The following are the outputs of the real-time captioning taken during the Eleventh Annual Meeting of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Jalisco, Mexico, from 5 to 9 December 2016. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid to understanding the proceedings at the event, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
***
(speaking non English language)
>> TIJANI BEN JEMAA: Good morning, everyone. My name is Tijani Ben Jemaa. I am from Tunisia. I will be the moderator of the workshop. I am engineer, but still very active in Civil Society as I have always been. Currently, I am Executive Director of the federal association of ‑‑ I am also the advice chair of ALAK.
(speaking non English language)
>> TIJANI BEN JEMAA: Thank you very much. So my name is Tijani Ben Jemaa. I will be the leader of this workshop. Michael will be the moderator. I am a retired engineer but I am still very active in Civil Society as I have always been. Currently, I am the Executive Director of the Mediterranean Federation of Internet Associations and advice chair of ALAK. I am also at ICANN and member of ISOC. I used to be very active participant in the WSIS. I also participated in seven of the previous ten IGFs, and I was either speaker or organizer of workshops in four of them. I serve on the IGF, and I am a member. First of all, I would like to thank Ines Hfaiedh for organizing this workshop and inviting me to moderate it. Thank you, Ines.
This workshop is about the ICT internet implementation, a road map to achieving sustainable development goals, SDGs. For the record, the fourth SDG is ‑‑ (Audio cut out)
(Audio too quiet)
Also, there was some information society recognized in 2003 means that ten years ago, e-learning as one of the nine e‑applications forming the action line number seven of the WSIS action plan which means that e‑learning was considered by head of states and governments at that time as one of the key pillars for building an inclusive information society. It was said in those action lines ‑‑ and I'm quoting here – "ICTs can contribute to achieving universal education worldwide through delivery of education and training for teachers and offering improved conditions for lifelong learning, encompassing people who are outside of the formal education process and improving professional skills." End of quote.
Since then, the technology has made significant improvement and now we have much more tools with better performance. This workshop is intended to discuss some core issues concerning the adoption, the implementation, and the development of the ICTs and internet and education, in the developing countries with experiences sharing and with a case study. Our first speaker will be the workshop organizer Ines Hfaiedh. Ines is Tunisian, too, and she is a teacher. She is an ICT implementation and education specialist. She is a fellow of the Arab World Internet Institute.
Also, she is an internet policy analyst in the IGMENA and other foundation. She is active member of the chapter and an ICANN, ISOC, and RGF fellow. She was a guest speaker of the fourth division of the Internet Governance Forum of the international symposium on ICTs and of the Tunisia national conference. The Arab educational tool portal has shared her tool of interactive ICT implementation and formal and informal learning and selected it for the international tool fair in Budapest.
Also, she compiled ICT enhanced lesson plans into a pedagogical paper. She was selected for rethinking the new Millennium. Ines will speak about the Tunisian education and the SDGs. Ines, you have the floor.
>> INES HFAIEDH: Thank you very much. Okay. Do you have my presentation? If you allow me I'll be standing up. Okay, so good morning everyone. I'll be talking about ICT implementation and the road map to achieving SDGs. My name is Ines Hfaiedh. I am from Tunisia. I'm a teacher and specialist in the implementation of technologies and education. Okay. I think it's not working. Can we move to the next slide, please in it's not working. Nothing is working.
Next slide, please. Okay. So, first, I'll be speaking about the creating a learning generation. Okay. So, this figure, we have the education for a new global realty, so by ‑‑ reality. So by 2050, half of today's jobs will be replaced by technology. Half of today's jobs will be replaced by technologies. It means that half of the people will not find jobs if they don't have IT skills. Also, by 2050, new jobs will demand different and higher level skills. It means that we will not need the same skills that we have today. We need new skills, and higher order skills.
The population of Africa ‑‑ and I come from Africa. The population of Africa will double to 2 billion. Half will be young people. So, young people, it means that we must adapt to this age range in terms of job opportunities and educational opportunities.
Also, if we do not ‑‑ if education and the education systems here do not respond to those new facts, we will have a major shortage of skilled workers in the global economy. Also, up to a quarter of the population could still live in extreme poverty, and we will have an income inequality which will fuel and create conflicts and instability. Next slide, please.
Okay. So, the facts say that up to half of today's jobs ‑‑ around 2 billion jobs ‑‑ are at high risk of disappearing due to the automation by 2030, and the altering of the demand of skills. The skills that we are going to ask for are different from the skills we need today. The new technologies risk not to create new jobs at anything like the skill, they are eradicating them. So, we have eradication of jobs. Many jobs will become obsolete and useless. So the people who have high skills and capacity to adapt to change, ability to access technologies, this range of people is the only range of people who can expect an ever greater share of earnings and are expected to benefit from those technology‑oriented jobs.
