How IICD supports healthcare in Africa by using ICT

IICD supports doctors and other health workers such as community workers in Africa and Latin America to use computers, mobile phones and other Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) to improve healthcare. This video tells the story of doctor Bon in Tanzania. This doctor works at a health clinic in Nyakato that is now using a Health Management Information System (HMIS) that reduces waiting time for patients and improves the overall efficiency of the clinic. The video also includes other examples and facts and figures about of IICD's effective work in 'ICT for health' in Africa.
 
Video at: http://youtu.be/3bblK35NbGU

A summary of Open Development

Why a focus on Open Development in Knowledge Societies?

Robin Mansell presented a summary of the conclusions of the event Open Development: Exploring the future of the information society in Latin America and the Caribbean in her intervention at the IV Ministerial Conference on the Information Society for Latin America and the Caribbean. Robin Mansell is a Professor of New Media and the Internet at the Department of Media and Communications of the London School of Economics, and she was the keynote speaker at Open Development with the presentation Imagining the internet: Open, Closed or In Between.

Read her summary here: http://www.info25.org/en/sum-opendev

The Power of Mobile: Saving Uganda's Banana Crop

Earlier this year, my two ICT colleagues, Merrick Schaefer and Joshua Goldstein, identified a number of innovative ICT solutions that have been developed and implemented by UNICEF’s Technology for Development (T4D) team. One of them is Ureport (www.ureport.ug), which is a network of 190,000+ volunteers across Uganda who use mobile technology to report on various issues that are of interest to UNICEF and other development partners.

Read more at: http://blogs.worldbank.org/ic4d/the-power-of-mobile-saving-ugandas-banana-crop

'#aiww: The Arrest of Ai Weiwei' Puts Digital Dissent in the Limelight

LONDON — At a theatre here, the characters and elements of a serendipitous meeting came together: A play about a dissident Chinese artist starring a British-born Chinese man and reviewed by an American whose father defected from a repressive communist nation.
Howard Brenton's #aiww: The Arrest of Ai Weiwei debuted here Thursday, with the hashtag title an homage to Twitter's significance for the Chinese artist who uses the platform and his 200,000 followers to promote digital rights and avoid censorship from the Great Wall of communism. Mr. Ai uses social media as a tool for political dissent, challenging the state's control with acts like publishing the names of 5,335 student victims who died in the magnitude 7.9 Sichuan earthquake in 2008 (which he attributes to the collapse of poorly built government housing).

Read more at: http://mashable.com/2013/04/12/arrest-of-ai-weiwei/

5 key takeaways for ICT development in the Caribbean from Silicon Savannah

Within the last seven years, Kenya, which has been dubbed “Silicon Savannah”, has become one of the leading ICT destinations in Africa, and is being increasingly recognised globally as a hotbed for tech innovation. This post highlights five takeaways from the Kenyan experience.

Read more at: http://www.ict-pulse.com/2013/04/5-key-takeaways-ict-development-caribbean-silicon-savannah/

Geocoding and public aid data in Nepal

The Government of Nepal (GoN) recently hosted the AidData team on our first geocoding launch trip
as part of the Higher Education Solutions Network (HESN). We’re writing to update on some exciting developments underway in Nepal that are quickly taking AidData’s work to a broader audience of government officials, donors, and concerned citizens.
The GoN has been operating an Aid Management Platform (AMP) since 2010 with admirable results. AMP Nepal currently has information on nearly 700 development projects (both on- and off-budget) representing over $US 6 billion in disbursements, including over $1 billion in fiscal year 2012 alone. GoN officials use AMP for internal reporting, district-level aid analysis, and an annual public Development Cooperation Report, among other things. In 2012, with the support of AusAID, AidData geocoded over half of the AMP project portfolio. All remaining AMP projects will be geocoded in 2013 under the USAID HESN award.

Read more at: http://blog.aiddata.org/search/label/Nepal

Half an Hour: The Great Rebranding

Stephen Downes:

"Seriously, what else can be said about a statement like this: " it will be offered locally with teachers at a scale of between 1 to 20 and 1 to 50. Because teachers matter.” It's like saying "we must at all costs limit education to small groups of people led by a teacher." The "distributed flip", advanced as this Great New Thing, is the connectivist model of MOOCs, but with small-group in-person attached.

The arguments in which the four elements of MOOCs - 'massive', 'open', 'online', and 'course' - are one by one putated to be 'optional' or 'unnecessary' seems to me to be a desparate attempt to cleanse MOOCs of any disruptive impact they may have on the traditional action of in-person teaching to a teacher to a small group of people."

See it on Scoop.it, via ICT for Education and Development

The Revolution 2.0 Index: Where Will The Next “Arab Spring” Occur?

In Networks of Outrage and Hope (NOH), Manuel Castells demonstrates the centrality of ICTs in the initiation, growth and mobilisation of recent mass protests: the Arab Spring, Iceland’s Kitchenware Revolution, the US Occupy Movement, and Spain’s Indignadas.
A central assertion is that cyberspace is a place of safety and autonomy for mass social movements, including those that grow into revolutions.  Looking worldwide, though, that clearly isn’t true – try organising your revolution online in China, for example, and see how far you get.
But can we measure “how far” you might get?

Read more at: http://ict4dblog.wordpress.com/2013/04/12/the-revolution-2-0-index-where-will-the-next-arab-spring-occur/

Open Educational Resources in Malaysian Higher Learning Institutions

"OER is a burning topic in Malaysia, and many more institutions are in the process of embracing this movement." (Zaid Ali Alsagoff)

See it on Scoop.it, via ICT for Education and Development

Smart Bracelet Protects Aid Workers in the Field

When fashion and technology mix, the results can garner unwelcome attention. And that’s just what the makers of this smart bracelet are hoping will happen.
A new high-tech wristband recently released to civil-rights and aid workers triggers an alarm when the wearer is in danger.
The greatest threat to workers is the stealth nature of attacks. These bracelets remove that danger.
GPS (basic mapping) and GSM (mobile phone) technology work together as a personal alarm that sends information about the wearer when danger is imminent. These alerts don’t simply go to police and co-workers; they are posted on Facebook and Twitter, signaling the world of an attack within minutes.

Read more at: http://mashable.com/2013/04/12/natalia-smart-bracelet/