Networked LEARNING

Overview

For some time now Iceland has been considered one of the world's most literate countries. Iceland’s students are required to complete ten years of school. An estimated 25 percent of the Icelandic workforce hold university degrees, a large percentage of which being graduate and post-graduate. Additionally, a large percentage of Iceland’s students takes advantage of numerous study-abroad opportunities, mostly in Europe or North America.

Communication

Iceland puts a great emphasis on communication. Country’s basic education includes the study of foreign languages from early education. The languages offered include English and Scandinavian for the basic education. As students enter secondary education most tack on a third language, typically either German or French. In 2009 there were 33,974 compulsory students (grades 1-10) studying English, and 18,178 compulsory students studying Danish. Some of the other common languages were: Swedish with 230 students, German with 397 students, French with 196 students, Spanish with 455 students and others. (1) As a result of the strong foreign language education software sold in Iceland is rarely translated to the native Icelandic language.

ICT Curriculum

As a part of the curriculum, all schools include computer education, with a wide variety of advanced courses being offered at various levels. Given the small population of Iceland, thousands of students graduate each year with a B.S. and M.S. degrees in ICT field. In 2008 almost 1000 students, out of the registered 13,000 undergraduate students, were from ICT field. Additionally, out of the registered 4,000 post-graduate and doctorate students, almost 300 were from ICT field. Computer courses of varying complexity are also being aggressively offered by Universities to other majors.

Schools' Access to Information and Communication Technologies.

ICT plays a major role in advancing the educational system. The ever-growing demand for electronic services such as electronic communication, digital distribution of instructional material, on-line and virtual classrooms, requires for continuous improvements in infrastructure. The future vision is to have the Icelandic school system at the leading edge.

Presently all upper secondary schools and continuing education schools in Iceland are utilizing the FS Network connectivity, with its high-speed data transmission of 100 Mbps per institution. At the same time, continuing education branches are linked to the network via 2 Mbps connections. Currently, the FS Network includes 28 upper secondary schools, 9 continuing education locations and 25 branches of the latter.

The Icelandic research and university network, now links 16 universities and research institutes with a transmission speed of up to 1 Gbps. Scientific research and development lead both the advance of technology and its use. Modern research requires powerful computer equipment and processing capacity to handle the ever-more extensive and complex measurement and research data gathered through international projects. In order for Icelandic scientists and students to be able to participate in distributed data processing, which is now becoming the practice in the international research and university environment, they need to have access to a minimum speed of 2.5 Gbps for international connections.