Multilingual Education in Cyberspace in Latin American: advances, barriers and new challenges

FELDMAN PATRICIO; FINQUELIEVICH SUSANA

Yakutsk

Conferencia; International Conference: "Preservation of Languages and Development of Linguistic Diversity in Cyberspace: context, policies, practice"; 2019

IFAP-UNESCO

The world is increasingly dependent on technological progress and on the abilities to use these advances. Being able to access the internet, either via computer or smartphone, is essential?not for personal communication and creativity of the individual, but also at the societal level for the delivery of services and as the foundation for education. As we have stated in previous papers (Finquelievich and Bassi, 2013; Finquelievich, Feldman and Fischnaller, 2014), many developing nations have committed themselves to becoming Knowledge Societies in the near future. They have approved development plans for horizons extended to 10, 15 or 25 years, with a view to substantially change their economies and their societies. The immediate implication is that most of their inhabitants will have not only to be connected to the Internet and become qualified users of ICT, but also to be proactive citizens in the Knowledge economy and society. This paper is a continuation of the article "Public policies for multilingual education using ICT in Latin America" written in 2014 and presented in 3RD International Conference on Linguistic and Cultural Diversity in Cyberspace 28 June - 3 July 2014, Yakutsk, Russia. This paper, based on meta research, focuses on advances, barriers and new challenges for Multilingual Education in Cyberspace in Latin America, taking into consideration the political, economic and social changes generated in recent years. It is important to consider the current stage of platform capitalism and the development of 4.0 technologies, focusing on the analysis of the mechanisms of exclusion of linguistic and cultural diversity from these spaces and new challenges for multilingual education in Cyberspace. The old ?digital divide? related to devices and connectivity has been replaced with the new ?knowledge divide?, which is about people knowing how to use digital tools productively. The language barrier is an issue that keeps many of these citizens from becoming productive cyber-citizens and enjoying universal access to information. In Latin America it is important to adopt an expanded vision of digital divide, considering the existence of a multiplicity of gaps: socio-digital, cognitive, socio-economic, socio-spatial, gender, among others. These gaps coexist, are connected, and feedback each other. For example, indigenous women have half the possibilities of men to access education, either bilingual or monolingual. Language presence in cyberspace is insufficient in view of the increased importance of the role of cyberspace for access to education and information, and the construction of inclusive knowledge societies (Bassi and Finquelievich, 2013). Indigenous peoples need to access cyberspace and contribute their own world vision in their own languages so that they may participate in productive innovation processes, preserve indigenous languages and culture, and become full citizens.We have decided to work on indigenous languages, since this may be considered as a vacancy area. Although there are an increasing number of studies about multilingualism in Latin America, they are mainly focused on the use of Spanish, Portuguese, French, and English (Daniel Prado & Daniel Pimienta, 2012, among others). Less attention has been paid to research on the role played by indigenous languages in cyberspace. While there is much literature about indigenous languages and ICT in Asia and Africa, there little about their counterparts in Latin America. The scarce literature about this subject (even scarcer in English) reveals a vacancy area which needs development, as well as attention and technical support from UNESCO (through IFAP and the Permanent Forum on Indigenous issues (UNPFII), and other international organizations.