Evaluating a mobile tablet project in rural South Africa against criteria to comply with being an innovative educational ecosystem

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate a specific mobile technology rural schools project known as ICT4E in South Africa to determine if it complies to be regarded as an innovative educational ecosystem. The criteria that were used were sourced from the literature. The project was explained and why it is regarded as a rural school mobile tablet project in education. Some high-level results and lessons learnt from this project are also provided that was used to evaluate whether it can be regarded as an instantiation of an innovative educational ecosystem. The evaluation methodology was applied to do the evaluation. The main results were that based on the criteria and the findings from the ICT4E project it could be regarded as an instantiation of an innovative educational ecosystem as it complied to most of the criteria except for two where it only partially complied. The project was also seen as a good example of how a country’s system of innovation can be supported from a socio-cultural context-specific perspective.