Free and Open Source Software in Africa

Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) - software that any developer can modify and improve - is an obvious way to go for developing countries - and the idea and its use are certainly gaining ground in Africa. One of the interviewees in this video captures the spirit nicely. As a child he would take his new toys apart to see how they worked - he never could accept the principle that things were closed to prevent understanding and improvement.

But there are obstacles - and they are within the very institutions that stand to gain so much. As another interviewee so rightly says - there is resistance within the administration of universities (even within the IT divisions) to adopt open source software. Watch the video - it's good.



The two projects profiled here, AVOIR and POLLES, are providing both the software to encourage eLearning and university administration in sub-Saharan and North Africa respectively, along with providing a platform for post secondary institutions to get applied training in software development. Connectivity Africa has been supporting these initiatives since 2004.

For more information:
http://avoir.uwc.ac.za
http://www.sakaiquebec.org/en/projets/polles.html
http://www.idrc.ca/en/ev-87736-201-1-DO_TOPIC.html

Did you know ? Human Capital Edition - 2009

How technology influences and is influenced - this video presents amazing research on the development and evolution from the industrial age to the information age and globalization. The figures will, of course, be out of date by the time you view this video.



This movie was intended to answer some of the questions left by the original shift happens production of "Did you know?"

Movie developed and researched by Lyle Potgieter, Mark Middleton, Fabrice Ho Fi and Renee Thorn. Enquire at http://www.PeopleStreme.com for a Facts Sheet.

Shift happens - Did you know?

Shift Happens: Education 3.0 - a newly revised edition for 2009 of the video originally created by Karl Fisch, modified by XPLANE and Campus Management. It answers the question, "What are we doing about the shift?" and covers innovations by Ashford University, Bridgepoint Education, Huntington Junior College, Jones International University, Mercer University, University of the Rockies, and The University System of Georgia.



This video gives an interesting perspective on how fast developments are taking place and emphasises how important it is for us to ensure that no country or community is further disadvantaged by being left behind.

Web 2.0 - an historically defining technology?

I was having a conversation with someone the other day about "historically defining technologies", i.e., technologies which define a period in history. The printing press and the telephone could be said to be two such "defining technologies". The conversation was about whether or not we can know at the time which technologies will be "defining" when viewed historically at some point in the future. It seems to me that Web 2.0 tools are prime candidates to be seen as "defining technologies". Web 2.0 will be seen as defining that period in history when radical changes in society were made possible by the abilitity to create, share, collaborate and publish digital information through the Internet.

So what is Web 2.0 and what are these changes?

The book/report "Change at hand: Web 2.0 for development" covers these topics. It is special issue of the series: Participatory Learning and Action that is guest-edited by Holly Ashley, Jon Corbett, Ben Garside and Giacomo Rambaldi, published in June 2009 by IIED and CTA.

It shares learning and reflections from practice and considers the ways forward for using Web 2.0 for development. A multimedia CD Rom with articles in English and French (and some in Spanish) is forthcoming later in 2009.

PART I: OVERVIEW
1. Change at hand: Web 2.0 for development
Holly Ashley, Jon Corbett, Ben Garside, Dave Jones and Giacomo Rambaldi
2. The two hands of Web2forDev: a conference summary
Chris Addison
PART II: STUDIES OF WEB 2.0 TOOLS
3. Exploring the potentials of blogging for development
Christian Kreutz
4. Web 2.0 tools to promote social networking for the Forest Connect alliance
Duncan Macqueen
5. Promoting information-sharing in Ghana using video blogging
Prince Deh
6. Mobile phones: the silver bullet to bridge the digital divide?
Roxanna Samii

PART III: ISSUE-BASED STUDIES
7. Anti social-computing: indigenous language, digital video and intellectual property
Jon Corbett and Tim Kulchyski
8. Tools for enhancing knowledge-sharing in agriculture: improving rural livelihoods in Uganda
Ednah Akiiki Karamagi and Mary Nakirya
9. Ushahidi or ‘testimony’: Web 2.0 tools for crowdsourcing crisis information
Ory Okolloh
10. Web 2.0 for Aboriginal cultural survival: a new Australian outback movement
Jon Corbett, Guy Singleton and Kado Muir

PART IV: THEORY AND REFLECTION ON PRACTICE
11. Circling the point: from ICT4D to Web 2.0 and back again
Anriette Esterhuysen
12. Web 2.0 tools for development: simple tools for smart people
Ethan Zuckerman
13. The Web2forDev story: towards a community of practice
Anja Barth and Giacomo Rambaldi
PART V: TIPS FOR TRAINERS
Web 2.0 tools: a series of short introductions
Holly Ashley, Dave Jones and Luigi Assom with Jon Corbett, Ben Garside, Christian Kreutz, Kevin Painting, Duncan Macqueen and Giacomo Rambaldi

