Educational Research Network for West and Central Africa

Education research should influence the evolution of educational systems. The "Educational Research Network for West and Central Africa" ERNWACA ("Réseau Ouest et Centre Africain de Recherche en Education" ROCARE) was created to increase research capacity, strengthen collaboration among researchers and practitioners, and promote African expertise on education so as to positively impact educational practices and policies.



The strategic objectives of ERNWACA are to:
• Build national and regional research and policy evaluation capacity.
• Improve the quality and pertinence of research for practitioners and decision-makers.
• Disseminate findings to stimulate public dialogue and advocacy,
• Strengthen Ernwaca as a sustainable regional institution.



One of the methods it is using to achieve these objectives is through a Virtual Library of the Educational Research Network for West and Central Africa. The library of the ERNWACA provides access to many works and publications relating to research in education in West and Central Africa.



The Educational Research Network for West and Central Africa ERNWACA's mission is the promotion of African expertise in order to influence the educational practices and policies positively. Education is one of the engines of the transformation and competitiveness in Africa where research in education must drive the development of education systems.

Public domain EPUB downloads on Google Books

I was very excited about Google's decison to put books online some years ago. It looked like another major step forward for the open access movement - which I support whole-heartedly, as most of you will know by now :-).

Then the process stopped - three years ago, the Authors Guild, the Association of American Publishers and a handful of authors and publishers filed a class action lawsuit against Google Books.

Google settled this lawsuit in October last year. It will still take some time for this to come into effect (maybe another couple of years) but I'm sure Google already has stuff lined up to come available immediately the court agrees.

For more information: http://books.google.com/googlebooks/agreement/

In the meantime, Google Books are making "public domain" material available in a variety of forms:

Try doing a search for [Hamlet] on Google Books. The first few results you'll get are "Full View" books — which means you can read the full text. And, because the book is in the public domain, you can also download a copy of Hamlet in PDF form.

You'll be able to download these and over one million public domain books from Google Books in an additional format - EPUB - a free and open industry standard for electronic books. It's supported by a wide variety of applications, so once you download a book, you'll be able to read it on any device or through any reading application that supports the format. That means that people will be able to access public domain works that Google digitized from libraries around the world in more ways, including some that haven't even been built or imagined yet.

They founded Google Books on the premise that anyone, anywhere, anytime should have the tools to explore the great works of history and culture. Google began digitizing these books because they thought it was important for people to be able to find and read them, and they want them to be able to do so anywhere — not just when they happen to be at a computer. This feature takes Google one step closer towards realizing that goal by helping support open standards that enable people to access these books in more places, on more devices and through more applications.

To find out more, check out the post on the Google Books blog.

Information Literacy Resources Directory

Gone are those days when so many of us (mistakenly) believed that information literacy was about getting to know the card catalogue in a library. Given the daily deluge of information to which we are all subjected, information literacy has taken on the importance it has always deserved but rarely been afforded. To make it possible for lecturers, teachers and librarians to teach these important skills, rather than each re-inventing the wheel, it makes good sense to share resources and materials.

The Information Literacy Section of the International Federation of Library Association and Institutions (IFLA) has created a database to record information literacy materials from different parts of the world, on behalf of UNESCO. The result is the Information Literacy Resources Directory.



The contents of the Information Literacy Resources Directory, which are of course searchable, include:

Communication

• Conferences on the subject
• International actions, meetings, programs
• Listservs - Discussion lists
• Weblogs
• Websites devoted to information literacy

IL Products for users

• Advocacy toolkits
• Assessment / Evaluation tools
• Credit courses
• Know how materials
• Library tours
• Tests of IL competencies/skills
• Tutorials for citizens
• Tutorials on how to use specific information resources
• Workshop/Hands on experience

Organizations

• Associations and professional bodies
• Information literacy training organizations
• International organizations with IL related work
• Research projects / Research centers

Publications

• Guidelines for information literacy
• IL monographs of international coverage or impact
• Other publications of international relevance
• Serials (Journals)
• Specific guidelines for key programs
• Thesis of international relevance
• Translations of key international documents

Training the trainers

• Courses
• Distant certificates/degrees
• IL institutes/immersion programs
• Web-based courses for training the trainers
• Workshop/Hands on experience

Librarians, educators and information professionals are invited to participate. If you have developed information literacy materials and would like to share them with the world community, please submit the required data.