So, the expectations with this fast paced world, we need to prioritize children at risk of being excluded. Who are those children? We have the rural child, and I am a teacher at a rural area in Tunisia, and the risk is real because we have connectivity issues. We have also meant at issues. We have problems with women and girls with rural areas that cannot access schools and in general, not only technologies. We have the street child that we don't think much about. We have the refugee child like you have seen with the huge refugee crisis we are having right now in all countries. In Tunisia we had 2 million refugees coming from Lebanon. In Europe, there are lots coming from Syria and Pakistan. So the refugee child, and also the child who is disabled who has specific needs or who is visually impaired.
Also, we must provide the resources and willingness. By willingness, I'm saying the political and economy willingness to harness the new technologies to meet the needs of those kids. Also, we need a commitment from policy and decision‑makers because by the end of the day, it is the government that implements the policy and it is the government that creates the projects. Also, we must provide common and universal training to teachers. To teach 21st century skills that we need for those ‑‑ for this new generation to meet the job opportunities and the change in job sphere that we will have by 2030. So, also, we must create indexes and indicators to assess the overall performance of educational institutions so that we don't have very big gaps between those educational institutions.
So, the second part of the presentation is about the transformation in education to achieve the SDGs. So, technologies restore the curiosity to education. This is what we've been noticing as teachers was because it brings sound and movement to static textbooks, because it helps us overcome physical and geographical barriers and it facilitates communication for many kids.
It eliminates the artificial boundaries between the school and outside world and also promotes an environment of global citizenship so the students feel themselves they are global citizens, not only Tunisian or African citizens.
So, this figure is really interesting and to be honest, I just added it recently because it's really impressive. Okay. The figure is about educating girls saved over 130 million lives. Like education is saving lives of girls. Declines in mortality rates per 1,000 in low and middle income countries between 1970 and 2010. So you can see that for the females, the percentage decline is really very high. Like 130 million lives were saved. Okay. The next slide.
Okay. Education is the smartest investment. When you invest one dollar in an additional year of schooling, it generates ten dollars benefits in low income countries. Ten dollars in developing countries is a lot of money. It's not a small amount. Okay. Education ‑‑ and we are talking about the sustainable development goals ‑‑ education increases peace and stability. How? School enrollments have been shown to increase a country's level of stability and peace and reduce crime and violence because we are teachers and we are witnessing this on a daily basis. Especially, I come from Tunisia and it's a post‑revolution context so us teachers when we educate our teachers ‑‑ especially, for example, in my school, we added theater.
Now we allow students to air their opinions and to talk and to act, so this helps them in airing their opinions and in avoiding violence and crimes. Increasing secondary school enrollments and literacy rates decrease the probability of civil war and also every additional year of schooling reduces an adolescent boy's risk of becoming involved in conflict by 20 percent. One additional year of schooling is 20 percent risk of being violent for an adolescent.
Basically, as teachers we are trying to teach our students that we are equipping them with skills that make them more peaceful or resilient in the as of national disasters or political shocks. When you are not educated you don't have the skills and know‑how on how to deal with your anger and those problems. So the sustainable development goals. Education lifts people out of poverty. It increases equality because it creates the middle class. For example, in Tunisia, some people when they access education, they can have skills and they can have jobs and this created the middle class in Tunisia over the past 50 years. It improves health, as we have seen that it has decreased the mortality rate for women. Education empowers women by facilitating access to information about rights and services. It increases confidence and also enables participation in decision‑making and accountability. Better education also increases people's awareness and commitment to conservation and climate change.
Okay. So this is by the International Commission on Financing Global Education Opportunity and it dates to 2016. It's pretty recent. So it has 12 recommendations under four goals. So, first is the performance. Second is innovation education, third is inclusion, very important, and the fourth is finance. So these I'll be going through very quickly to leave the floor to my colleagues. It has to do with setting standards and tracking progress, not only setting standards but really tracking and scaling the progress.
It has to do in innovation to strengthen and inclusion, to prioritize the poor. Early years to invest across sectors to tackle the factors preventing learning and finance to mobilize more and better domestic resources and to ensure leadership for the coming generation. So the recommendations to help us in implementing technologies and in achieving the sustainable developing goals, raising public awareness, first and foremost.
Involving the youth. Enlarging the stakeholder discussion in local, regional, and international IGFs. Involving the Civil Society, the government, the academia, even the youth, they can have a say. We must lay the policy foundation. Also, we must put the issue on the government's agenda. And also, as I always say, invest in education as a value chain. Invest in the people. Next slide.
