research projects

The findings indicated that most members of the Christchurch community had access to computers and mobile phones, as well as other forms of ICT. The most common uses of ICTs amongst Christchurch Muslims were to support study and to use the Internet to read and watch news from home. Many of the surveyed participants learned to use the ICTs by themselves, or with the help of friends and family. Few had taken a course or had tuition. Participants were interested in improving their ICT skills. However, barriers to learning, including language, lack of money and lack of time, prevented them from doing so. The Halal Union results echoed the findings from the Christchurch Muslim community, although a key difference was the lower usage rates, with the main purpose being for communication.

The findings indicated recommendations for improvements regarding the next steps in the Digital Outreach programme:

• Efforts are made to improve the level of access for Muslims to the Internet, especially via broadband.

• Provision of computers and software to the Canterbury Muslim community are targeted to the Somali and Kurdish groups, as these nationalities have the lowest levels of access.

• Training programmes are funded to help improve skills and awareness of the wider uses and relevance of ICTs to the lives of individuals and their communities.

• Training in ICTs is delivered in both English and community languages.

• Funding is provided to support training facilitators to deliver ICT courses in English and community languages.

• Funding is provided to train and support a webmaster to develop and run a website to help Muslim migrants settle in New Zealand.

The feedback from the trial schools indicated that, to be effective, the EPS for ICTs website should be used as part of a group workshop or series of professional development sessions, giving teachers the opportunity to discuss the results obtained from their EPS for ICTs maps. Teachers should be encouraged to keep a record of their EPS for ICT activity in order to evaluate their ongoing progress in assimilating ICTs into teaching and learning. The EPS for ICTs online tool provides valuable information for schools embarking on a development process that can be used again at a later stage to provide evidence of where progress has been made. Feedback provided identifies relative strengths, which can be targeted in future development activities and provides feedback to suggest the next steps that may be taken. An improved system, that enables whole school review, has been launched (EPS). This new model has been designed to enable teachers to establish what their educational landscape looks like and where they are located within it, as well as where the teacher would like to be and what they need to do to get there.