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.

Open Access Week, Day 1: Timeline of the open access movement

For the whole of Open Access Week, October 19 – 23, 2009, each day's blog will be devoted to ... you've guessed it - open access.

This is Day 1 and this first blog of the week is about the timeline of the open access movement.

Peter Suber used to maintain a Timeline of the Open Access Movement (formerly called the Timeline of the Free Online Scholarship Movement) but since February this year it has moved to be a sub-component of a wiki called the Open Access Directory. Moving it to a wiki is, of course, an excellent idea. It means that the OA community can update, edit and maintain the content, rather than all this falling on one person.

I found the timeline very informative. Although I have been a supporter of the OA movement and an editor/publisher of an OA journal IJEDICT for several years, I hadn't realised that one of the very early OA journals is New Horizons in Adult Education and Human Resource Development which started as an OA journal in 1987. There's lots of other interesting facts included in the comprehensive timeline.

Whilst browsing the timeline, I decided to look at the "containing" wiki - the Open Access Directory (OAD).

The OAD collects together lists of sources and resources about open access (OA) to science and scholarship. It is maintained by the OA community so is continually being added to, edited and refined. The easier they are to maintain and discover, the more effectively they can spread useful, accurate information about OA. By bringing many OA-related lists together in one place, OAD makes it easier for everyone to discover them and use them for reference. Thus, for example, there is one page on "Free and open-source journal management software" - very useful to institutions thinking of starting journals.

Open Access Week, October 19 – 23, 2009

I just want to remind everyone that Open Access Week starts in a week's time - so you've just got time to organize something.

This event, which takes place October 19 – 23, is an annual event 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. As you all know, open access is a topic close to my heart, so I hope you'll all participate in some way.

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 Ghana Information and Knowledge Sharing Network

It is rather ironic that ICT is the most powerful tool we have for sharing knowledge and yet we are not sharing experiences and knowledge about ICT project implementation effectively. Initiatives spring up everywhere, seemingly with little awareness of what is going on elsewhere.

One way to tackle this problem is to have country-based or regional information and knowledge sharing networks. The Ghana Information and Knowledge Sharing Network (GINKS) is a good example of this approach. It streamline all disjointed ICT projects, initiatives and programs in a way that provides solutions to challenges and problems in the Ghana ICT environment.



The whole purpose of GINKS is to create a structure through which all relevant Ghana ICT initiatives will be facilitated. As a network, it will:

• Commission research on ICTs and development;
• Publish an influential on-line and off-line quarterly newsletter;
• Organise and participate in workshops, seminars and fora on ICT4D related themes;
• Undertake activities and programmes to generate and source for funds in aid of the network;
• Form strategic partnerships and build networks with organisations and institutions;
• Provide a united front for advocacy on ICTs for development themes and issues.

So far the activities of GINKS include:

• Interactions with rural communities to identify development partners who will work with GINKS to address the information needs of local communities;
• Co-organising monthly seminars on ICT4D issues with BusyInternet called the cyberseries
• An online space for networking through the GINKS mailing list and GINKS portal;
• Co–organising information exchange events with development partners for members of the network with other stakeholder participation;
• Working with organisations such as ITAfrica.org to generate and disseminate local ICT4D content.

Food Security Open Educational Resources

Just came across this useful open access resource from an EC/FAO Programme. Their website "Food Security Information for Decision Making" has lots of information, news and self-access e-learning courses.



The website offers self-paced e-learning, developed by international experts to support capacity building and on-the-job Training and Workshops at national and local food security information systems and networks.

You can try the sample lesson without registering - "What is Food Security?" I had a look at it. The presentation is clean and colourful, with easily manageable amounts of information presented on each page. I found it to be a well developed self-access course.




The following courses are also available (free of charge) just by registering:
- Food Security Information Systems and Networks
- Reporting Food Security Information
- Availability Assessment and Analysis
- Baseline Food Security Assessments
- Food Security Concepts and Frameworks
- Collaboration and Advocacy Techniques
- Livelihoods Assessment and Analysis
- Markets Assessment and Analysis
- Nutritional Status Assessment and Analysis
- Food Security Policies - Formulation and Implementation
- Targeting
- Vulnerability Assessment and Analysis

Well worth exploring.

iDISC - the infoDev Incubator Support Center

The infoDev Incubator Support Center - iDISC - provides hands-on and practical information for incubators and other business development organizations using ICT to facilitate entrepreneurship and new business creation in the developing world. It is also a place where members of the Network can tell their stories and link up with similar organizations.



