Overall+Comparisons+and+Conclusions





While South Korea and New Zealand both have solid e-learning policies in place and their respective ministries have plans to further develop current practices their focus seems to be more on the tool, rather than the content of the learning. South Korea is more commercially driven than New Zealand and Africa, seeing the economic potential of e-learning in terms of creating jobs and generating sales for domestic high-tech industries. Africa would find itself struggling to find only commercial reasons to develop e-learning as for them it is still about reaching out to students who have until recently not had access to the education system.

In comparing these three countries current practices and future visions for e-learning it seems clear that Africa is a long way behind in both policy development and infrastructure. Only a small number of countries have developed policies for e-learning and a significant area of Africa still encounters problems with electricity and internet connections. Africa seems to be working around this problem by turning to solutions such as mobile phones for continuing e-learning practices, rather than developing the infrastructure.

Africa needs to focus on developing policies and plans and reaching out to its students in innovative ways to overcome the problems such as a lack of infrastructure. Although the unreliability of electricity and internet connections are known to the government, it seems as though this may take them awhile to address these issues. So many African countries are making their own way in the development of e-learning and focusing on meeting the immediate needs of students. Because both South Korea and New Zealand have substantial infrastructure compared to Africa, their concentration seems to have moved away from meeting the direct requirements of students and seems to have become more about having cutting edge technologies available for their e-learning practices. As with so many countries around the world, broadband has a profound effect on how people work and live. It has become associated with the concept that broadband is a significant driver of national competitiveness and economic growth. As both much of South Korea and New Zealand have access to broadband internet it has facilitated in transforming e-learning. According to [|Kim, Kelly and Raja] (2010) Korea revolutionized itself by having a vision of the information society, “The government is following a holistic approach to developing the broadband ecosystem and adopting broader social and economic features to low and middle income countries.” Broadband is extremely well established across South Korea, providing 97% to a subscription base of 47 million, as of June 2009.



All three countries have identified the need for up-skilling teachers, which indicates policies and practices that have been put into place have been going ahead without satisfactory training. For Africa it has been due to limited access to training facilities and being unaware of what is becoming available in e-learning technologies. New Zealand and South Korea are aspiring for teachers to become more creative and enthused in integrating e-learning practices in their classrooms to exploit rather than tame technology.

For all the progress that South Korea is making in e-learning [|Choi and Ahn](2010) found that, "despite the fact that online learning has grown rapidly in a decade there seems to be a lack of of effort for quality control." It would seem that across the board professional development of teachers is going to assist in further development of e-learning practices.

Although the topic of computer addiction was not discussed, in closing we consider it warrants mention due to its potential impact on society. If we look to South Korea, as the most advanced nation, as some form of social barometer, its “growing pains of becoming the world's first fully fledged information society” (McCurry, 2010) already provided us with pause for thought about the potential negative impact on children of ubiquitous computing in education. The Guardian.Co.UK Has the following [|report]

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[|Here is the place] to post any final thoughts: