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national systems grapple with the challenge of how best to deploy the potential of ICT to the benefit of students, educators and countries. A wide range of digital applications exist that can be used to create and distribute educational materials. (Details are provided in Appendices Three and Four.)
The long-term impact of ICT on education is still largely a matter of conjecture (often driven by ideological determinism or commercial marketing), and will only really start to become fully clear over the next 15 to 20 years. Nevertheless, certain trends in ICT use that are relevant to education have emerged that have a bearing on discussions about OER:
- ICT use is expanding the range of options available to educational planners in terms of the teaching and learning strategies they choose to use, providing an often bewildering array of choices in terms of systems design options, teaching and learning combinations, and strategies for administering and managing education.
- ICT use is allowing for exponential increases in the transfer of data through increasingly globalized communication systems, and connecting growing numbers of people through those networks.
- ICT networks have significantly expanded the potential for organizations to expand their sphere of operations and influence beyond their traditional geographical boundaries.
- ICT use is reducing barriers to entry of potential competitors to educational institutions, by reducing the importance of geographical distance as a barrier, by reducing the overhead and logistical requirements of running educational programmes and research agencies, and by expanding cheap access to information resources.
- There has been an explosion in collective sharing and generation of knowledge as a consequence of growing numbers of connected people, and the proliferation of so-called Web 2.0 technologies.[1] Consequently, collective intelligence and mass amateurization are pushing the boundaries of scholarship, while dynamic knowledge creation and social computing tools and processes are becoming more widespread and accepted.
- ↑ Wikipedia notes that 'Web 2.0…refers to a supposed second generation of Internet-based services – such as social networking sites, wikis, communication tools, and folksonomies – that emphasize online collaboration and sharing among users… In the opening talk of the first Web 2.0 conference, Tim O'Reilly and John Battelle summarized key principles they believed characterized Web 2.0 applications:
- The Web as a platform
- Data as the driving force
- Network effects created by an architecture of participation
- Innovation in assembly of systems and sites composed by pulling together features from distributed, independent developers (a kind of "open source" development)
- Lightweight business models enabled by content and service syndication
- The end of the software adoption cycle ("the perpetual beta")
- Software above the level of a single device, leveraging the power of The Long Tail.'
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