Each introductory guide provides a brief description of the Web 2.0 tool and how it can be used for development purposes, along with links to further information and where applications can be downloaded online (more information also in e-participation):

• Blogging
• Micro-blogging and Twitter
• Wikis
• Online social networking
• RSS feeds
• Tagging
• Social bookmarking
• Glossary of Web 2.0 terms

This special issue is co-published with the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA) and is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

Download "Change at hand: Web 2.0 for development" (PDF 6 Mb)

The Chawama Youth Project

Chawama Township in Zambia is like so many other urban centres in Africa and the Caribbean - it is facing major problems with the young people, especially males. It has a population of 37,500 of which 65% is 25 years old or younger. Most of the youths (between 15 and 25 years old) are unemployed and lack skills to generate their own sustainable livelihoods. One of the main factors is the low level of education. Many youths do not finish their school, and most of these school drop outs are unskilled and unproductive, which in turn negatively affects their self-esteem and leads to increased levels of loitering, alcohol abuse and criminal activity. The story is a familiar one.

But Chawama Township has tackled the problem in a way that deserves attention.

“We realized that there is a rampant employment among youth of Chawama Township. So we decided to come up with a skills training centre to give them life skills. This would help them to get employment or be self employed” said Rodgers Mulenga (Secretary General of the Chawama Youth Project).

Here is a video about the award-winning Project.



The Chawama Youth Project (CYP) is a community-based non-governmental organisation established in 2001 and registered with the Technical Education, Vocational and Entrepreneurship Training Authority (TEVETA). It offers ‘life skills’ courses in subjects such as Auto Mechanics, Tailoring, Carpentry, and ICT, to improve the young people’s chances of finding work. Teachers are using the internet to enhance content (e.g. by accessing diagrams of engines using Google Images instead of drawing on the blackboard); hand-outs are being produced quickly; existing lesson plans are now being stored and re-used.

You can download an IICD briefing on the project here.

Open Access Week, Day 5'n'bit: Access across the Atlantic - Part 2

This is Day 5 and a bit of Open Access Week.

Okay - so I know that strictly speaking Open Access Week runs 5 days - from October 19 to October 23 - so today's blog is an extra free one :-)

But I really did want to squeeze in this second part of the special two-part issue of IJEDICT dedicated to Open Access Week and designed to deepen the flow of academic knowledge between the Caribbean and Africa.

As I wrote in the first part of "Access across the Atlantic", IJEDICT is managed and published in the Caribbean, but it has always had a special relationship with Africa and in particular with Cape Town in South Africa. One of the Chief Editors was working at Cape Town University of Technology when the journal was first started and is now the Director of TISI, an NGO headquartered in Cape Town. And of course, the Guest Editors of this Special Issue (and the two previous Special Issues on eLearning in Africa) work at the University of Cape Town. Interesting how networking works eh?

Vol. 5, No. 5 (2009) of International Journal of Education and Development using ICT is published online at:
http://ijedict.dec.uwi.edu/viewissue.php?id=23.

As usual, the articles are available for anyone to read and download free of charge. This issue has nine articles and a couple of editorials:

Editorial

Editorial: Special Issue - e/merge in Africa
Stewart Marshall, The University of the West Indies, Barbados, West Indies
Wal Taylor, TISI, Cape Town, South Africa
http://ijedict.dec.uwi.edu/viewarticle.php?id=898

e/merge in Africa
Tony Carr and Laura Czerniewicz, University of Cape Town
http://ijedict.dec.uwi.edu/viewarticle.php?id=879

Refereed Articles

Scarce resources: Conflict and sharing in discourse around primary school email use
Nicola Pallitt, University of Cape Town, South Africa
http://ijedict.dec.uwi.edu/viewarticle.php?id=865

Educators and the Cape Town Open Learning Declaration: Rhetorically reducing distance
Andrew Deacon and Catherine Wynsculley, University of Cape Town, South Africa
http://ijedict.dec.uwi.edu/viewarticle.php?id=878

Degrees of Openness: The emergence of Open Educational Resources at the University of Cape Town
Cheryl Hodgkinson-Williams and Eve Gray, University of Cape Town, South Africa
http://ijedict.dec.uwi.edu/viewarticle.php?id=864

