How can a developing nation consider investments in information and
communication technology for enhancing its formal and nonformal
education systems when most of its people still live in absolute poverty?
This question is discomforting for everyone concerned with the intersecting
issues of ICT and development. However, these interests are
not contradictory, and raising the educational level of the poor is a long-term
solution toward alleviating their economic problems. The impact of educational
level on economic development is more pronounced with the recent growth
of ICT and its increasing importance in social and economic development. This
has profound implications for education––
both in how ICTs can be used to
strengthen education, and how education can be more effective in promoting
the growth of ICT in the Asia and Pacific region. However,
education systems have changed very little in response. Without improved
efficiencies in their education systems, developing nations will not likely be
able to provide the additional human capital required to achieve economic
self-sufficiency in the context of a highly competitive global economy that is. Why Invest in ICT for Education?
ICT has the potential to bridge the knowledge gap in terms of improving quality
of education, increasing the quantity of quality educational opportunities, making
knowledge building possible through borderless and boundless accessibility
to resources and people, and reaching populations in remote areas to satisfy
their basic right to education. As various ICTs become increasingly affordable,
accessible, and interactive, their role at all levels of education is likely to be
all the more significant in making educational outcomes relevant to the labor
market, in revolutionizing educational content and delivery, and in fostering
information literacy. Educational Need


Users of information technology need to apply their critical thinking skills with respect to their computers by developing a healthy skepticism regarding its reliability. Users need to recognize the inevitability of its failure, to fully appreciate the risk of loss, and to adequately protect their creative work that resides as bits of data on their computers.

My goal with this project is to get users of information technology to change their belief that computers are infallible and to critically examine what data they need to backup. It is my belief that when users fully appreciate the value of their creative input on computers, they will have the motivation to overcome presenting barriers to backing up data. For the novice user, this may mean simply learning how to backup and then integrating the procedure into a routine that will actually get performed. For the more advanced user, I would like to propose a simple solution to the problem of regenerating settings that are necessary to make software on computers to “do what it’s supposed to”, such as accessing email and the Internet, having usual software programs behave as “they normally do”, etc.

This falls within the province of developing a critical thinking approach to technology in general. As users, we need to reflect constantly upon how reliable the information that we are presented with via technology is. Just because the data looks good is not guarantee of its accuracy or usefulness. Developing such a critical approach provides an excellent opportunity to exercise several of the Habits of Mind identified by Costa and Kallick (2001) which help life time learners to behave intelligently when confronted with problems whose answers are not immediately apparent. Calm persistence, carefully monitoring when things work and don’t work, drawing on a repertoire of problem solving strategies, valuing uncertainty and developing the confidence to explore alternatives are among the patterns of intellectual behavior I would like to encourage with this project.

Project Goal


People will become more effective users of information technology as they learn to anticipate and work through its failure. They will fundamentally shift their thinking and see technology in a different way: “It will fail” and “I can take reasonable steps to protect myself

A quandary confronting those who rely on technology that has become particularly acute as a result of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 on the World Trade Center Towers in New York City is how to secure the huge amounts of energy and creative capital that users have invested in their computers. Even barring catastrophic events, as new operating systems are introduced with increasing frequency and technological growth continues to outstrip even the most optimistic of estimates, the need for securing data becomes ever more pressing. This project focuses on three broad areas: to change technology users’ perceptions that technology is infallible, to raise users’ awareness of the value of data stored on their computers, and pragmatically, what to actually backup and how. Though to a certain extent the “how to” questions are machine and platform dependent, the question of what needs to be backed up is general and can be examined from a “cost to restore” point of view. Success will be when the user confidently backs up his/her data on a regular basis and is able to overcome obstacles such as when technology doesn’t perform as expected employing habits of mind of intelligent behavior.