Why review the First Principles anyhow?

I ask myself this question repeatedly. Why? You wrote 'em, you wrote the short version of 'em, why are you writing about them?

The First Principles are intended, primarily, to guide education officers at USAID as they work with country governments, other donors (not USAID) and private-sector partners (like, for example, Intel, Microsoft and Cisco, who are everywhere) to design, plan and support technology projects in schools in the developing countries where USAID works. Education officers have a good general grasp of education, and of the systems in the countries in which they are working, but they are not specially cognizant of issues in relation to the use of new tools.

So. The FP document is written, despite my best efforts, in my own version of "development speak." That it's my version means that I'm trying as hard as I can to avoid using jargon and acronyms, I'm trying to say things plainly and to make sense to everybody, and yet I'm aware that for my main audience, "ICT" is more meaningful than "technology" or "computers," and "implement" is more compelling than "do" or "make happen" (or than "knife," fork" or "hammer," for that matter.)

The commentary that appears on the Natoma Group blog is my effort to move the FP writing further away from development-speak. My effort to make the principles a bit more usable. I'm aware that for teachers and planners in the US and other countries with mature school systems, all of the FP information is far too simple, far too axiomatic. There are established practices, there are regulations and constraints. But in developing countries the administration of rules and requirements is less stringent, and the use of technology is deeply retrograde. If we could just get ministries of education to work within the FP parameters we would impact millions of students (that's development speak for help a lot of kids learn;).