Global Networked Readiness for Education project

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To date, little rigorous analysis has been brought to bear on efforts of policy reform in the developing world to introduce IT into formal educational systems. As part of its innovative five-year pilot project, World Links for Development (WorLD), the Education Program at the World Bank Institute has done preliminary research on the impact of ICTs on students and teachers information reasoning skills, communication and collaboration skills, cultural awareness, and technology skills. Other groups have made strides in linking IT and education projects to overall economic development goals.

However, much more evaluation needs to be done internationally in this area. To date, research efforts have been stymied by three main gaps:

1. The lack of international benchmarks regarding policy reform
2. Poor/non-existent international datasets dealing with ICTs and Education
3. Limited statistical models and analysis that focus on the link between ICTs and Education policy reform and its impact on the economic development process.

While numerous ICT & Education projects have been implemented in the developing world, by the World Bank and others, other than WorLD program, relatively little effort has been made in creating sound international benchmarks or monitoring and evaluation methodologies.

Working with the Berkman Center at Harvard University, we are developing a "Global Networked Readiness for Education toolkit" to address these gaps and help policymakers in the developing world deal with planning decisions around ICTs and education.

This toolkit will provide broad metrics for policymakers to benchmark their current environment for ICTs in education. As a first step towards developing this toolkit, we will have conducted a survey of schools who have been using ICTs for past few years, in 11 countries globally with our 5000 respondents.

To learn more please visit the project website at, http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/gnre/.

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Last updated: November 15, 2004