So, this is my last slide. I really wanted to end up with this. The 2016 ‑‑ so it's really recent ‑‑ the 2016 UNESCO global education monitor report. It says education is vital for achieving the sustainable development goals of poverty reduction, evaluation, improved health, gender equality, resilient cities and more equal and just societies. In fact, education is so central for facilitating development that each one of the 17SDGs includes a target which relates to or depends upon learning and education. I hope you enjoyed it. Thank you very much
(applause)
>> TIJANI BEN JEMAA: Thank you, Ines. Thank you for this presentation and it's clear that education prevent the society from a lot of problems, and it's clear that the ICTs and internet is helping a lot in the education. The new tools of education gives more flexibility, more possibility to educate people who were for home. It wasn't possible to give any kind of education. So, thank you very much. Our second speaker now, it will be presentation of a special ‑‑ it will be a special presentation made by two speakers. They will address the adoption of ICTs and internet in the education system, in the Asia region, and we'll have China as a case study. So, the first speaker will be Mr. Zhou Xiang. He is member of the Committee on ICT for United In case at China Association for Science and Technology. He is professor and head of project division in the institute of remote sensing and digital earth at China Academy of Sciences and he is co‑chair of the task group on scientific and technology in developing countries. Mr. Zhou, the floor is yours.
>> XIANG ZHOU: Good morning, everyone. I'll be standing here for presentation. This morning, I'm going to talk about usage of ICT in education, but I will take China as a case study. So my name is Zhou Xiang from ‑‑ which used to belong to Chinese academy of science. As the chair introduced, I was the co‑chair of task group preservation of an access to the science and technology in developing countries. Task group, I belong to the co‑data. It's international organization. So, as we know, information communicating and technology has great potential to accelerate human progress and the great digital divide to achieve the sustainable development goals in 2013 agenda.
So, definitely, there is a strong lead for each country. The commercial ICT in education for the goals of sustainable development. But, there is division on the balance of social and economic development on SDG infrastructure, also education in this. As you may know, several country in this range like Singapore, Korea, Japan, they actually have very comparatively high rank in the network performance and also infrastructure, and also several countries trying to establish the education system to better utilizing ICT technology and also there are several country that made great progress on the digital resource like digital textbook in the primary and secondary school. In general, the developed country and developing nations in Asia range all on the development of ICT and its education.
So, taking Singapore as example. As you received, Singapore has a long standing master plan on the ICT implementation. So since 1997, they are already launched three master plan in past decades and in 2015, they have a new plan which aims to build intelligent nation, a global city powered by the info communication technology. So, they have achieved very good goals by implementation of ICT education. You may see in 2015, Singapore was ranked first in the world on network readiness index and also very high performance on other indicators.
Other examples. Korea also has a long standing master plan for education. Now is come to, you can see current goals is to train creative minds through the education and ICT, tasks were drawn up into five categories. Also some key strategy was included in the new master plan, like opening and sharing of public data with increasing concerns in the developing country and developed country as well. So, big data, and then also, we have forum, very good service provider government like national teaching and learning center, and so on.
So, how about China? China's situation is, as everybody knows, rapidly changing. Economic, social, and technology, education environment. Also Chinese government also has achieved considerable progress by construction of infrastructure, and the policy making. Also, teach resource, learning innovation of all the different user at different level. So, there is one important project which called connection and two platforms. You may find there is a very obvious trend on the proportion of school connect to internet and the classroom equipped with multimedia teaching equipment and also the teachers resource was deployed in all 64 teaching spots, including teaching spots in rural area. So, generally this tends, education at work has already build which covers the primary and secondary school, including rural area. So, the effort to promote the ICT education in China was categorized in different levels.
The first we consider is policy and planning, as Singapore and Korea did. So, for the industry and the information technology, in long term ICT development and the industry‑specific development, China has underlined different policy to the implementation and encouraging of development of ICT industry. As you may see, the state development strategy from 2006 to 2020, and we also have a new updated version which is called a occurring lar on the insurance of ‑‑ curricular on the influence of education and also some regulation and laws on the radio and telecommunication.
For policy, in education, so China are trying to build the framework of policy and planning in different level at national, provisional and municipal to are develop and reinforce the structure of quality education resource and also the government want to view the national management system for the promotion of ICT in education. So, especially in rural area, you may notice, there's new five year plan issued in June this year is that try to build infrastructure to promote education ICT include all the stakeholders in administration, finance, laws, and other aspect.
So, the promotion on ICT education includes efforts. Smart ICT as we had a session yesterday so this will be integration between this project. So that's the output we had, policy and planning in the past years. We also got some outcomes on infrastructure construction, as I mentioned, which is called pre-connection. What's these connections? The first one is connect the school with broad network. You can see apparent increase on the number of PCs the student use. This diagram shows PCs students use for the K12 students and also, as you know, with growth of smartphone, there is very rapid increase on the number of mobile phone user in China which will be good foundation for the implementation of the ICT in education in China. And second connection is Connects Class with Quality Learning Resource. That means a lot of the students have a cast to the quality resource. The third one is, connect to the students with cyber learning space.
