Introducing ICT to a primary school in a developing country : a Fijian experience

One aspect of quality education in the 21st century is the availability of digital resources in schools. Many developing countries need to build this capability – not just in terms of technology but teacher capability as well. One of the ways to achieve such capacity is through knowledge sharing between teachers and educators in developed and developing countries. Over time such collaboration can have a lasting impact on all participants on both sides of the digital divide. This paper reports on how such collaboration can occur. It focuses on the initial stages of a long-term initiative where our primary objective is to develop models, which demonstrate how we (in developed countries) can engage productively and meaningfully with schools in developing countries to build their ICT capacity. As part of this initiative, we introduced laptops and LEGO robotics tool kits to a rural primary school in Fiji. We developed ICT activities that aligned with the curriculum in a number of subjects. In addition, we worked with the teachers over two weeks to build their expertise.