What is “Sustainability” in ICT for Education?

Sustainability is the ability of an educational ecosystem to maintain scholastic processes, functions, diversity and productivity into the future.

Yet that’s a pretty broad and vague statement. Bringing it down to a practical level, how might we introduce information and communication technologies into existing educational ecosystems where they can absorb it and own the change When planning ICT deployments in schools, there is much talk around making the effort sustainable.

Starting with cost, where most do, is “sustainability” covering local costs through local fees or taxes? Should national governments be the funder? Or is sustainability actually greater than merely its monetary price, but actually creating community ownership to the point of local customization in implementation, and self-propagating growth and expansion?

Regardless of how we define it, how can schools or Ministries of Education achieve this “sustainability”? What resources do they need or need to re-purpose to achieve it?strategic planning for the integration of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) into pre-service education and in-service training programs. He also leads efforts to design, develop, implement and evaluate ICT initiatives in both arenas.