Abstract:

Economic growth without equity constitutes one of the most pressing challenges for human development in Latin America. Even if poverty levels have fallen in many countries over the last two decades, advances in income distribution are more modest or even negative. Latin America remains the region with the highest inequity indexes in the world.
Education can and must be a central component in the search for more equitable societies. Inequalities in the years of schooling, to name but one indicator, have strong correlations in income inequality. Development and educational policies must explicitly include equity-related targets, such as completion of school years up to the end of the secondary cycles, compensating for the urban-rural educational divide and fostering university studies among disadvantages groups (such as indigenous communities).

ICTs can play an important role to improve equality of educational opportunities, through a variety of channels that include, among others, (i) the improved distribution of quality educational resources, (ii) stimulating and facilitating learning or (iii) better and more direct support to teachers, particularly those away from urban centers. Many governments in the region are actively exploring 1:1 models, ie. those where every students gets a laptop or netbook computer. Important as these new initiatives are, they may focus too much on the equipment or infrastructure.

We believe that collaborative networks in the educational sector can be particularly effective mechanisms through which foster and empower teachers and school officials for improving educational equity. On the one hand, their operational fabric is ICT-based, given our context of the Information or Network Society. In this regard, they will help build technology capacity among the people and organizations involved. But more importantly, these networks can strengthen the ability for collaborative projects and actions, setting a fertile ground on which they can flourish.
This paper explores how existing educational networks can play a part in advancing educatinal equity in Latin America. It includes networks of two main categories: one, of an institutional type such as RELPE or Red Latinoamericana de Portales Educativos (http://www.relpe.org/ ); two, of a school-net or twinning nature, such as Aulas Hermanas (http://www.aulashermanas.org/index.html). It will describe how they were established, their evolution and how they have already planted the seeds for innovation in education in the region. In particular, it will examine how these networks can form part of Open Development trends where individual and collective talent has growing access to quality information and knowledge resources.

Keywords:

Equity, educational networks, portal networks, school-nets, ICT.