We have several projects, the teaching and lending, resource sharing community, and also management tool relies these goals for access to internet learning to everyone. So, the common, also, has made great efforts to build national public platform. Two kinds of platform. First one is resource, and other one education management with closer rate to the management administration of government on ICT in education. So, until now, more than 20 programs has established the national public platform for education resource and also this platform serves 150 in school and more than 100 million students and teachers. Also for education management, more than 150 education data center was established in different province, provide including enrollment, examinations, and so on.
Next issue is about ‑‑ as we know the teachers, with education of ICT is very crucial for the implementation of the information technology and communication in China. So, the Ministry of education in China requires teacher to use ICT in teaching and a stand out for them, the kinds of projects to conduct in course like TITT project. So, June 2016, the production of primary and secondary school teachers who participate in the training of ICT was reached 73.9 percentage and also here, I take Tinjin City as example, over 92 of all full‑time teacher has become registered user on this platform for training program.
So, for the digital resource is very crucial for implementation of ICT in education. So China has taken measure to promote learning innovation through internet, which covers the elementary and secondary school. Also higher education and academy research and also career and vocational education. The market was introduced to implement the application of ICT in education. Also, as well as the public service was provided to the user. Is okay? So, there is some case I can show you.
First is for elementary and secondary school. Is two case. The first one is homework for the students reaching primary school. As China first K12 online homework platform, this registered user of this company has exceeded 23 million in past five years, and also, there is case, a project for English with native speaker at home. So you can see link and the interaction between the students, teacher, and parents was established. And it's a good circle to improve the quality of teaching and also increase awareness of the stakeholder in the education in teaching for the students and also government.
So, there is another effort made by government on elementary and secondary school. This is called a project of learning and evaluation on digital teaching resource. You can see figure because new project launched last year so currently, there are already 7 million course online, and this year, show there is more than 4 million courses were uploaded by the teacher for evaluation and for the learning in this you're the so, so there are also some online school, regional school, and also education channels by the library was launched in April of 2014. Is commercial service but also provide support for the learning of different user at different ages. So for the higher education and research, the government also takes some measure to conduct promotion of ICT.
This project was the Project for National Resource and Stability which called experimental teaching center for visual stimulation. This project was recently launched by the government. Actually, we have many different project but I select these to present to you. More than 2,600 course socially issued by the government as assessment. And also, 100 new center for teaching of with simulation was approved in last year. That means deep integration of this course in learning and information technology. Also, some will be introduced by professor Tao later.
There is something interest here. So for everybody, I know each of us want to learn something different as interesting. So there is online course for the children. He needed to go to the physical facility or classroom. He or she just can follow the instruction online, and submit his drawing online and he can get evaluation and try to improve his or her drawing through this mechanism.
Also, very interesting for the Chinese handwriting because each of us learn this kind of handwriting from very beginning of our student age, but not everybody can do very well. So, this platform, the technique to practice the handwriting, so, they have the ‑‑ sorry, this is Chinese but I can't try to explain. This is the radio and the ‑‑ how to write this character in Chinese is very interesting. And useful for the different user in different ages. Also, for career and vocational education, they are manning company and service which provide professional training like accounting, law, architecture, medicine, and so on.
See, this is the service belong to one company, which already established company in United States. So, Okay. That's something about the Chinese learning. So, you may know the institute, but now we have online course. This online course has more than 4,000 online teacher, 250,000 online license which collaborate with 87 organizations. So, the user can ‑‑ this system can provide user for the service on learning Chinese, exploring culture, and community exchange with the people from different community and do the test online. So, this is very active course, lecture, on website. You see, I don't know how to pronounce in Arabic. Okay. I will make it quick. Thank you. Okay.
So, as you may see, China has achieved considerable progress on the ICT in education. Also, they are still problems on the awareness, mechanism, team building, also gender difference and maybe a very special one for the common program for developing country, that's the regional gap. Safety and the rural. Actually, I show you there is a great difference between the user and the equivalent earned by the rural area and the city. So that's other area we need to address. So as a very important output on international conference, China declaration gave us a very great global ICT development and strategy towards education 2013, so we have so much work to do. I mean, common efforts on the ICT infrastructure, and training, policy, learning innovation, and so on. So, China want to share the experience ‑‑ and they go further. Thank you. Thank you.
>> TIJANI BEN JEMAA: Thank you very much Dr. Xiang. I see that you have a really good program. I really appreciate this program. You have everything. Platforms, you have the network. You even go to the Kindergarten and use the ICTs there. So, you have a comprehensive program and I think that you are one of the countries which is the most ‑‑ how to say, using ICTs and education. So, thank you very much for this presentation. I have two questions, if you don't mind. First of all, are you using for all those tools, are you always using internet or do you have internal network or internet network? And the second question, I see very well the network, the platforms, everything, but what about the content? Are you developing your MOOCS yourself? Are the teacher who are not used to use ICTs, are they ready to develop MOOCS for the next generation?
