ICT4D Research Grants

The Strengthening ICT4D Research Capacity in Asia (SIRCA) Programme is pleased to announce a call for grant proposals.

The SIRCA Programme seeks to identify future research leaders and to facilitate their development through the support of research grants. The awards are intended to ensure capacities to conduct research in the area of Information and Communications Technology for Development (ICT4D or ICTD) are built in Asia. This applies particularly to emerging researchers based in Asia who are relatively new to ICTD research and interested in undertaking theoretically-based and methodologically rigorous research. Additionally, these applicants would benefit from concerted capacity building exercises including a mentorship arrangement. In particular, the program promotes broad-based high-quality multidisciplinary research in ICT development, e-services, new media use and social impact, and policy for the benefit and advancement of individuals, organizations, nation and society.

PROPOSAL GUIDELINES

• Applicants must register online at www.ntu.edu.sg/sci/sirc/sirca with their name, project title, email address and country of research by 29th September 2008.
• Applicants are free to choose relevant topics within the overall ICTD discipline.
• Proposals must be received via email by 13th October 2008. Send email submissions to sirca@ntu.edu.sg with “SIRCA Proposal” in the subject line of your message. Attachments must be in MS Word, MS Excel or PDF and should be labelled with your name (for example: Jane_Doe_Info_Sheet.doc or .docx or .pdf).

Visit the following web pages for additional information about the programme and the call for proposals:

SIRCA Brochure

SIRCA Research Grant Proposal Guidelines

SIRCA Programme Secretariat
Email: sirca@ ntu.edu.sg
Website: www.ntu.edu.sg/sci/sirc/sirca

More Open Educational Resources from UKOU

You may wonder why I keep blogging about the UK Open University? Well - my first experience of distance education was as a Tutor with them when they first started in the early 1970's. They were leaders then and they are leaders again with their OpenLearn (Open Educational Resource repository), which has seen over 2 million people take advantage of free education since it was launched in October 2006.

Latest study units

• The incredible shrinking chip
• Funding elite sports
• Improving aerobic fitness
• Business organisations and their environments: Culture
• Project management
• Company law in context
• Getting started with SPSS
• Real functions and graphs
• Mathematical language
• Campaigns and organisations
• Introduction to international development management
• Creativity, community and ICT
• Healthcare technology management

Top five units

This month's five most popular OpenLearn units are:

• Start writing fiction
• Writing what you know
• What is good writing?
• The importance of interpersonal skills
• Espacios publicos

Make Internet TV

The website "Make Internet TV" provides a guide with step-by-step instructions for shooting, editing, and publishing online videos that can be watched and subscribed to by millions of people.

Here is a video introduction by Dean Jansen:

Make Internet TV: Introduction

Very soon, this site will feature short videos from experienced internet video publishers. If you're interested in sharing your expertise, visit the Make Internet TV (MITV) wiki and find out how.

Learning maths and science online in Africa

Educational content is an issue with which many African countries still struggle, so Intel’s approach to preparing Ghanaian science students for the digital age seems quite promising. The objective of www.skoool.com.gh is to provide a rich and integrated platform for science and math education.

Topics generally seen as being very “dry” are delivered in a rather playful manner. An interactive football match, for example, serves to illustrate math topics like types of angles. On the methodological side, the main features of skoool are interactive simulations, exam-centre study notes, exam guides for maths and integrated science as well as study and revision tips.

In conjunction with its participation in the third eLearning Africa Conference, held in Accra, and in line with its Intel World Ahead Program, Intel launched the localised Ghanaian version of its worldwide digital education content platform www.skoool.com. The site – www.skoool.com.gh – is being run in collaboration with the Ghanaian Ministry of Education, Science and Sports (MOESS) and the Ministry of Communication (MOC). The interactive teaching platform conforms to the action points taken at the conference. All content developed for the site will be based on identified areas of difficulty in various subjects. The learning resources are similar in each country in which it operates but are populated with local content.

In the course of the official launch ceremony at the Kofi Annan Centre, Accra, Ms. Elizabeth Ohene, Minister for State in charge of Tertiary Education, said that the Ghanaian government was focusing primarily on science and technology to accelerate the pace of technological advancement, with www.skoool.com.gh also complementing the government’s efforts to drive ICT in the country. Dr Benjamin Aggrey Ntim, Ghana’s Communication Minister, asked the heads of the schools to encourage their students to use the resource to develop their skills in the areas of mathematics and science.

The platform www.skoool.com.gh aids students with curriculum-focused multi-media learning and research, offers open-ended learning tools to help students explore wider concepts and provides valuable exam focused resources to help students prepare effectively for state exams standards. The parent platform, skoool.com, has been active in Africa since 2006, starting with a platform in South Africa. The first release of skoool Nigeria supported the successful Classmate PC proof of concept and deployment during 2007. The online version of skoool Nigeria will be launched in 2008.