On iDISC you can find:

• A “How to” section with guidelines for starting an incubator, selecting clients, managing and financing an incubator, monitoring and evaluation, and engaging partners.
• An overview of our 5 regional networks and activities across Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe & Central Asia, Latin America & the Caribbean, and Middle East & Northern Africa.
• An iDisc Network Member Directory that allows you to search and locate incubators across the regions, and to search facts & figures within the global network.
• Network members' Success Stories and Tools that tell us about the impact of business incubation on business start-ups and tools that can be shared among network members to implement best practices.
• Presentations and documents from workshops and specific research themes.
• Information on upcoming events, such as infoDev regional workshops as well as local seminars and symposiums.

This virtual networking and knowledge-sharing platform has its origins in infoDev’s Incubator Initiative, which started in 2002 to support organizations promoting ICT-enabled innovation and entrepreneurship in developing countries.

So how did you spend your Saturday evening?

I'm fortunate. I live next to the beach, which is obviously very enjoyable. And just occasionally it throws in a few surprises.

At about 7.00pm last night I was walking back from the supermarket with two plastic bags (yes - we still use those here) filled with groceries, got into the parking lot of the flats where I live and I noticed all these baby turtles going the wrong way - away from the sea towards the road. So I put all my groceries in one plastic bag to empty the other one, then used it to put the baby turtles in as I caught them. I must have collected about 50 of them and thought I had got the lot. So I walked the 20 metres on the path alongside the flats to the beach and the sea, waded in a bit and released them all.

Then I came back to collect my other bag to go upstairs to my flat. But the baby turtles had other ideas. There were more of them, all scuttling across the car park in the wrong direction. So I collected that lot, probably about 30 to 40 of them, and then took those down to the sea. Came back and - guess what - there were more of them - so I gathered those up and took them down to the sea to join their brothers and sisters.

On my last trip back I couldn't see any more, so I dashed upstairs to take the groceries in and change into something more suitable for turtle catching (though I'm not sure that turtles are very fashion conscious). Then back down to see if there were any more.


How many eggs do these things lay And the mother just left them all for me to look after. Phew!!! Pretty irresponsible parenting if you ask me.

Apparently, after hatching, the turtles are confused by the lights and head towards them instead of down the beach to the sea. An understandable mistake.

Well, on my return I found that a neighbour had noticed the turtles' plight and decided to join me in scooping them up. But now we were only catching a few late developers or stragglers. So two more trips with about 10 turtles and we reckoned we'd got the lot. So we decided to call it a night. And what a night!!

What's all this got to do with ICT? Absolutely nothing. But it explains why I didn't write the usual blog last night

Project Masiluleke: Using mobiles to tackle HIV/AIDS

South Africa has more HIV positive citizens than any country in the world. In some provinces, more than 40% of the population is infected. Yet only 2% of South Africans have ever been tested for HIV. Testing and anti-retrovirals are now available in all parts of the country. And yet, of those who are HIV positive, a mere 10% are receiving anti-retroviral therapy – leaving 90% untreated, infectious and likely to die.

HIV/AIDS carries a huge social stigma in South Africa, preventing many from getting tested or pursuing treatment, and there is wide-spread misinformation about how the disease is contracted.

Project Masiluleke seeks to harnesses the power of mobile technology to address these issues. Here is a video about the Project.



Meaning ‘hope’ and ‘warm counsel’ in Zulu, Project Masiluleke brings together a coalition of world-class partners – including iTeach, the Praekelt Foundation, frog design, Nokia Siemens Networks and the National Geographic Society. The first phase was launched on October 1, 2008, when a text message was sent to 1 million phones – the largest-ever use of mobile messaging to address HIV.

The key elements and stages of Project Masiluleke include:

“Please Call Me” x 1 Million x 365 - messages broadcast in the unused space of “Please Call Me” (PCM) text messages – a special, free form of SMS text widely used in South Africa and across the continent. Trained operators provide callers with accurate healthcare information, counseling and referrals to local testing clinics.

TxtAlert - a system of text messaging to remind patients of scheduled clinic visits to help ensure they adhere to ARV regimens.

HIV Self-Testing with Mobile Support - The project partners are actively exploring a low cost HIV self-testing with mobile counseling support. Analogous to a pregnancy test, these distributed diagnostics would provide a free, private and reliable way for anyone to take the critical first step of knowing his or her status, with high-quality information provided via mobile device.