So, thank you very much and now the second speaker about this same topic is Dr. (Indiscernible) who is a member on the ICT for science and technology, and who is professor at Beijing University of post and telecommunications. The floor is yours.
>> Thank you. Thank you for having me here. Today my talk is about open Universities and open courses in China. I'm Tao from Cast. Here, I have some statistic figures about higher education entrance examination from the year 1985 to last year, totally about 30 years. Actually, I got permission to the University in the 1989. At that time, totally about 3 million participate and the only maybe 0.6 million got admission to the University. So, the rate is about 20, maybe. 120th. Last year, you can see totally participate over 9 million. 9 million. And perm mission is about also 7 million. Totally, admission rate over 70 percent, so totally different. So currently, just as I said, over 70 percent admission in higher education. This is one case.
The second, you can see over 3,700,000,000 internet users in China is about 15 percent. And why open University in China, you can see the objective, why the access to higher standard of scholarship in higher education and ‑‑ wider access to higher standard of scholarship in higher education and promote life-long learning regardless of time and education, use internet technology. And solution. Next time, University will higher education costs open to everyone. And here, just some MOOCs. There's a history of the open University. You can see from the year 2003 the higher quality curriculums, construction, project launched by our government.
And in the year 2011, quality really opened cost project launched. And in the year 2012, we're emerging two, for example, emerge quality with the open cost project on a central University together. And we construct open University of China. This one was very important. Central radio and TB University. About 30 years ago, I got permission to go to University, but some of my friends failed. And one of my friends throws a central radio on University, starts some courses and gets degree, and he became a lawyer. A very famous lawyer in China. So central radio on University.
Lot of open University of China has male branch. So, for example, 44 for high level and over 1,000. In China over 3,000 study center and has over 100,000 teachers and over 5 million students have enrolled since 1979. A quarter of the open University of China. To use science technologies. For example, provide higher education through the radio and television. And of course, we use internet teaching platform interact between students and teachers, and over 14,000 education courses with degree. You study these kind of courses, you can get degree. And over 16,000 education courses exist without a degree. And in open University, we have some open courses. The selection of quality open courses produced over 1,000 from the year 2011 to the year 2015. And course also have hosted by those open courses. You can see launched in the year 2013 and sponsors by Ministry of Education and Ministry of Finance. Now, over 1,000 online courses are public to everybody without charge.
And you can see, somebody introduced UAE ‑‑ (Audio cutting out)
Open courses. A lot of days where you have already published eight open courses on iCourse. For example, optical, complication technologies, and circuit analyses. Of course, for example, communications and the digital communication, principle of digital communication. And, our University record our post on telecommunication, so this too is very important. I'm sorry? So very important. For example, our principle of communication is very important course in our University. They're called flagship courses. Also, for most of the popular courses on iCourse. Yesterday, over 500 students learning are on principle of communication courses.
And material of this course is based on the book, Principle of Communication written by our professor, professor Zho. Professor Zho is member of Chinese education, very high level. And the teacher, professor Huang and the open courses, and Professor Huang has over 20 years teaching experiments, so is very famous in our University. Especially in Principle of Communication course. And of course, we have other open education resource. For example, the MOOC, as Mr. Tijani said, MOOC. We also devout ourselves to teach some MOOC courses. I think for open courses now shift rules of open University courses and that maybe 20 years ago, some students without getting the permission of Universities start some courses on open University and maybe then get some degree and maybe then get some good career. As I said, one of my friend get ‑‑ now he's a lawyer, very famous lawyer. But now open courses also have citizen for life-long learning. That's very important for us.
And we have different learning source. Just as I said, iCourse, MOOC, maybe. And now open University, courses with levels of education gap with regions. For example, Beijing was very beautiful, good resources but maybe west part of China may be poor. So we can narrow the education gap through the open courses or open Universities. Okay. That's all. Thank you
(applause)
>> TIJANI BEN JEMAA: Thank you very much, Dr. Tao. Now you gave the answer of my second question. I see that you are developing your open courses, your MOOCs, et cetera, and this is very important because technology is not the only thing we need. We need more the content. And the content should be done by local people and local language. So normally, we should have remote participation. Remote intervention. I don't know if they are ready. Do we have something ready? We have two remote presentation. Does it work?
Okay. Thank you very much. So now we are supposed to have two remote participants, but unfortunately, they are not online now. Michael is checking. But in the meantime, perhaps you will take some questions and we will start by the remote questions. So, yes. We think for those two presentations, remote presentations, we will start taking questions and we will start by the remote questions. Mike.
