Yesterday a writer at Ars Technica asked How wide is the world’s digital divide, anyway? More specifically, the writer was wondering about the penetration rates of broadband in various countries. In a survey of 127 countries:

only 10 countries are above 80 percent—mostly small places like Hong Kong, Singapore, Denmark, and South Korea. Together, the ten countries in this bracket account for only two percent of the world population.

Access to broadband in other countries is much, much lower. Eighty eight other countries were not included in the study because they had no home broadband penetration.

Does that make me proud to be Singaporean? No, it actually depresses me as a world citizen. It depresses me further when I think about how little we do in Singapore education with the much that we have.

The day before the Ars Technica article was published, the World Bank highlighted how broadband access and mobile technologies were key to economic growth. Their report claimed that:

for every 10 percentage-point increase in high-speed Internet connections there is an increase in economic growth of 1.3 percentage points.

Assuming that the World Bank methods for arriving at this conclusion were sound, this should make any politician or government official jump into action. At least, one would think so. After all, if you have to grab someone, you should do so where they will take notice: In the balls. Eye balls that is. Oh, and the wallet area too.

(On a side note, the second article also mentioned in passing that greater broadband access would “promote social inclusion”. I guess we might have to wait for someone to write about what Web 2.0 denizens already understand.)

What matters to me obviously is technology in education. I champion mobile and Web 2.0 technologies because I think that they are key tools for promoting more relevant forms of teaching and learning. They can shift the power of learning to students because they get information for themselves, learn from anyone from any part of the world, and ultimately learn to think for themselves. Learning takes place any place, any time and in any way.

So when opportunities arise, I urge the school personnel that I meet to set up wireless access and to buy netbooks for students instead of refreshing the computers in labs. When I meet industry representatives who tout netbooks or mobile Internet access, I try to convince them to collaborate with schools.

But I swim against the current. I see companies and schools (and, unfortunately, some of my colleagues) pushing things like Interactive White Boards (IWBs) and outdated Learning Management Systems (LMS). IWBs keep technology largely in the hands of teachers and promote teacher-centric pedagogy. LMS are more often about control than about creativity, communication, collaboration and critical thinking. Both IWBs and LMS are money spinners for the companies that sell them, but they are outdated technologies as far as progressive education is concerned.

Not only should teachers be putting relevant and relatively-cheap-yet-powerful technologies in the hands of students, they should be practising more student-centred pedagogies. They should be modelling and imparting 21st century skills and values instead of beating the 19th century education horse to death.

But if they must use IWBs, then how might they use them regularly and meaningfully so that students learn real world collaboration skills? If LMS are heavily invested in schools, then how might they be integrated into everyday curriculum so that students learn to create and critique instead of learning merely to copy, and conform?

Don’t get me wrong. There is a place and time for didactic forms of teaching. But that place should not be everywhere and all the time and it certainly should not be the pedestal where it still rests. Just because you are talking does not mean that students are listening and learning!

Teachers should stop shifting the blame on why they don’t rely more on student-centred, technology-mediated pedagogies to a lack of time or a tight curriculum or the exam system. If they keep their students’ needs and futures in mind, all these obstacles become insignificant. Schools in Singapore have the money, the motivation and the means to make this happen. Are we going to let inertia and old mindsets hold us back?