ICTs for agricultural livelihoods

A new book by IICD "ICTs for agricultural livelihoods" describes experiences and achievements of the International Institute for Communication and Development (IICD) and its partners with using ICT to enhance agricultural livelihoods through thirty-five projects over six years in nine countries in Africa and Latin America. This booklet is part of a series of reports on the use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in various sectors.



The study is intended to provide guidance to organisations working in the agriculture sector. It is particularly meant for policymakers, ICT practitioners and donor agencies. Expectations of the potential of ICT to reduce global poverty and contribute to realising the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are high, but the evidence base needs strengthening. With this study IICD hopes to contribute to a joint understanding of the use of ICT in support of agricultural development and rural poverty alleviation.

Analysis of the impact of IICD-supported projects indicates that ICTs can contribute to achieving the first Millennium Development Goal to ‘eradicate extreme hunger and poverty by raising the income of small-scale farmers and strengthening the agriculture sector. Overall, ICTs contribute to better access to prices, markets and production information.

Click here to download the booklet as a PDF file (1.3 MB).

African universities face new Internet challenges

African universities are facing a new digital challenge - it is no longer access to the Internet that is the problem - it is its use, according to Jonathan Harle, programme officer for the Association of Commonwealth Universities (ACU).

In his report "Digital resources for research: a review of access and use in African universities" he explained that "With infrastructure and facilities steadily improving … addressing the use of, rather than access to, electronic resources should perhaps receive greater attention".

"Users must be given the skills to identify and locate what they need for their work," writes Harle. He says the ability of African scholars to publish and contribute information is critical to redressing the prevailing imbalance, where Africa is a consumer but not a contributor of information and knowledge. Although bandwidth and slow connections continue to be a problem, priority should now be given to training staff, particularly in ICT and web skills.

More on how to blog

Here's a neat introduction to blogs and blogging - a slideshow by my colleague Telly Onu.

For another one go to my earlier post on Blogs

MDG indicators for Asia and the Pacific 2009

The Key Indicators for Asia and the Pacific 2009 annual statistical data book has just been published by the Asian Development Bank (ADB). It presents the latest available economic, financial, social, environmental, and Millennium Development Goals (MDG) indicators for regional members of ADB. Data are grouped under MDG and Regional Tables, together with nontechnical explanations and brief analyses of the MDG achievements and developments.

This issue includes:
Part I: A special chapter on “Enterprises in Asia: Fostering Dynamism in SMEs”
Part II: Millennium Development Goals
Part III: Regional Tables

View the full document PDF: 13,383 kb | 324 pages ]


The special chapter in Part I looks at the impact of the economic crisis on workers and enterprises, including small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). It also discusses how to foster greater efficiency in SMEs once the crisis has played out. A key channel through which the economic crisis has affected enterprises is through the reduction in Asian exports. While SMEs tend to work for the domestic rather than export markets, some of the most dynamic SMEs export or supply inputs to larger export dependent enterprises. Moreover, many SMEs will be affected by the fall in domestic demand as unemployment rises and household incomes contract. In the short run, government efforts at boosting aggregate demand, as well as specific policy initiatives to assist SMEs’ access to finance, should help enterprises cope with the crisis. But over the longer-term, policies must help SMEs adopt modern technologies and raise their productivity. Above all, governments should avoid creating incentives for small enterprises to remain small and operate with outdated technologies. Fostering dynamism in SMEs will not only help their owners, but also workers at large. In this way, a dynamic SME sector can play an important role in the rebalancing of the economies of Asia by raising household incomes and thus domestic demand.

Reminder: Open Access Week, October 19 – 23, 2009

I just want to remind everyone that October 19 – 23 is Open Access Week.