>> MICHAEL OGHIA: All right. So this question comes from Hosan. He actually starts with a comment. First he says, the main challenges for ICT, I believe, are infrastructure, lack of awareness of new technologies, and engaging both students and instructors through the process of e-education. How can we overcome or at least reduce these challenges, and is making policies based on ICT mean or include a reform of the national education system? He's from Tunisia, by the way.
>> INES HFAIEDH: Can you hear me? Okay. Thank you very much for the question, very interesting question, indeed. Before the educational reform, this is what we're trying because at the same time, I'm a teacher with the Ministry of Education. I work for the government but at the same time I'm a Civil Society activist with an organization, we are a group of young activists called IGMENA, the Internet Governance for the ‑‑ we are raising awareness through radio shows, articles. Through conferences. We had some conferences where we invited even ministers and it was very important conference, and we are trying to push things forward. So this is our first thing we are trying to do is raise awareness and raise the public consciousness about the importance of Internet Governance and the importance of technologies in education, in general. So, this is number one.
After raising the awareness, we are going to start because we are growing as a group, as IGMENA, we are becoming really influential, to be on, on the sphere of Internet Governance, so our next step is to really draft a policy and to present it to the Parliament so that we have actual and complete reform of the educational system. But, this is true that there is a problem of infrastructure, so this is why by the end of the day, we need the government to implement this policy. Thank you very much, Hosan, again.
>> TIJANI BEN JEMAA: Good. So now our remote participant is ready now. So Bonface? Okay. So our next speaker is Bonface Witaba from Kenya. He's a founder of OER for school. An initiative that seeks to empower rural schools in Kenya through digital inclusion, flipped learning. He's an open learning writer and he's concerned in technology and policy areas of Internet Governance. He also works as learning tutors. So Bonface, if you hear me, please go ahead and start your presentation. Do you hear me? So, can he speak?
>> INES HFAIEDH: Bonface, do you hear us?
>> BENJAMIN AKINMOYEJE: Hello.
>> INES HFAIEDH: Hi, Bonface. This is Ines, please when you want to move from one slide to another, just tell me next, okay? We hear you very well.
>> BENJAMIN AKINMOYEJE: Yeah. Good afternoon. What's the time there? Can you hear me?
>> INES HFAIEDH: Yeah, we hear you very well, Bonface. Hi.
>> BENJAMIN AKINMOYEJE: Okay. I'm excited to be on. Good afternoon, everyone. I hope it's the same time. I'm actually in Kenya. I hope I can speak on the topic. Can I proceed?
>> TIJANI BEN JEMAA: Go ahead, please.
>> BENJAMIN AKINMOYEJE: Okay. Well I'd like to talk about open educational resource from around African continent. Recent times, once I think about couple of years back now, the government started what they call national open University. And this was to help people who couldn't leave work, get some kind of education. Like people who couldn't afford to leave their work and go to school but want to keep their work, at the same time, get an education. So, what was mainly used in this process was Open Educational Resources. They were like open source tools that students could go through. You didn't have to buy University books. You could just use these tools and learn. And most of the lecturers took their curriculum from these materials. That was really, really good because we had a lot of online tools for them to learn with.
Now, why am I making case for this? This, ordinarily, it would have been textbooks that were very expensive. Very expensive textbooks and all of that. But with these open source tools like MOOCs, mass online courses that students could leverage on and there were free common license, students were able to learn and even collaborate. So that was really, really something good that has been happening and a lot of people have graduated from this open University. So that was something I know that it was through the help of ICT that we could have that kind of. And of course across the country, you could find centers all across Nigeria called National Open University Centers equipped with computers that had this free source educational resources that students could use. And those platforms, they also developed platforms that students would ask questions.
>> INES HFAIEDH: Excuse me, Bonface. This is Ines. Can you tell us which slide you are now? Which slide? In the introduction, you're still on the introduction?
>> BENJAMIN AKINMOYEJE: Yes. I started ‑‑ do you have the slide shown?
>> INES HFAIEDH: Yes. We are at the introduction right now.
>> BENJAMIN AKINMOYEJE: Oh, at introduction. I thought I could just speak on my topic.
>> INES HFAIEDH: Okay. Which slide are you now? Which page?
>> BENJAMIN AKINMOYEJE: Actually, it is Benjamin talking. Not Bonface.
>> INES HFAIEDH: Okay. Benjamin. Okay. Thank you. Yes, Benjamin. Please proceed.
>> BENJAMIN AKINMOYEJE: Mine is just the talk. I'm not presenting.
>> INES HFAIEDH: Yes. Please proceed.
