ICT in education in indonesia

ICT and Education in Indonesia

I. Introduction
In the beginning globalization is fully believed to be able to lead to greater economic
development in the sense of greater market scale, which in turn will increase the gross
national product. So people believed that poor countries or third world countries will
develop faster, thus the economic gap between the rich developed countries and the
third world countries will diminished.
However, facts show the contrary. It is true that the gross national product of
countries will increase, but the gap between the income of the rich and poor countries
is also getting wider.
The main reason for this gap is the extra-ordinary growth of information as a result of
the development of communications and information technologies in northern
developed countries which have full control of these technologies. This information
boom enables multinational companies to compete with changes in market demands,
new products and new technologies, which in turn can boost the economy of a
country, increase its efficiency and win global dominance.
On the other hand, in third world countries which are also known as southern
hemisphere countries, they have difficulties to seek, to receive, to process and to
produce information. The lack of appropriate information at the right time will result
in low productivity, low quality research works, and waste of time to pursue
information and even to do research which actually had been done by others or in
other countries.
Indonesia as a third world country has a great concern over this deficiency and believe
that the digital divide should be reduced so that there will be an economic recovery.
The Indonesian government is determined to utilize the information technology
effectively to support efforts to increase the national competitiveness. This aspiration
is reflected in the Indonesian
Presidential Decree Number 50 year 2000 about the establishment of the Coordination
Team of Telemathics of Indonesia. This team consists of all the ministers in the
cabinet including the Minister of Education. Its tasks are among others to define the
government policy in the area of telemathics; to decide the phases and priorities of
development in the area of telemathics and its uses in Indonesia; to monitor and