Educational reform and ICTs

The issue of introducing Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) into the field of education in Armenia arises within the feverish process of the transformation and development of educational system, where numerous problems, diverse and, at times, opposing trends and interests, old values, and new imperatives collide.

It is assumed that change will take place in the short term, without much thought or discussion. No one can explain how, for example, the ideology of the national school will be reconciled with principles exported from the western educational system, or whether it is possible to make modern information technologies (as a vehicle of western values) subservient to national values and educational ideals.

It is clear that the program of transforming the educational system must take into consideration the fundamental changes that have taken place in our country in recent years - the spread of consumer culture, the overthrow of values and ideals of the not-distant past, etc. It is not at all a rhetorical question whether it is at all possible to restore the deteriorated and distorted prestige of knowledge and education in a country like Armenia today, and what is more, to make the ability to learn a national strategic goal. In any case, the easiest way to describe the current transformation taking place in the field of education and within the very notion of education is through the change in the educational environment or the technological base - as a gradual passage from the print media and the model stipulated by it toward an educational systems based upon modern ICTs.

As the growth in importance of modern technologies and the necessity of possessing them has led to a new conception of literacy, different from the conventional notion, the essence of learning and teaching is undergoing major changes as well. Distance learning provides for new alternatives; the ways in which education is organized are changing, which makes it possible to move toward unlimited and uninterrupted distance leaning.

Three domains in education

In the first stage of the spread of computer and Internet use in Armenia , people received the necessary training spontaneously through private educational institutions that had appeared and thanks to projects sponsored by various international organizations. Today the situation is gradually changing: elements of ICT knowledge are introduced into school and university curricula. At the same time, centers providing public access to the Internet have been set up (with the assistance of IREX and the UNDP), and a specific, unavoidable trend has appeared - to integrate these educational initiatives into projects pursuing wider social objectives (such as developing communities, raising the level of local self government, or shaping democracy and civil society) which are implemented by, for example, Project Harmony or the UNDP. This process, however, raises a number of unanswered questions, in particular, because being exclusively handed over to the discretion of the foreign and international organizations, it is completely removed from local initiative and mechanisms for assessment and reform.

At the same time, if we take a sober look, we must state that thus far, no accentuated social demand for new knowledge has been taken shape. The unwantedness of international standards for assessment and professional skills, and the uncrowdedness, to put it mildly, of the certified training centers that have been established in the last one two years, is graphic evidence of this.

In terms of introducing and employing ICTs, the most complicated arena is, of course, school. Thus far, it is here that the most activity in the sense of project implementation can be seen. The current situation here is portrayed exclusively quantitatively - the number of schools with computer classes, the number of computers in a computer class, the number of schools with Internet access, and so on. It is likely that nothing else exists beyond these facts. There is no need to talk about qualitative changes, especially since qualitative changes are not envisaged in these projects. Elementary questions-What is the role of the computer (Internet) in education? How should the results of providing schools with computer classes be assessed? Is it a priority for Armenian schools to have Internet access when there is a nearly total absence of electronic educational content in the Armenian language?-have no clear-cut answers. The main importance is attached to equipment and Internet access, while the much more complicated problems related to software are neglected.

Compared to the other educational domains, Armenia 's universities are at this point the farthest removed from these processes. If we consider that the problem of training programmers for the software industry is somewhat solved, the appropriate training of a number of other specialists, including even school informatics teachers, is a task for the future. It is pointless to speak about the training of specialists who are able to introduce the ICTs into education or to conduct research related to the economic social and cultural significance of these technologies, though this is how the effectiveness of universities in modernizing the domains of schools and public education should be manifested.

Distance learning is at a low level for a number of reasons - problems related to the telecommunication system in Armenia (high costs of connection and low reliability), the issue of the accessibility of computers and computer knowledge, and the absence of specialists, teaching methods, and curricula...

To be continued.