learning, an important requirement for developing independent thinkers and workers. Providing learners with a vast information resource and multi-dimensional communication tool such as the Internet allows them to develop innovative approaches to analysing information, solving problems and generating new knowledge. The fundamental structure of the web, hypertext, demonstrates a non-linear approach to investigating and thinking that seems far more appropriate to the new non-algorithmic world of work than the old linear model exemplified by the conventional textbook.

The Internet offers teachers themselves a significant professional resource, where they can tap into banks of lesson plans or assessment items, research class topics and projects, and exchange views with colleagues around the world. Its communicative functions allow the creation of professional communities, so important to professional growth, without worrying about distance or time.

I will leave it to other presenters at this conference to flesh out such possibilities. My purpose here is rather to put such potential into a practical context. Where does information technology fit into the realities of South African education? The answer, in a nutshell, is as a bridge to the future. Giving students and teachers access to computers and the Internet simultaneously teaches them to use a tool that is rapidly becoming central to the worlds of work and education while allowing them to enjoy the benefits of that tool to improve their own teaching and learning.

Strategies for implementation

The key to unlocking the potential of educational technology for South African educational reform, then, lies in its two underlying thrusts: redress and reconceptualisation.

To move the entire system forward towards new paradigms for the new century, we must take full advantage of the power of future-oriented innovations such as informatics. Obviously this must begin with providing the necessary infrastructure. Given the huge barriers to such an objective in this country, new strategies must be developed. For example, those students currently excluded from the Internet because their schools lack electricity, or telephone lines, or finance, might gain access through multi-purpose community centres, places accessible by public transport that link development resources to community-defined needs. These centres can offer a range of technologies for typing, printing, faxing, photocopying, posting, and using the Internet. In the United States, inner-city groups currently use this approach to ensure that disadvantaged students without adequate computer technology in their own schools do not fall further behind.

Those schools that do enjoy electricity and telephone services, but face normal budgetary constraints, might consider central server technology. Putting processing power, memory and even software on a central server allows old equipment to run like new. And for the same cost of entry, the central-server approach can provide ongoing computer and educational support.

The other requirement for effective informatics implementation, far too often overlooked, is teacher training. Especially given that this innovation offers the greatest potential as a tool rather than a content-delivery mechanism (although content delivery certainly does promise real benefits), teachers as well as students need to learn how to take full advantage of its power. For teachers the first step generally is to overcome their very real fears of being overwhelmed by the technology or embarrassed in front of their classes. That hurdle cleared, they must learn how to use informatics to empower their pupils and themselves. Without such training, we are likely to continue seeing lectures to thoroughly-bored learners sitting Tantalus-like in front of machines that they are not allowed to touch, or the same machines gathering dust in some computer lab. The real training challenge is not computer literacy. It is computer-based empowerment, using information technology in support of reforms such as outcomes-based education and constructivist teaching.

At the same time that the leading edge of South Africa's educational system rides technologies such as informatics into the 21^st century, the system's trailing edge, indeed the majority of its schools, must be given extra help to close the gap. It would be foolish to wait until every school has a computer before developing effective ways to use information technology to support new educational models. Such a strategy would only ensure that all South Africa lags behind the global competition. But it would be immoral to allow advantaged schools to move into the future while consigning disadvantaged schools to the ghetto of the past.

Part of the answer lies in making computer technology available to more schools as rapidly as possible. Government's plan to extend basic infrastructure will lay the foundation for this effort. Compensatory strategies such as multi-purpose community centres can help bridge the gap. The rest of the answer lies in other types of educational technology: low-cost, high-impact methodologies such as posters and broadcast radio. Priority must be given to such technologies lest South African experiments with informatics lead to the same unintended outcome as Sesame Street did originally in the United States: maintaining, or even widening, the very opportunity and performance gaps they were intended to close.

Redress technologies such as posters and radio programmes can help ensure that basic threshold conditions for learning are met for all students. Reconceptualisation technologies such as computers and the Internet can simultaneously extend their work by helping redefine the educational environment. The result could be a new education system for a new South Africa in a new world and a new century.