>> BENJAMIN AKINMOYEJE: Okay. Yeah, that's my one picture up there. So, as I said, so this tool could really help the students to really start to learn which open source tools. Then, one of the major issues that we're coming up is how to get trainers tutors to help students because most cases, you had one lecturer to thousands of students and securing to particularly help different students. So, recently, there's an innovation that's come up, and that's the link www.tutorial.com. So this platform doesn't do only educational skills, also any kind of skills that a student might want to learn. You could search ‑‑ you could use the website to search for a tutor and the tutor would locate the students and they could come to an agreement at the minimum cost to the platform that can be made.
So, what we're getting at, we're getting very good tutorials, we're highly rated. Getting opportunity to train students who are really eager to learn, and that has been happening. So you can look up that site, tutorial.com is something coming out of Nigeria and very, very good. Another thing that ICT has been doing that I've seen around Nigeria is collaborative learning, which ordinarily might not be very popular in an environmental competition where everybody wants to be the best, but with ICT now, people are learning collaboratively, we are having Facebook groups created. WhatsApp group created around learning materials. These classes are basically free beyond the fact that you have to pay for your data and that's why it's a real big issue right now that governments in Nigeria want to increase the data cost. So we're really worried because that will greatly affect students who are already using these tools to get some knowledge.
Moving to the next point that I highlighted on it is creative learning as well. I actually put on there the website which is a very fantastic site doing amazing things in Nigeria and bringing about collaborative learning through the use of ICTs and addressing a lot of social issues mostly targeted to the SDG goals and I would encourage you to look at the website and look at what they're doing. Other point I have in this short paper that I put together is, creative learning that we're seeing around Nigeria and I'm sure is happening also every other place in Africa. We have integrative learning.
We have some schools right now that have ICT installed in computers. Most private schools now have a lot of internet infrastructure but I don't think it's been maximized yet, but it's bringing about some improvements. What you also have, the fifth points is evaluating learning. People train and they talk allot about poor quality of education and all of that, but most of the schools now are using softwares, open source tools. Initially, this started with Google applications, but now, I mean, there's Google for business. There's also Google education and all of that but there are also a lot of open source tools that allow school management to manage their attendance, track student performance, organize exams, rules for teachers. All of these things put in the hands of the school administrators tools that help them manage students and their staff more effectively. In the end, bringing about better outcomes. So students and parents would result check the progress they made
Math or English, and that way, we're getting some improvement. So all of this, I didn't have to mention any particular name of application or anything, because I'm not here to sell any product. But I'm saying, there's a o whole lot of application in those regards so I would like to conclude right now that I think ICT is finding an amazing relevance in Nigeria and open resources are really the way to go. Thank you.
>> TIJANI BEN JEMAA: Thank you very much, Benjamin
(applause)
And I really apologize for the confusion of the names but thank you very much. Now, we are running out of time and we will have a question and answer session. So, we have ‑‑ Bonface is here? But, ‑‑
>> INES HFAIEDH: Bonface, can you hear us?
>> TIJANI BEN JEMAA: Can you hear us, Bonface? Bonface? So, I don't think we will have time for that. We have only 15 minutes and we didn't get any questions from the floor, so now we will go to the Q and A session. So, the floor is yours. Please give us your question if you have any question. Do we have remote questions? No. Do we have questions? Otherwise, I will give the floor to our Chinese plans to answer our question already, my first question.
>> Does it work? Okay. Mr. Tijani raised two questions. The first about education based on the network capacity, and second is the course, written MOOC. So I would like to try to answer the first question and leave the second question to my colleague, Mr. Tao. Regarding the ICT based on infrastructure, Chinese has quite a situation. We can take a different strategy based on the foundation of the physical infrastructure. I mean, for the city and the area with enough bandwidth. That means very strong connectivity on network. The kinds of resource like I introduced on the other side. So could be visual stimulation, online. There are also online course for different user, but key point is the area, especially rural area, result in half the network capacity. So there are different means. For example, we do have data receiving stations so we can receive some digital resource regularly, periodically from this kind of mean and update the local digital textbook for provide the update information for students.
And in some other area, we still use compact disk or television, so this is also the scope of ‑‑
>> TIJANI BEN JEMAA: Okay. Excuse me. This is not my question. My question was, you are using networks. Are you using only the internet or are you using some internet network? This is the question.
>> XIANG ZHOU: Yes, yes, yes. So the first strategy I talked to is internet because it depends on different infrastructure. For intranet, is also depends on the situation. Some organization like my academy for the internal training, we have also online program. So this is internet. But for the contents I talked today, since strongly connect to the internet. So, this is ‑‑
>> TIJANI BEN JEMAA: So I understand that you are using a mixture of internet and intranet. A mixture of them. Very good. Question please, yes. Go ahead. Microphone.
>> Yeah. My name is Usdan. I'm from Ghana. And I'm a MAG member. I noted a few points. And I went to ‑‑ I try to give what is happening in Ghana, the case is Ghana. That's my contribution. Internet adoption and income inequality as mentioned by Ines in her presentation on economic groove. Now, there is an estimation that the implied effect of internet adoption on groove negative for some countries which high income equality. Especially in the developing countries. Because the income groove incurred by the internet.
