SRI Announces Findings of World Bank Program to Prepare Students in Developing Countries for the Internet Age

Youths Gain Knowledge and Skills through Internet Connectivity to Succeed and Contribute to Their Country's Development
 
Menlo Park, Calif. (February 16, 2000) -- In an effort to build global and educational online communities for secondary school students and teachers around the world, SRI International's Center for Technology in Learning today released the findings of its World Bank's World Links for Development (WorLD) Monitoring and Evaluation study.
 
In response to widespread requests from developing countries to assist them in preparing their youth to enter the information age, WorLD began in 1997 as a philanthropic pilot initiative of the World Bank. In countries where paper, pencils, and textbooks are often in short supply, WorLD aims to link at least 3,000 secondary schools in 40 developing countries by the end of year 2004. By providing internet connectivity, collaborative projects, and educational networks to schools across the globe, youth gain the knowledge, technical skills, and enhanced cultural understanding they need to succeed in the 21^st century and contribute to their country's development as part of a global economy.
 
The WorLD program consists of five components:

The goal of SRI's Center for Technology in Learning's Monitoring and Evaluation component of the program is to provide the World Bank and educational ministries of participating countries with information about results and implementation of the program as well as the challenges faced by students, teachers and administrators.
 
The evaluation was conducted at the end of the 1999 school year in five of the currently 15 participating countries: Chile, Paraguay, Peru, Senegal and Uganda. (Plans are in place to continue the evaluation in subsequent years and expand it to other countries.) In total, 26 WorLD schools with 20,000 students and 1,200 teachers and administrators were asked to evaluate the impact of the program upon student learning and the impact of computers within the WorLD program. The highest rated impact of the program was students' ability to get better jobs upon graduation. Moreover, a large number of students indicated that they had acquired the technological and communication skills they needed to succeed in the information economy.
 
A large majority of teachers agreed that students improved their information, communication, collaboration, technological skills, and attitudes as a result of their participation in the WorLD program. Teachers and administrators also concurred that they too acquired new skills and attitudes in both technology and pedagogy as a result of participating in the program.
 
The results of the SRI Center for Technology in Learning's study prove that information technology holds the potential for making a significant contribution to world educational, economic, and cross-cultural development. The WorLD program intends to thoroughly integrate the SRI Monitoring and Evaluation component into its services to help the program meet its biggest challenge: turning these early successes in the classroom into sustained educational progression. SRI International aims to leverage these early accomplishments to stimulate new educational reform efforts and capitalize on those already in place within each country.
 
About SRI International
Silicon Valley-based SRI International (http://www.sri.com) is one of the world's largest independent research, technology development and consulting organizations. Founded in 1946 as the Stanford Research Institute, SRI has been meeting the strategic needs of global markets for more than 50 years. As part of its strategy to bring its technologies to the marketplace, SRI licenses its technologies, forms strategic partnerships and creates spin-off companies.
 
SRI International's Center for Technology in Learning (http://www.sri.com/policy/ctl/) is a leading research and development center that advances theory and research on effective learning and teaching and applies these insights to the innovative design, use and assessment of interactive learning environments.
 
About the World Bank Group
Founded in 1944, the World Bank Group (http://www.worldbank.org) is the world's largest source of development assistance, providing nearly $30 billion in loans annually to its client countries. The World Bank uses its financial resources, highly trained staff, and extensive knowledge base to individually help each developing country onto a path of stable, sustainable, and equitable growth. The main focus is on helping the poorest people and the poorest countries and to fight poverty with passion and professionalism for lasting results.