CONCLUSION

We have seen that the changing nature of the world, and in particular the world of work, dictates equivalent changes to learning systems. The days of routine jobs and correct algorithms are fading rapidly. Educationists must respond to such changes by developing new approaches to curriculum and instruction. At the same time, countries such as South Africa must help the majority of their students, teachers and schools catch up to the point where they can take advantage of such approaches, overcoming the legacy of inadequate resources, poor teacher training and poor performance.

Enthusiasts have too often presented educational technology as the panacea that will inevitably solve all such problems. They have failed to respond effectively to some of technology's weaknesses, which can include high costs, inappropriate usage, inadequate consideration of human factors, and exacerbation of systemic discrepancies. Beyond this, they often do not see clearly the need to fit the solution to the problem, to select the right mix of technologies for each particular challenge. On the other hand, such weaknesses are not inevitable. Clear thinking and careful planning can take advantage of educational technology's considerable strengths, including mass-delivery of high-quality content and instruction at lower unit costs, advanced teacher training, and leapfrogging barriers such as distance and poverty.

South Africa requires the best possible mixture of educational technologies to meet the dual challenge of reducing the gap between its worst and best schools while moving the entire system towards new paradigms. Such a mix likely would include low-cost, high-impact approaches such as radio and printed materials to help redress the balance, plus future-oriented technologies such as computers and the Internet to help catapult the system into the 21^st century. With clear vision and creative implementation strategies, South Africa can succeed where others have failed. There is no reason why every South African child cannot claim his or her birthright of a high-quality, world-class education.

It is impolitic for outsiders to advise South Africa on the way forward. The responsibility of setting the course and steering the ship towards educational reform must rest with South Africans themselves. Therefore, it seems unwise to quote an American to an audience in this country. However, I would like to make an exception for a particularly well-know American from another era, President Abraham Lincoln. Speaking to his fellow citizens about the ravages of a civil war that had threatened the very fabric of the nation he led, he voiced a principle which seems equally appropriate to the challenge of educational reform in South Africa today and relevant to the role of educational technology in that process. Therefore, I would like to conclude with Lincoln's words. He said:

"The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country."[18]

ENDNOTES

[1] Arnold Packer, "Educating for Future Work," presentation at the Future World Conference, Cape Town, 2 December 1997.

[2] Paul Spector, "Improving Educational Quality for Sustainable Development in Africa," Arlington, Virginia, Institute for International Research, December, 1994, p. 1.

[3] "Submission to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission on Gross Violations of Human Rights in Education: Presented by the National Literacy Co-operation and other educational stakeholders, prepared with the kind assistance of the Education Policy Unit (University of Natal, Durban)," Johannesburg, National Literacy Co-operation, 1996, Submissions, pp. 6-8.

[6] Department of Education Annual Report 1996, Pretoria, National Department of Education, April, 1997, pp. 74-75.

[7] An Agenda of Possibilities: National Policy on Teacher Supply, Utilisation and Development: A Stakeholder Response, Pretoria, National Department of Education, March, 1997 pp. 20-21.

[9] Elizabeth Sidiropoulos et. al., South Africa Survey 1995/96, Johannesburg, South African Institute of Race Relations, 1996, p. 122.

[10] "Media in Education Trust Fact Sheet," Pretoria, USAID/South Africa, undated, p. 2-2.

[11] Anthony Evans, The Education Foundation, Durban, telephonic conversation 10 November 1997. The precise figures, based on 1996 data, are 18,399 of 27,395 schools, or 67.17 percent.

[12] According to Evans' data, 51.83 percent of schools (14,198 in total) lack mains electricity. A few of these do have generators, however.

[14] Leigh, Stuart, Changing Times in South Africa: Remodelling Interactive Learning (LearnTech Case Study Series No. 8), Washington, DC, Educational Development Centre, 1995, p. 27.

[16] Potter, Charles, "English in Action: Case Studies of Interactive Radio Learning in Schools in Four Regions of South Africa," Johannesburg, OLSET, 1994, p. 31.

[17] Stephen Marquard, "1996 SA School Connectivity Review, 17 December 1996, < http://www.wcape.school.za/za/conrvw96.htm>.

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