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Technology has been viewed as a means to improve the quality of education for children globally, particularly in remote and marginal communities. This study examines the comparative advantages of the use of appropriate technology (off-line servers with digital libraries connected to a classroom set of laptops) in ten intervention schools in Indigenous communities in Guatemala for one school year. The study was too short (due to pandemic restrictions) to demonstrate statistically significant differences for learning outcomes. However, using an instructional core model as a framework, qualitative findings supported four previously identified comparative advantages, and identified four additional ones relevant to remote Indigenous communities. The intervention validated the ability of technology to improve standardised instruction, differentiated instruction, opportunities for practice, and learner engagement. Newly identified advantages are: access to high-quality educational resources (substitution for print materials), teacher capacity-building, student technical skills and digital literacy, and sharing cultural knowledge.

The article focuses on the functioning of a Mayan customary law system--in use during the period 1921-1968--in the indigenous Mam community of Comitancillo, in San Marcos, Guatemala. The author explores the town's legal records as evidence for describing how communal life was regulated using a syncretism of Mayan communal practices and values and Guatemalan codified law. She also compares the administration of justice in Comitancillo to that after 1968 as well as to how justice was carried out in other Guatemalan communities.