Now, from a policy standpoint, this resource implies that positive impacts of the internets on grooves will be reinforced by income redistribution. Now my question is, how can this be achieved? Now my thinking, I think putting in investment in ICT infrastructure within the educational sector in all countries, especially in the developing countries. Now, I think this can also be done in two levels. The educational sector takes this upon itself and invests in ICT infrastructure within the educational sector.
Our government will look at it as a national issue and then come out with a national infrastructure. A shared national infrastructure where education can also tap their resources and all that. So, in the case of Ghana, what we did was government actually took the initiative to come out a national photograph. So we have currently ‑‑ infrastructure. So we currently have a national infrastructure which is spear headed by my agency and the Ministry of Communication and we've been able to lay a fiber cable throughout the whole country of Ghana, connecting all public schools, government institutions on to one platform. We have a national data center, and I think it's one of the biggest in west Africa.
And then, what we're doing now is getting the e‑applications for these educational institutions for them to actually put their resources on it and their vision on it. Now, what do we do? We have the internet as part of it, and then we have the intranet as part of it. So even if the internet goes off, educational or institution can still use their resources that is being put on the platform. So I think that is what we should be looking at to see how we can leverage on that. Also, we need to share resources so what we're trying to do now is to connect on to our platform. We're also planning to connect Google on to our platform. We also planning to connect (Indiscernible) on to our platform. So, this is what we have been doing I think we try looking to this policy to see how we can all help to solve this educational issues. I want to find out from Chinese. What tools do you have you like to share with developing country, especially African developing countries will be very, very happy. Some of these resources would like to leverage.
>> TIJANI BEN JEMAA: Thank you very much. Any other question before we give the floor to the panelists? Five minutes. Okay. No questions? So.
First of all, I will give elements of answer and then I will give the floor to our friends here. Ah, he is leaving. I think that infrastructure is very important. Without infrastructure, we cannot do anything. It is needed. But, infrastructure is not everything. You may have the best infrastructure and can't make education by ICTs because you don't have the content. The content is more important than infrastructure because if you buy or you take content from other countries, it will not be adopted to your country so it will be useless and you will not be really educating your people. I think you did very good things. You have the platform and you are helping other countries so I think for the infrastructure, now you are not ‑‑ you don't have real problem. I think the problem is to have the content.
>> XIANG ZHOU: Okay. First I want to answer Tijani's MOOC question. I remember about three or four years ago, Ministry of Education encouraged top University in China for MOOC and also our University, is one of top University, especially in telecommunication area. So our University also encourage teachers, staff, especially for young teachers for MOOC courses. Now days, I see many courses in MOOC are designed for the public. I think more and more Universities pay much attention to MOOC course design, yes. And maybe my answer for Usban's question. The first one, our government also encourage us to make cooperation. Currently, we have one belt, one road. Our government want to encourage us in collaboration with other overseas. This month, most Ministry of Science and Technology, and we had a meeting. Encouraging top University, making some cooperation and share some thermos with others. I think maybe this is very important. Thank you
>> TIJANI BEN JEMAA: Thank you very much. Any other question before we adjourn this? Any other questions? Is this working? So, if there is no question, I think that the conclusion that we may have here is that for the developing countries, ICTs should be a tool for enhancement of the education for the quality of education and of the ‑‑ how do you say, the target people. Because now some people cannot be educated because of their geographic situation, because of their also perhaps even social situation. But, with the ICTs in education, we can reach everyone.
So, as I said, infrastructure, we need it. And if we don't have infrastructure, we cannot go ahead. We cannot make education with ICTs. But if we have those infrastructure, we have also to work on the content and I know that for most of our countries, most professors were not skilled to use ICTs and those who think that their courses are their property. They cannot share it.
If they share it, other people will take it. They are thinking like this and I understand them. In this case, if you ask them to put their course on the net, they will not accept. We need young people because young people understand that all properties is different now. And people who are making the MOOCs are generally young people. The knowledge generally is taken from the old one, from people who have most knowledge, experience. But the work of the MOOCs, the work of the courses is done by young people and I think in our countries, our youth is very active and we have to lay on them so that we can improve the inclusion of the ICTs in the education and so that we can benefit from this use of ICTs.
I think that we reach the end of our session, so thank you very much. It was very good. I want to thank, again, Ines for organizing this workshop. Our two Chinese speakers. They were very kind, and also our friends from Africa who tried to make online presentation but technology is not always good there so we are sorry for that. I also want to thank our technicians and our remote moderator, Michael, for helping us. So, thank you everyone. Thank you for coming, for attending, and this session is adjourned.
(applause)
(Session was concluded at 10:32 a.m. CST)