Translation - Kehittyvät maat etäopetuksen edelläkävijöinä?

Developing countries in the first row of eLearning?
Without any doubt, one cornerstone of our welfare society in Finland is our comprehensive school system which strives to serve all equally. Sometimes it has also criticized been criticised to be over-equal in certain contexts - who knows. Anyway, education equality is at a very high standard in Finland, also found so through international research. Our good teacher education system ensures that we always have good results and our free comprehensive school system shows the true meaning of cost free education for parents. The school health care system in Finland is efficient and systematic as well, although having some regional variety. Overall, our system offers good basics for students’ life after school.
The reality in developing areas is different. Good standard education is a privilege for few and not an option for many children or adults. Mostly external factors are what define the lives the people instead of personal decision; for instance, the possibility of one learning how to read before adulthood, or if one will get information on how HIV can be prevented, or how central issue like clean drinking water for healthy life is. One central external factor behind this division is for instance if a child is living in a major city or in rural areas. Naturally, there also exists villages that can offer qualified education and safe environment for growing children, but these examples are unfortunately rather uncommon.
In this project of SharingAwareness.org we will concentrate on these kinds of villages which lack in the knowledge of basic things that are useful for their wellbeing. In our projects, we promote participatory involvement and would like to increase community responsibility and ownership. The real change makers must be the villagers themselves; otherwise I can’t see possibility for sustainable change. Our role as outsiders will be to offer additional knowledge on necessary things, and to give strong support to the community’s commitment for the change. That change can be phenomenal and rip down old traditions which may have been harmful to the societies. One tool to make this outside help easier will be modern technology, especially mobile phones. As developing countries become wealthier, the amount of money used for mobile phones is growing faster compared to anything else like water or energy. Whatever thoughts this raises in our minds, it offers huge possibilities for our work. Now we have a concrete tool in our hands, to show our interest towards these villages and their development, even from Finland. Once we return back from the villages after very short education period, we are not going to leave the responsible people in the villages alone with their challenges. We are reachable anytime, and operate as active partners from a distance through eCommunication.
The usage of mobile phones is going to be rather unlimited. Mobile technology is in actual fact computer technology and all the data moves everywhere in a flash around the world via satellites. Even in developing countries? Yes in deed, permanent Internet connections are just coming there, but mobile networks are very common and are working well. That offers a huge possibility to support these areas in the long run and we can begin now. MKFC Stockholm College has been a great pioneer in this work, and achieved great success in Ghana, for instance. It is great to join this innovative group and search for the next step forward. Our national policy in developmental politics strongly supports this aim, and I assume we may be closer to the situation in the topic. Developing countries truly can stay in the first row in using eLearning. That could be the way how to construct a good future for them – a future where accessibility to basic education is equal for each child – not depending on the location, condition of health or the living standard of his parents. Just like in Finland.