In SL, there had been IRDP’s from June 1974 in 19 districts (sadly ignoring districts in N/E)and most have had second phase extentions too. All these IRDP’s(some were later redesigned as REAP) were heavily funded by foreign donor agencies. But their performances were pathetic to say the least. The maximum utility of committed funds have never gone beyond 40%. And most have been on “rent, vehicles, foreign training for project staff, salaries, etc. The SL administration system, which is the apex implementing tool, is a wholly inefficient and corrupt apparatus. Also, NONE of these IRDP’s had anything to do with primary and secondary education. And the rural society has NOT GAINED anything out of them, after more than 30 years. Thus the issue of rural development, that needs to include education reforms to go hand in glove with rural market expansion, appropriate technology for value addition to products and services, improved infrastructure, that would increasingly absorb school leaving youth into decent and viable livelihoods.

Take this summary into count. At an average, around 450,000 sit O/L annually. Around 170,000 qualify to pursue A/L. Out of this segment, only about 75,000 QUALIFY to enter University, but only about 20,000 are admitted annually. What is there in the education system for those 280,000 who terminate education at the O/L exams? And then the other 150,000 who miss universities? Unless they have an opportunity to get to some limited stream in Colombo, which is darn little, the majority which should be over 90% of the 430,000 “missed outs” are, FRUSTRATED YOUTH, with no place to go in their future.

This is why, education and development needs to be taken together in discussions of this nature. Why rural development becomes a component in discussing education.
Thanks

I totally agree with your comments regarding the lack of learning content. This is why I assigned high priority to the development of CAL material(see my previous post)to be used in e-Learning. You may have the infrastructure and even trained staff but if you don’t have the content to be delivered, overall objective of e-learning cannot be achieved.

From my personal experience, I can confirm development of CAL material is a very time consuming effot which require pooling of several different special skills. As a rule of thumb, it is believed that about 300-400 differently skilled manhours are required to design and develop a learning content that can be studied in one hour.

Development of learning content is in our own languages is a good idea. However, I feel that we should try to make e-leaners learn English and Computer skills so that they can even access internationally developed contents through the Internet, etc. High prioirity should be given to teach these skills to e-learners first.

Regards.

The Tele Center Operators have not been trained well, they have lots of problems and
broken promises by Tele Center Creaters.

There is no e-Learning facility at Nenasala, Not even in simple form, No educational content in local language, So how can you support e- learning.

It is heartening to see a healthy discussion taking place on this interesting topic. I like the introduction to the topic made in the above aticle. It sets a general background for us to start discussions. I also agree that in this fast changing world of ICT it may not be proper to rely on data which are older than 10 years. Even without any hard statistics, we can easily visualise the changes that have occurred duing the last 10 years in terms of ICT in this country. Thanks for the updated statistics provided by some subsequent contributors to this forum.

I am aware of several national initiatives currently underway with an objective to expand/popularise e-Learning in Sri Lanka. They include initiatives launched by ICTA, Nenasalas,SEMP and Disance Eduation Modernisation Project (DEMP) funded by ADB.

e-Learning can be used to minimise the social disparities that exist between rural and urban communities of our country. If the opportunities provided by the new technology is not properly used the existing disparities will be further enlarged and the rural communities will be further marginalisd by what we call “Digital Divide”

I see three important areas that need to be addressed in popularising e-Learning in Sri Lanka:

1) Provision of relaible, fast (sufficient bandwidth) and affordable ICT networks and related infrastructure,
2) Campaign to increase IT awareness and IT literacy throughout the country (including English language competence)
3) Sound Instructional Design of Computer Aided Learning (CAL) material to teach important subject matters using CD ROMS,Intranets, and the Internet.

Out of the three areas mentioned above, I feel that the real challenges are in the area of development/expansion of skills in Instrutional Design (ID).

I would like invite you all to read a few articles I have written recently on these topics. Please read them when you have time and let me have your comments. Realted links are given below.

1) e-Learning: An Excellent Opportunity to Bridge the Economic and Social Gaps Between Urban and Rural Sectors (http://gaminipad.blogspot.com/2005/11/article.html)
2) Instructional Design: Means to Ensure Effective Learning (http://gaminipad.blogspot.com/2007/03/instructional-design-means-to-ensure.html)
3) Blended Learning: How Can Sri Lankan Rural Masses Benefit? (http://gaminipad.blogspot.com/2007/03/blended-learning-how-can-sri-lankan.html)
4) Online Tutoring and Mentoring (http://gaminipad.blogspot.com/2006/05/online-tutoring-and-mentoring_29.html)

Regards,

Gamini Padmaperuma
(former Senior Lecturer of the OUSL)

45%+ (July 2006) of the households in WP have phones, as opposed to your figure of 10.3%.In NorthWestern it was 23.1% last year, not 1.1% as you say. There is hardly any young person in Colombo (aside from the poorest of the poor) who doesn’t have a computer and a mobile phone.

Netsurfing in communication centres is incredibly cheap. Have you ever been to one? PCs and internet are also quite affordable, especially considering the fact that Sri Lanka is no longer a low income country. I remember when I was in Sri Lanka (late 90s/early noughties) my parents wouldn’t let me use the internet but there was a whole network of young kids trading hacked SLT passwords and using Moratuwa uni’s Learnmail (popsmtp) for free. Our mating call was “do you wanna swap hora passwords”.

You’re using some outdated statistics to support a similarly outdated preconceived opinion of Colombo being unfairly advantaged and most Sri Lankans being shit poor. This is not really true for 2007. You really need to get out more.

Your catchy militant slogan may have been suitable for 1996, but even the JVP would not use it today. Much of your commentary show an old-left bias, generally seen among rural boys made good. You’re really out of touch uncle.

Consumer Finance Survey data from 2004 are available in any of the Central Bank reports that were issued since then (and CBSL reports can be downloaded free from the website). I have these numbers in excel and in slide format. If anyone wishes to post them on the web I can provide them.