CEDICT: Communication, Education and Development using ICT

2013-07-20

The powerful ‘Open Data for Africa’ platform is now available across the continent

The African Development Bank (AfDB) has announced that it has completed the last phase of deploying its Open Data for Africa platform across the continent following deployments in Benin, Comoros, Côte d’Ivoire, Djibouti, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, The Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Kenya, São Tomé and Príncipe, Sierra Leone, Swaziland, and Togo.

The platform has now been rolled out to all 54 countries across the continent.

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2013-07-19

WSIS Knowledge Communities: Building inclusive societies for persons with disabilities

The “Building inclusive societies for persons with disabilities” community provides a unique opportunity for strategic debate and action oriented partnerships among various stakeholders such as persons with disabilities, practitioners, decision and policy makers, researchers, civil society, industry and UN system organizations as well as any individual who is interested in building inclusive education systems and knowledge societies for persons with disabilities.

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2013-07-17

Why National Broadband Plans Matter?

In 2011, at the Broadband Leadership Summit, the Commission endorsed a set of advocacy targets covering broadband policy, affordability and uptake. This report looks specifically at the first target, which calls for broadband policy to be made universal by 2015, and examines the importance of policy leadership and the effectiveness and policy implications of national broadband plans.

Link: http://www.broadbandcommission.org/documents/reportNBP2013.pdf

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2013-07-16

Teachers: Technology Encourages Student Creativity, Makes Teaching Writing Easier

Are digital tools like cell phones and social networking sites undermining students' writing skills or helping to improve them?

A new survey of teachers from the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project found that most teachers involved in the survey consider technology beneficial to writing in several ways, including creativity and personal expression (78 percent), collaboration (79 percent), and the ability to share their work with a wider audience (96 percent).

However, the news wasn't all positive. Among those surveyed, 68 percent said technology makes make students more likely "to take shortcuts and not put effort into their writing."

"These results challenge in many ways the notion that students' writing skills are being undermined by their increasing engagement with digital tools and platforms," notes Kristen Purcell, associate director for research at Pew Internet, in a statement released to coincide with the report. "Teachers do have concerns that digital tools are blurring the lines between formal and informal writing and see writing skills that need improvement, but they also see the benefit of students having more people respond to their writing and the increased opportunities for expression these digital tools offer."

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2013-07-15

A teaching adventure

THE first thing that drew university student Lu Song towards a volunteer position near Nairobi, Kenya was the opportunity to put the experience on his applications for postgraduate study in the United States (US). The second was the chance to spend an adventurous summer abroad.

But the 18-year-old did not count on a third factor that would only become apparent after he had begun working at a school in one of Africa’s largest slums — the desire to help.

Lu, a first-year undergraduate at the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing, found the experience so rewarding that he now recruits other students as volunteers, and is raising money for the school he worked at.

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2013-07-12

Kenya's laptops for schools dream fails to address reality.

Mark Graham: Kenya wants to be Africa's digital heart but its e-learning strategy ignores the need for more trained teachers and less inequality

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2013-07-03

Mobile Learning: 5 Advantages and 5 Disadvantages

Learning is becoming more mobile and easier for the average student. So what are the advantages and disadvantages of mobile learning? Is easier better?

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Namibia seeks partners in rural schools ICT programme

The Namibian government aims to embark on a programme to take ICTs to isolated rural schools, and is seeking investment partners to support the plan.

This emerged at the Namibian Investment Seminar staged for potential investors at Gallagher Estate in Johannesburg, South Africa, yesterday.

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2013-07-02

Emerging countries open up new opportunities for marketers: report

Sixty-eight percent of consumers surveyed in emerging markets said that they want to receive weekly mobile promotions, according to a new report from Upstream.
Upstream’s new 2013 “Emerging Markets Mobile Attitudes” report examines which types of mobile content consumers in emerging countries are most interested in. In particular the report points to emerging markets as the next big opportunity for some of the big players in the tech industry, including Apple, Samsung, Facebook and Google.

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2013-07-01

Find Out More About Online Learning

Online learning is a convenient mode of study for many people, especially those who are working and do not wish to take time off work to attend campus for their studies.

Find out more about online learning or elearning - using audio and video-conferencing, email, chat, and completing an online degree or certificate by distance.

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