Radical use of communication for learning

Hi, I am Robert Philips, and I have been listening keenly to the spiralling discussion on "community and technology , possible goals and potential actions". I am at the Technology Innovation Centre at UTECH, and there are three of the companies here , ZAWDIE, AURA and PANMEDIA that are into digital media .eg www.zawdie.com Educational television was introduced to Jamaican primary schools nearly 40 years ago, and cable TV has mushroomed over the last 10 years. We seem to be so certain about the instructional effects (defects) of cable TV, but with the exception of a few youth programs (eg Rappin, Schoools Challenge) we have made little effort to create or influence content in a medium that has 20% penetration.The content issue arises in the internet and PC arena as well, but given the 3% and 5% penetration, the main obstacle there is the investment required to enable access. At our universities, some lecturers are making the transition to media, people like Robert Lancashire, who is now Professor of Computers in Chemistry, and pioneered computer instructional websites in 1994; UWI now offers graduate courses in this specialisation.http://wwwchem.uwimona.edu.jm:1104/chrl.htmlAt UTECH, the brunt of the task of making content accessible on the web is borne by the Multimedia Centre. Vilma Gregory leads the Centre. http://www.utechjamaica.edu.jm/mmedia/Default.htmOne could say that nationally, the expertise is spread so thin that we can't do much more than make samples. Carlyon may remember Bob and Vilma; Vilma's company built a cosmetology learning CD for the Heart Trust in 1995-96, with video clips done by Willy Ochaya who was an instructional designer at Heart /NTA.The universities have their own issues regarding technology and community;one could argue that bandwidth and price limitations are obstacles to the marketing thrusts of overseas online universities into the Caribbean, but if the online options are not available locally soon, as prices fall, our universities will be under more pressure.Interestingly, the task of building educational technology skills has been taken on by an overseas university , Nova Southeastern in partnership with MIco College , who now offer the masters and doctoral programs in instructional technology and distance ed.Strategically, we should accelerate the development of a corp of educational technology technicians, for video and web, then for primary and secondary level school learning, engineer the building of courseware that is a proven treatment for an endemic deficit, be it critical language or quantitative skills, or even non-violent predisposition, if that is possible. This may sound a little too centralist or undemocratic, but we have wandering in the wilderness for nearly forty years. Frank Odasz has pointed out implicitly that technology infusion is not expected to take place without resistance, I think that in Jamaica's case things are not just going to happen, improvement is not going to occur without design.This intervention on a pilot basis to improve a deficient community would be one of the successes that I believe Ev Gowie is talking about.No doubt there are others that we should be celebrating and documenting.For example, Mrs Ricketts who recently retired from Edwin Allen High School had made some breakthroughs in computer-mediated learningWe have lots of opportunities to conduct controlled research. Should there be any state or church supported childrens homes with deficient learning technology environments? There shouldn't be but there are. Aren't there many funding agencies that would be interested? The impact of educational TV in Jamaica, must have been evaluated. We need to pick up those threads and identify the reasons why there isn't significant use of TV or video for formal instruction, because the channel with the highest potential for access to systematic and informal learning seems to be cable and free TV. Robert