2008 One Laptop Per Child trial in East Sepik Province, Papua New Guinea.
Like my earlier post about Mauritania, I was inspired to look into education in Papua New Guinea (PNG) after a team meeting. Similar to last time, a manager explained that our company was sending an American male trainer to a site in PNG rather than the local one (in this case, a woman from our Australia office) “because it’s a Muslim country and they won’t allow female trainers.” That didn’t seem right to me, so I did a quick Wikipedia search and discovered that it’s actually 96% Christian. I mentioned that in the meeting, so a coworker suggested that the site needing the training might be using imported labor, perhaps Indonesian Muslims. I’m not sure if I’ll ever find out the real story, but it did make me wonder what the ed tech situation was there, if any.
A quick glance at education in PNG seems grim. As a developing country with an average income of around $2400 (UN data), school is not compulsory at any age and the “net enrollment” rate in basic education is only 52.9%, according to UNICEF. A YouTube search reveals several videos of schools there, if you want a more visceral understanding of their challenges.
One Laptop Per Child deployed some trials there in 2008, but it is unclear to me what the current state of the program is. Initial feedback reported in 2009 appeared positive, but a 2011 presentation on four site visits mentioned concerns such as schools losing Internet access, a “short supply” of electricity and “No clear financial plan for maintenance, replacement or repair of XOs, or for providing new XOs to incoming classes.”
At the higher ed level, I found two papers looking at e-learning at local universities — 2009’s “Enhancing Students Performance with E- Learning at the Papua New Guinea University of Technology” (which has limited Internet access and where “90% of the lectures are chalk and talk”) and 2012’s “The Evolution of Distance Learning and Factors Promoting ICT Use in the Pacific Islands: Focusing on the Possibility of E-learning Opportunities for Higher Education.” It mentioned an Internet penetration rate of under 1% in PNG (2.5% as of 2014) but also said that “under the influence of Australia, the development of e-learning courses has been quite active” at their universities, with “comprehensive” online diploma, certification and degree courses at the Catholic Divine Word University.
Searching through my Twitter feed, the only recent news I could find about PNG was the World Bank’s EduTech blog post “Promoting literacy with mobile phones in rural Papua New Guinea.” I highly recommend it as both a good overview of education issues in PNG and an in-depth look at an interesting project called “SMS Story” that sent daily text message stories to children. Inveneo also summarized the project more briefly, describing only the research and outcomes.
Through googling, I also came across a recent article about how researchers are using digital technology to preserve vanishing languages, specifically highlighting David Harrison‘s work in PNG, which has over 750 languages. While not specifically ed tech, it may certainly help people preserve their heritage as they move to a digital age, as well as benefit future learners. I also found an interesting TEDx talk by cultural anthropologist Michael Wesch, explaining how his experiences studying the implications of writing in PNG led him to focus on “the effects of social media and digital technology on global society.”
All in all, it seems PNG has more challenges than opportunities when it comes to education, but perhaps this will change as infrastructure improves, and with more international aid and interest in innovative development projects.
Ed Tech: A Global Exploration 