Pune: Distance education is growing in India and should continue to do so, but the country should follow UNESCO guidelines to weed out unscrupulous players, a group of educationists said here on Thursday. Educationists from countries like Britain, Australia, Malaysia and Canada who met here on Thursday along with those from India to discuss the need and advantage of providing higher education through private distance educational institutes said India should follow Unesco guidelines to weed out unscrupulous players.

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Learning ‘using’ technologies has become a global phenomenon. The Internet is often seen as a value-neutral tool that potentially allows individuals to overcome the constraints of traditional elitist spaces and gain unhindered access to learning.

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When John Sexton, the president of New York University, first met Omar Saif Ghobash, an investor trying to entice him to open a branch campus in the United Arab Emirates, Mr. Sexton was not sure what to make of the proposal — so he asked for a $50 million gift.

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UNESCO sponsored a project aiming at developing distance education in Afghanistan by creating the Educational Radio and Television (ERTV).

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This paper challenges conventional policy development and evaluation approaches that emphasize the instrumental side of technology. There is a growing gap between conventional planning and evaluation approaches for rural broadband ICTs that seek to demonstrate a direct link between investments and results on the one hand; and on the other, with evidence that the contribution of ICTs to rural economic, social and cultural wellbeing is increasingly difficult to demonstrate beyond short-term measurable indicators. The paper proposes an alternative paradigm based on socio-technical systems, stakeholder engagement, an acknowledgement of the multiple dimensions at play, and the growing evidence of unpredictability of ICTs. The paper emphasizes a perspective based on ‘contribution’, not attribution; policy-making that is both adaptive and inclusive of multiple perspectives; methodological testing of emerging evaluation methodologies, and projects as learning experiments. This alternative theoretical and policy making paradigm is encapsulated in a metaphor based on the management of natural resources where stakeholders track their own indicators of impact by reading how the system responds to a project intervention.

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n "Thinking Ahead: A Vision of the Role of ICT in Education and Research in the Future, 2007–2010," the higher education institutions in the Netherlands agreed on future strategy. Under the direction of SURF, the Dutch national organization, a collaborative strategy for the application of information and communications technology (ICT) was formulated. The starting point for the strategy was the needs of individual users: how can higher education best organize and support the individual's workflow with fast, secure, and relevant services?

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This paper discusses research and development work currently being conducted with universities in Bhutan and Nepal to design appropriate systems for distance and distributed learning courses among a network of campus sites. Although working from a high level of awareness of pedagogic skills, staff in the region face two significant impediments in the adoption of a more open culture of learning. Firstly, Internet access is improving rapidly, but is still generally too weak and inconsistent to allow any reliance on net-based learning solutions. Secondly, the academic culture is resistant to the recognition of the value of open-learning degrees, with subsequent difficulties in re-designing course materials for a more educationally flexible, student-centred learning environment. Some current pilot initiatives in distributed learning are described. Methods for addressing these two impediments are discussed.

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As the world shrinks ISTE continues to learn with and from the global education community and to provide leadership around the world.

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Organizations from Australia, United States and United Kingdom to Research Value of Education Technology

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Microsoft Vietnam launched Friday its online Partners in Learning program including e-learning solutions and Teachers Network.

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