Last week, I shared some of the great prospects of Osun State's giant strides and heavy investment in the Opon imo project. For all that has been said about the landmark innovation, so much has not been understood about how radically it stands to impact education, knowledge sharing and the Nigerian economy as a whole. It may be difficult to quantify how much it would have cost to print all those books in each tablet for the students in the state. The cost can only be imagined.
In an estimate, it would have probably taken a whole forest of massive trees covering a land mass, the size of 10 football pitches, to achieve the feat.
In this era of global warming and other environmental and economic dangers of deforestation, erosion and countless numbers of animal and plant species that could be endangered by such a devastating loss of natural habitat, and with all these saved by compressing all the books in a tablet, the benefits of e-Learning cannot, therefore, be over-emphasised.
With a barrage of informative and highly creative 3D simulations, cartoons, feature films and other educative materials that are easily available on the Internet, young people are better informed about taking to the right lifestyle and making survival decisions in more responsible ways. They are now better informed, knowing how such decisions ultimately affect the quality of life in terms of its dominant effects on other people and for generations to come.
It is particularly imperative that we put e-Learning in a proper perspective of its relevance to contemporary global issues. Otherwise, it will amount to teaching a child how to pluck mangos on a tree with an instrument without letting him or her know other positive uses and dangers of it. This is particularly important because virtually all ICT tools that are crucial to e-Learning are equally laden with other potentially harmful uses to which an uninformed and unsupervised child may be exposed.
Let us look at just two of these ICT landmines that are inherent in the use of ICT as a vital tool in e-Learning.
First is the issue of security. In today's world of hacking, password theft, Internet fraud and other dangerous criminal activities being perpetrated through the internet and other ICT tools and means, an average student must be informed enough to appreciate the real dangers these tools pose to health and life. Being taught to be more responsible with the information they disclose about themselves to the media will go a long way in denying criminals and other undesirable elements of the crucial information they need to perpetrate their nefarious activities. As cybercrime assumes more frightening dimensions, efforts must be put in place to prevent more young people from being lured into it, as much as they need to be enlightened about becoming victims.
The other crucial aspect of ICT use in e-Learning that I consider very important as it impacts sustainable development is its importance as an instrument of value orientation in the society. There is no debating the fact that just as much as the proliferation of the printing press in the early 16th Century democratised learning, to such extent also, it seems that modern innovations in ICT has greatly de-emphasised the importance of value-orientation as an integral part of technological innovations.
There is no denying the fact that something of the cultural milieu produces an invention that informs its design and features which must be taken into consideration in adapting it to other environments.
This means that it is not just enough that we adopt these tools for our own use; we must take further steps to ensure that they adequately suit our peculiar challenges, identity, goals and aspiration as a people.
This need is premised on the fact that, even the notion of sustainable development in itself is a value-laden discourse. Variously defined as development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs, any government's plan or programme aimed at sustainable development has failed intrinsically if it fails to protect and sustain the viability of the people's historical and cultural identities like language and social norms. Such concerns are what informed the policy drive dictating the pace, texture and direction of the application of ICT to education.
The place of policy in deploying ICT in e-Learning cannot be overemphasized; it takes inputs from the social, economic and environmental indices of development to design the content and structure of the learning process.
Such policy should thus provide an impetus to drive other aspects of knowledge application and information, sharing in ways that drive development in other crucial sectors of the economy such as entertainment, agriculture, security, and commerce.
However, it would seem as if individuality is the bane of modern technology as exemplified in the use and misuse of ICT tools.
Thus, efforts must be made to ensure that we appreciate technology as not a thing in itself but as a tool of social relation. And as such, it must not be allowed to replace real, healthy and supportive interactions between people – even for educational purposes.
However, the fact remains that beyond its dangers, ICT in education at such early level of education, offers a huge leverage for the Nigerian child to stand on the shoulder of technology to influence a much more promising future for himself and for our dear country – Nigeria.
