China has been moving rapidly to improve the use of information technology in elementary and secondary schools, progressing in stages from offering basic computer programming courses to creating networked schools with information technology integrated into the whole curriculum. By 2003, in the developed regions of the country, 70 percent of teachers applied information technology to their classes often. In the Tenth Five Year Plan (2001 - 2005), the Chinese government gave priority to the construction of information technology infrastructure. By 2003 the ratio of elementary school students to computers was 12:1 in the most developed regions and 373:1 in the least developed. At the high school level the range was from 8:1 to 18:1. One goal is to equalize educational opportunities across the geographic regions, which now vary greatly As part of this education improvement initiative, the central government will undertake a number of programs, including an ICT development project in village schools, aimed at improving staff development, school management, and instructional quality and efficiency. According to the new teacher training plan, normal universities will make full use of face-to-face education and distance education to lay the groundwork for improved instructional resources and form an instructional network for village and city teachers. Those regions which have been well equipped with computers and school networks will develop network training and TV training. The purpose of these efforts is to effect modernization in education, meaning the improvement of educational efficiency and effectiveness and the promotion of more learner-centered instruction.

The following paragraph is extracted from an email message written by a German medical doctor working in Papua New Guinea (PNG) since 1999. I was impressed the most by a 15-year-old boy who arrived out of the bush in a health center complaining about lower-right abdominal pain. Due to the possibility of an appendix infection, he had to be transferred to the hospital. But the sea was rough, and he had to wait for two days at the health center. Then a so-called banana boat, a boat with an outboard motor, brought him in a 6-hour trip to Vunapope [a town in PNG]. Even for healthy people such a trip with all the up and down is not a pleasure. As it turned out, the appendix had broken through and quite some pus had collected in his abdomen. In spite of the pain medication, the trip on the boat must have been hell for the boy, but he endured it courageously. The doctor regularly reports about her life and adventures in PNG to her friends and sponsors viaemail. The stories in her e-mail messages are often fascinating and sometimes heartbreaking. Life m PNG is far beyond what some of us can imagine. This article reports on information technology (IT) in PNG, particularly as it affects education and cultural development. The findings are based on data collected from the medical doctor and a school principal, both currently working in PNG. The purpose of the article is not to present sophisticated research results but to offer a glimpse of IT culture in PNG. It starts with a brief overview of IT in developing countries and then focuses on PNG.