Invited speeches: The language factor in ICT education: A case from rural Pakistan

Author

Hussain, Sarmad

Author_Institution

Nat. Univ. of Comput. & Emerging Sci., Lahore, Pakistan

fYear

2009

fDate

19-20 Oct. 2009

Abstract

ICTs have an immense potential to contribute to socio-economic development of Pakistan. ICT Education is a necessary pre-requisite, to enable Pakistanis to use ICTs to access online content and to generate it. However, 91% schools of Pakistan are not English medium, and only 10% of Pakistanis are English literate. In the context ICT education and use can only be effective in local languages. The current presentation highlights a recent project to qualitatively and quantitatively assess the significance of the language factor in ICT education in rural public schools. The results show an overwhelming need to localize ICTs and training to develop an inclusive knowledge society in Pakistan.

Keywords

linguistics; societies; socio-economic effects; ICT education; inclusive knowledge society development; language factor; qualitative assessment; quantitative assessment; socio economic development; Asia; Biographies; Computer science; Computer science education; Educational institutions; Government; Natural languages; Speech processing; Standardization;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Emerging Technologies, 2009. ICET 2009. International Conference on

Conference_Location

Islamabad

Print_ISBN

978-1-4244-5630-7

Electronic_ISBN

978-1-4244-5631-4

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/ICET.2009.5353218

Filename

5353218