Appointment of the Core Management Team and Initial Documents

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4. Definition of the Pilot Stage and Staff Development Plan

The benefits of a pilot stage as the starting point for an ICT Program have been discussed extensively in this document. It serves to gain experience and to obtain information for the next broader steps. The size of the pilot phase ought to take into account the availability of capable ICT trainers, the budget allotted for such purpose, and the convenience to test trial responses from the most typical school categories i.e., large and small, urban and rural, public and private. At this stage, it will also be necessary to prepare plans for a teacher-training program that must be set up at a very early stage. This plan will call for a state-of-the-art teacher-learning model that includes a number of aspects that have been previously discussed. These include teacher’s beliefs and attitudes towards innovation, learning methodologies, use of educational software, possible use of e-learning systems, production of exemplary practices, hardware and software trouble-shooting skills. Presently, given the many exemplary ICT programs put in place by countries from different areas in the world, it is possible to find an already made in-service ICT staff development program that, with some reformulation, could fit a new program’s requirements and without the costs it would take to start from scratch See WorldLinks 25 , Intel’s Teach to The Future 26 and UNESCO 27 initiatives. The possibility of sharing resources and developing training programs with neighboring countries could also be considered as an eventual policy issue. The teacher training plan may require production of curriculum-related learning activities, such as examples of “good practices” and some Internet content that may have to be ready before teacher training activities begin. During this stage, the management team should also allocate time for the following tasks: § To study and decide upon the configuration of hardware and software the schools will be provided with, and whether this configuration will vary according to school enrolment, class size, and level of education. § To write the terms of reference and decide on the technical specifications for the first hardware and software procurement, which should be conducted via public bidding. When the budget comes through a loan or a grant from an international agency, this documentation has to be prepared several months in advance because it must be cleared not only by the country’s administrative and budgetary technical staff, but also by those from the granting or loaning agency. Therefore, it is important to approach all other decisions that are incidental to procurements, during the first quarter of the year. § To draft the terms of reference for an independent high-quality external Task Force for baseline and future evaluations. Without solid assessment and baseline data, it will become virtually impossible to monitor whether the ICT policies have had the desired outcome and whether further fine-tuning needs to be considered. The definition of the number and type of schools to be included in the pilot stage, their geographical location, the number of teachers to be trained and similar decisions will produce the necessary information for the definition of the initial budget. It will also provide input for a possible expansion of the core management team and of the institutions that will have to be called in for help e.g. universities in different regions. 25 WorldLinks is a World Bank Institute’s initiative. See: http:www.worldbank.orgworldlinks . 26 Intel’s Teach to the Future initiative has trained more than a million teachers worldwide. See: http:www97.intel.comeducationteachindex.htm 27 UNESCO http:www.unesco.org has a comprehensive “curriculum for schools and programme of teacher development” under its “Education and ICTs” theme. 71 These initial priorities should help with the main decisions during the first year of the ICT Program implementation. However, they should not be taken literally and each country ought to define its priorities according to its own reality and its broader educational policies. Also, at the beginning of the program, it will be important to avoid embarking on technology-driven solutions offered by hardware and software vendors in exchange for special pricing conditions.