The Role of ICTs in Rural Schools of Patagonia

Abstract

UNESCO indicates that one of the biggest problems we have to solve in the early twenty-first century is the abolition of differences between individuals and cultures. Intercultural education is a necessary and urgent alternative in order to change the current situation, and ICTs, with their potential to meet and interact with people from different countries and cultures, offer interesting tools in this matter. Argentina acknowledges the right of indigenous people to access bilingual and intercultural education and seeks to improve teachers’ skills to achieve a better quality of education that allows equal opportunities. However, recent research (Slavsky, 2006; Binstock, 2008) has demonstrated that in the province of Neuquen, with a high rate of aboriginal people (Mapuche), the reality is that schools are far from having achieved this target. There is no clear policy to solve this intercultural problem and a program of integration of ICTs in the classroom has not yet been implemented. This chapter presents data on the educational reality of Neuquen and the use of ICTs in schools, based on the opinion of students, teachers, and school managers. It also analyzes the performance of students and its relation to the use of technological tools.