Creating an online learning ecology in support of mathematical literacy teachers
Maggie Verster, ICT4Champions, Johannesburg, South Africa
http://ijedict.dec.uwi.edu/viewarticle.php?id=863

Assessing Cell Phone Usage in a South African Township School
Tino Kreutzer, United Nations Development Programme
http://ijedict.dec.uwi.edu/viewarticle.php?id=862

Investigating popular Internet applications as supporting e-learning technologies for teaching and learning with Generation Y
Mici Halse and Brenda Mallinson, Rhodes University, South Africa
http://ijedict.dec.uwi.edu/viewarticle.php?id=861

Using ICTs in Teaching and Learning: Reflections on Professional Development of Academic Staff
Markus Mostert and Lynn Quinn, Rhodes University, South Africa
http://ijedict.dec.uwi.edu/viewarticle.php?id=860

Increasing education access through open and distance learning in Tanzania: A critical review of approaches and practices
Willy Lazaro Komba, Mkwawa University College of Education
http://ijedict.dec.uwi.edu/viewarticle.php?id=859

“Him and Her” - gender differentials in ICT uptake: A critical literature review and research agenda
Ruth Nsibirano, Makarere University, Uganda
http://ijedict.dec.uwi.edu/viewarticle.php?id=858

Open Access Week Day 5: dg-Communities - Open Educational Resources

This is Day 5 of Open Access Week. This blog is about a really valuable source of open educational material and associted resources - DG Communties. It isn't new. I've been a member for a couple of years. But it has had a name change to "Zunia" and the website has had a face-lift.

dgCommunities is a place to find knowledge resources focused on development issues and also an interactive space where you can share your own work, participate in discussions, find people with similar interests and more. They have more than 40,000 members worldwide - and over half are in developing countries.



The revamped site comprises, amongst other things, a knowledge exchange, country guides and also several overlapping interest groups, e.g., open educational resources, eLearning.

dgCommunities is a collaborative space for professionals working in more than 200 countries to share knowledge resources, tools, contact information, and more. Each online community is centered on specific themes and guided by experts in the field. Their role is to coordinate topic highlights, prepare community newsletters and monitor content submissions for relevance and value to the topic at hand. All guides, volunteer advisors and community coordinators are committed to ensuring an open forum where all ideas are welcome.

International collaboration is at the heart of dgCommunities. More than 500 individuals and organizations working as volunteer guides and advisors, or cooperating with the Development Gateway Foundation team in other ways. If you or your organization want to get involved, please read our Get Involved page and then contact us. We want to hear from you.

Use of dgCommunities is open to all and has a global membership. They are committed to the values of tolerance and respect for all views, with no preference or bias as to the source of any content submitted by a community member or partner organization. The dominant language of most individual communities and their content is English. Navigation is also available in Arabic, French, and Spanish. They encourage members to submit content in French and Spanish. Currently, only the Arab reform community accepts content in Arabic. Most guides, advisors, and other participants speak more than one language, in some cases, many languages. Feel free to contact them.

dgCommunities is provided by Development Gateway Foundation (DGF) as part of its mission to reduce poverty and enable change in developing nations through information technology.

Open Access Week, Day 4: Access across the Atlantic - Part 1

This is Day 4 of Open Access Week and today's blog is about the first of two special joint issues of the International Journal of Education and Development using Information and Communication Technology (IJEDICT) about opening access the Atlantic.

IJEDICT is an e-journal about ICT in development that provides free and open access to all of its content. It fully supports the open access movement and has dedicated these two special joint issues of the journal to the movement by deepening the flow of academic knowledge between the Caribbean and Africa.

IJEDICT has always had a special relationship with Africa. One of the Chief Editors was working at Cape Town University of Technology when the journal was first started and is now the Director of TISI, an NGO headquartered in Cape Town. And of course, IJEDICT continues to have a very special relationship with the Caribbean because it is published by The University of the West Indies, and the Founding and Managing Editor (me) is located there as a Director in the Open Campus of the University.

So what better tribute to Open Access Week than to have two special joint issues of IJEDICT dedicated to the Caribbean and to Africa.

