World Economic Forum Global IT Report
The UK has come in 9th in the World Economic Forum’s Network Readiness Index with Denmark and Sweden coming in front. This is an improvement on our 10th ranking in 2005-6. The US has dropped from 1st in 2005-6 to 7th in 2006-7.
Looking at the last three years it seems that those in the top 10 stay fairly stable (Japan bobs around a bit!) with Singapore, Iceland Finland Denmark and the US generally doing well under this index. Interestingly, China and India are dropping a little with central America gaining ground. Sadly, Africa is not gaining ground in the index.
With regard to education, the summary states.
In education, IP networks are turning the traditional classroom into virtual schoolhouses that deliver education to remote students, life-long learners, and others. Essentially, education has been transformed from a teacher-led class to a student-centric experience accentuated by self-learning; peer-to-peer teaching; rich, readily available content; greater accessibility; and discovery-based learning.
That all sounds rather nice but it is not my experience here in the UK- perhaps that’s why we are not 1st! It’s something worth aiming for but I do wonder if ‘ learning platforms’ will take us closer. The key phase is ’ IP networks’: that’s the transformational technology and not any one application of it. The Internet, including ways of accessing it, is the platform.
Maybe I’ll try to wrangle a trip to a Nordic country by way of research to see how it’s done.