This annual event presents an opportunity to broaden awareness and understanding of Open Access to research, including access policies from all types of research funders, within the international higher education community and the general public.

Open Access Week builds on the momentum generated by the 120 campuses in 27 countries that celebrated Open Access Day in 2008. Event organizers SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing & Academic Resources Coalition), the Public Library of Science (PLoS), and Students for FreeCulture welcome key new contributors, who will help to enhance and expand the global reach of this popular event in 2009: eIFL.net (Electronic Information for Libraries), OASIS (the Open Access Scholarly Information Sourcebook); and the Open Access Directory (OAD).

This year’s program will highlight educational resources on Open Access that local hosts can use to customize their own programs to suit local audiences and time zones. OASIS will serve as the centerpiece of the 2009 program, delivering resources for every constituency and every awareness level. The Open Access Directory will again provide an index of participants on five continents, as well as their growing clearinghouse for all OA resources. Through the collaborative functionality of the two initiatives, OA videos, briefing papers, podcasts, slideshows, posters and other informative tools will be drawn from all over the Web to be highlighted during Open Access Week.

The organizers will also work with registrants to develop a variety of sample program tracks, such as “Administrators’ introduction to campus open-access policies and funds,” “OA 101,” and “Complying with the NIH public access policy” that take full advantage of available tools. Participants are invited to adapt these resources for local use, and to mark Open Access Week by hosting an event, distributing literature, blogging — or even just wearing an Open Access t-shirt.

For more information about Open Access Week and to register, visit http://www.openaccessweek.org.

The Participatory Web - New Potentials of ICT in Rural Areas

The most noticeable development in terms of e-tools is what is known as "Web 2.0", in which social software is used to facilitate collaboration and sharing between users. This computer-mediated communication has become very popular with sites like MySpace and YouTube. These tools encourage self-publishing or online journalism, where people express their points of view on their websites. Whether you are sharing your words, video-sharing or photo-sharing, the most important aspect of Web 2.0 is the control it gives to any user to publish whatever they want to the web. Internet users are no longer passive recipients of information placed there by organizations and institutions. Instead they are active contributors. Web 2.0 tools have levelled the playing field.

Web 2.0 tools offer people in rural areas a platform for networking and knowledge exchange. The brochure, "The Participatory Web - New Potentials of ICT in Rural Areas" published by Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ), provides a systematic overview of Web 2.0 experiences in Africa, Asia and Latin America. It serves as a practice-oriented introduction to the theme and discusses both the potentials and the possible limitations to the participatory web.

Download:
The Participatory Web pdf, 1.8 MB (English)

Clouding distinctions in higher education

I recently came across a thought-provoking volume - The Tower and The Cloud: Higher education in the Age of Cloud Computing - published as a free e-Book by EDUCAUSE. It examines the impact of IT on higher education and also on the IT organization in higher education. But it isn't intended as a book just for IT specialists or for higher education administrators (though it should be compulsory reading for these groups of people) - it is intended for all those with an interest in higher education and more broadly in societal structures in the networked information economy.

The book's description says: "The emergence of the networked information economy is unleashing two powerful forces. On one hand, easy access to high-speed networks is empowering individuals. People can now discover and consume information resources and services globally from their homes. Further, new social computing approaches are inviting people to share in the creation and edification of information on the Internet. Empowerment of the individual—or consumerization—is reducing the individual's reliance on traditional brick-and-mortar institutions in favor of new and emerging virtual ones. Second, ubiquitous access to high-speed networks along with network standards, open standards and content, and techniques for virtualizing hardware, software, and services is making it possible to leverage scale economies in unprecedented ways. What appears to be emerging is industrial-scale computing—a standardized infrastructure for delivering computing power, network bandwidth, data storage and protection, and services."

"Consumerization and industrialization beg the question "Is this the end of the middle?"; that is, what will be the role of "enterprise" IT in the future? Indeed, the bigger question is what will become of all of our intermediating institutions?"