THE STATE OF THE WORLD'S CHILDREN 2005
THE DIGITAL DIVIDE IN CHINA The China launch of the State of the World’s Children Report in Shanghai is intended to highlight the global threats to childhood outlined in the Report which include the lack of access to information. Even in countries like China with well-developed media infrastructure, there are major disparities which affect their development potentials. Internet users in China have increased from 620,000 in 1997 to over 87 million today, making the country second only to the United States in Internet connections. But this massive expansion has been uneven, so that the country’s six most developed administrative units have 50% of these connections, while the six poorest account for less than 1%. It has also been estimated that the over 60% of the total Chinese population living in predominantly rural areas has access to only 0.8 % of total Internet connections. With Information and Communication Technology such an integral part of education today, this Digital Divide will impact heavily on the development potentials of China’ s children. BRIDGING THE DIGITAL DIVIDE IN SCHOOLS By the end of 2000, a total of 70,000 primary and secondary schools across China had begun offering IT education, and more than 2.1 million computers were provided to these schools, and about 50 million students per year accepted IT education in schools. By 2003, at least 10,000 primary and middle schools in the poor western provinces had been equipped. The school where the China launch of the State of the World’s Children Report is taking place is one of two Shanghai primary schools which is participating in an innovative tele-collaborative learning project aimed at reducing the digital divide to improve education quality. The basic idea is to develop IT links between schools in the more developed areas of Shanghai and Guangzhou with schools in the poorer western provinces. THE CITIGROUP FUNDED PROJECT Through the creation of twin-schools communication, to upgrade the quality of distance education, CITIGROUP is collaborating with UNICEF to pilot an action research project on tele-collaborative learning. Participating schools will have technology integrated into their curricula and will eventually make an important transition from teacher-centred to learner-centred instruction in child friendly learning environments. The project is piggybacking on the schools already participating in a Distance Education (DE) project under the Ministry of Education (MOE)-UNICEF cooperation. As the information infrastructure in western China is weak, all project schools do not have the same capacity and ability to get involved in the project. Therefore in 2004, 15 pilot schools have been selected from three UNICEF-supported DE project counties in Guangxi and two DE project counties in Chongqing. In 2005, this will be scaled up to 50 schools under the MOE-UNICEF project. All together the project is expected to cover 10,000 students. Eight partner schools have been selected from Shanghai, Anhui and Guangzhou to lead and facilitate the tele-collaborative learning process. They will share their experiences and educational resources with the project schools. These will also be the sites for visits from the project schools. The eight partner schools and 50 project schools will form a learning community to undertake project based learning, co-construct knowledge, and learn from each other.
- The National Center for Educational Technology (NCET), Ministry of Education (MOE) - The Provincial Center for Educational Technology (PCETs) - The County Center for Educational Technology (CCETs) - Partners: Eastern China Normal University, Southern China Normal University
Mr. Charles Rycroft, Communication Officer, UNICEF China (English language) Ms. Li Liu, Communication Assistant, UNICEF China (English and Chinese languages)
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