The first of these two issues - Vol. 5, No. 4 (2009) - has now been published online at:
http://ijedict.dec.uwi.edu/viewissue.php?id=22

Here are the contents:

Editorial

"Editorial: Special Issue on eLearning in the Caribbean"
Stewart Marshall, Open Campus, The University of the West Indies, Barbados
Wal Taylor, TISI, Cape Town, South Africa
http://ijedict.dec.uwi.edu/viewarticle.php?id=893

"Guest Editorial: eLearning in the Caribbean"
Dianne Thurab-Nkhosi, Open Campus, The University of the West Indies, Trinidad & Tobago
http://ijedict.dec.uwi.edu/viewarticle.php?id=873

Refereed Articles

"Burrokeet, an Application for Creating and Publishing Content Packages with support for Multiple Input and Output Formats"
Margaret Ann Bernard, The University of the West Indies, Trinidad & Tobago
Anil Ramnarine, Open Campus, The University of the West Indies, Trinidad & Tobago
http://ijedict.dec.uwi.edu/viewarticle.php?id=853

"E-learning at the Arthur Lok Jack Graduate School of Business - A Survey of Faculty Members"
Balraj Kistow, Lok Jack GSB, Trinidad & Tobago
http://ijedict.dec.uwi.edu/viewarticle.php?id=845

"myDR: Improving the Self-Care Process for Caribbean Patients with Type II Diabetes through Mobile Learning"
Salys Sarah Sultan and Permanand Mohan,
The University of The West Indies, Trinidad & Tobago
http://ijedict.dec.uwi.edu/viewarticle.php?id=850

"MyeLearning as a tool to enhance the writing process in Spanish as a foreign language"
Diego Mideros, The University of the West Indies, Trinidad & Tobago
http://ijedict.dec.uwi.edu/viewarticle.php?id=851

"Creating Reusable Lesson Plans for E-learning using the IMS Learning Design Specification"
Diana M Ragbir and Permanand Mohan,
The University of the West Indies, Trinidad & Tobago
http://ijedict.dec.uwi.edu/viewarticle.php?id=852

"One Size Fits All? – The Case of ECNG 3020 – Special Project Portal"
Wayne Sarjusingh, Crista Mohammed, and Fernando Castellanos
The University of the West Indies, Trinidad & Tobago
http://ijedict.dec.uwi.edu/viewarticle.php?id=866

"Technology-oriented or Learning-driven?"
Lisle Waldron, The University of the West Indies, Trinidad & Tobago
http://ijedict.dec.uwi.edu/viewarticle.php?id=870

Open Access Week, Day 3

This is Day 3 of Open Access Week and today's blog is about an open access book on another favourite topic of mine - telecentres for development.

The book - Making the Connection: Scaling Telecenters for Development – identifies and discusses the most pressing issues facing the global telecenter movement, presents a condensed view of the current state of knowledge with regard to telecenters, and highlights possible paths forward.

The book was developed through a partnership between the Academy for Educational Development, Microsoft® and IDRC's telecenter.org. Two AED staff, Barbara Fillip and Dennis Foote, were the principal authors of the book.

As C.K. Prahalad says in the Forword -
"We know that the Internet has brought the potential for empowering even the most marginalized groups in our societies. We know that it will benefit all of us if we can unleash their entrepreneurial energy and creativity. Among the first steps is surely the challenge of how to achieve access to the Internet for the groups at the bottom of the pyramid, so they can participate fully in shaping their own future."

In developed countries we tend to think of "universal access" as meaning having Internet access in the home. But in so many developing c0untries we have to think differently about this concept. Instead, we need to think of strategies for providing universal communal access. Hence the need to "scale telecenters for development". The primary goal of this book is help people move forward, to inspire them and whenever possible, to guide the growth of this movement.

The book is in three main parts. Part 1 reviews the past and the evolving vision of telecenters for development. Part 2 seeks to identify appropriate organizational models and appropriate technologies for sustainability and scaling. Part 3 looks at scaling up at the national level.

The book uses case studies to illustrate the main themes. Many of these case studies are from projects that AED’s Information Technology Applications Center has carried out over the last two decades, some are from Microsoft® and some from IDRC’s telecentre.org program.

Open Access Week, Day 2: Open access materials for teachers

This is Day 2 of Open Access Week and today's blog is about this goldmine of resources I found a little while ago. It has video programs and supporting resources on a whole range of topics for K-12 teachers courtesy of Annenberg Media. Go to their website http://www.learner.org to see what is available.

Utilising these resources will certainly create interesting classes. And of course, the whole idea of the project is to create interesting, creative educational K-12 classes. Annenberg Media uses media and telecommunications to advance excellent teaching in American schools. This mandate is carried out chiefly by the funding and broad distribution of educational video programs with coordinated Web and print materials to assist K-12 teachers improve their classes and also for their professional development.

They have a brochure available to assist people to find material on their website.

Annenberg Media is part of The Annenberg Foundation and advances the Foundation's goal of encouraging the development of more effective ways to share ideas and knowledge.