The article's purpose is to compare case studies of computer technology use at two rural elementary schools across two international settings. This study uses the Social Construction of Technology (SCOT) theory to guide this comparative investigation of how elementary school teachers and students in East Texas and South India construct meaning for…

Purpose: Earlier research on "Hole-in-the-Wall (HiWEL)" conclusively indicated groups of children pick up computer literacy on their own and are adept at performing basic functions such as cut, copy, paste, surf the internet to answer high-end questions. Research also indicates that children self-organize themselves to figure out things…

Purpose: Information technology (IT) has tremendous potential for fostering grassroots development and the Indian government has created various capital-intensive computer networks to promote agricultural development. However, research studies have shown that information technology investments are not always translated into productivity gains due…

In this article, the practicability of introduction of computer multimedia as an educational tool was compared with the traditional approach for training sugarcane growers in ratoon management practices in three villages of Tamil Nadu state, India using pre-test, post-test control group experimental design. A CD-ROM was developed as a multimedia…

Earlier work at unsupervised playground computer kiosks in rural India, popularly called "hole-in-the-wall", showed that children exposed to these kiosks learn to use computers on their own and that they are able to clear school examinations in computer science, without any classroom teaching for it. Extending this, our recent research…

Earlier work, often referred to as the "hole in the wall" experiments, has shown that groups of children can learn to use public computers on their own. This paper presents the method and results of an experiment conducted to investigate whether such unsupervised group learning in shared public spaces is universal. The experiment was…

The Computers in Education (Comped) study was designed as a two-stage survey. The first stage (1987-1990) was aimed at gathering information from a representative sample of schools at elementary, lower secondary and upper secondary level with regard to the state of computer use in education. The survey's focus was on the extent and availability of…

Technology provides a new and effective tool for accelerating economic growth, and developing countries are embracing technology and education as the means toward attaining economic parity with the United States and other developed nations. Evidence suggests that this strategy is paying off. Developing countries are building a technology…