Development Blogs.com

Notes from the IPID ICT4D PG symposium 2008, Mekrijärvi Research Station, Joensuu University, Finland. 8 and 9 September, 2008. Nelson Godfried Agyemang, University of Pretoria: A Sustainability Framework for Advanced ICT Education in a Developing country Nelson Godfried Agyemang How to make sustainable Postgraduate in ICT education programmes in developing countries. Action research methodology. Kurt Lewin’s iterative process: diagnose, action planning, action taking, evaluating, specifying learning. Important point: not to take research for consultancy. Different sustainability stages: outcomes, processes, context, etc. In the digitizing sustainability, not everything can be digitized. Tersia Gowases, University of Joensuu: Impacts of Higher Education Institutions of an...

Notes from the IPID ICT4D PG symposium 2008, Mekrijärvi Research Station, Joensuu University, Finland. 8 and 9 September, 2008. Edephonce N. Nfuka, Stockholm University: A Holistic Approach for IT Governance in the Public sector Organizations in a Developing Country: A Case Study of Tanzania What is IT Governance? Business support, IT risks, performance, delivery time, service cost, service quality, etc. Basically, business people have to be aligned with IT people. A holistic approach covering the following areas of improvement: Leadership Effective coordination mechanisms Reasonable IT investment Research question: how could IT Governance in the public sector in a developing country be streamlined in order to improve public services delivery? A framework for effective governance:...

Conference by Richard M. Stallman at the First International Conference Free Knowledge, Free Technology - Education for a free information society in Barcelona (Spain), 15 July 2008, on the production and sharing of free educational and training materials about Free Software. Stephen Downes, Institute for Information Technology’s Internet Logic Research GroupThe Future of Education The Public in Public Education Public education, education for everyone, is an important concept not for the “education” part, but for the “public” part, as its impact goes far beyond the acquisition of knowledge, but the shaping of the whole society. Stephen Downes presents gRSShopper. Besides the most evident uses of the tool as a resource harvester, the main purpose being...

Conference by Richard M. Stallman at the First International Conference Free Knowledge, Free Technology - Education for a free information society in Barcelona (Spain), 15 July 2008, on the production and sharing of free educational and training materials about Free Software. Richard M. Stallman, president of the Free Software FoundationFree Software and Beyond Free Software is about giving freedom to the user and respecting the work done by the community of programmers. The analogy with cooking recipes is clearly the best way to help people understand the four freedoms of Free Software. Electronic book readers are evil The key to promote Free Software is not software in itself, the possibility to be able to “cook”, but: as long as software is needed to do more and more things...

(notes from the homonimous session at the bdigital Global Congress) Moderator: Begoña Gros Three main reports issued in 2007 in Spain about ICTs at Schools. The conclusions are more or less the same: everyone uses ICTs (teachers and students) but not at school. Ismael Peña-LópezDigital students, analogue institutions, teachers in extinction Jordi VivancosKnowledge and Learning Technologies, a transforming vision of ICT in Education The Educational sector (i.e. teachers) is one of the sectors with highest penetration in the use of ICTs. So, teachers are not analogue anymore. The design of the traditional syllabus did not make possible the introduction of ICTs in the educational programmes, especially the acquisition of digital competencies. This was solved (in Catalonia) in year 2006,...

Next 20, 21 and 22 May 2008 takes place the bdigital Global Congress, one of the major events about the Information Society in Spain. Our University has been asked to organize the Education track, that will be chair by our Innovation Vicerector Begoña Gros. I have been invited to impart the opening speech for the track, and give an overview of the relationship between the development of the Society and economic development, and how both questions are closely related to the acquisition of digital competences by the citizens. In this matter, the situation of ICTs at school and their use by teachers and students will be analyzed, proposing some strategies to foster ICTs in the educational framework. I here advance the material I prepared for that session as a request for comments. Feel free...

e-STAS is a Symposium about the Technologies for the Social Action, with an international and multi-stakeholder nature, where all the agents implicated in the development and implementation of the ICT (NGO’s, Local authorities, Universities, Companies and Media) are appointed in an aim to promote, foster and adapt the use of the ICT for the social action. Here come my notes for session V. Subjects Free software Accessibility and usability Linguistic diversity Educational programmes New content programmes Debate (random ideas, slightly sorted/grouped) Muhammad Yunus proposes a new kind of enterprise where the focus is on stakeholders and not on shareholders, where no profit is seek, but only social benefit. Low cost computers/devices are converging with mainstream infrastructures....

The Canadian Institute of Distance Education Research, University of Athabasca, has invited me to impart a seminar in the framework of the CIDER Sessions about my digressions around The Personal Research Portal. The focus here will be on the educator, as I did in my article El portal personal del profesor: El claustro virtual o la red tras las aulas [The Personal Research Portal: The Virtual Faculty or the Net behind the Classroom]. The seminar will take place online — using Elluminate — on Friday 11th April 2008, at 17:00h GMT (in English). Relevant info Materials for the seminar (browse and download) Link to Presentation (click to log in 30min prior to the start of the presentation) CIDER Sessions home page Abstract Instructional technology has suffered, in our opinion, two...

Lady Virginia Mugarra VelardeEducation for HIV/AIDS and sexually transmitted diseases prevention The role of ICTs to educate about sexually transmitted diseases prevention, especially to educate educators. An important aspect of such education is to ease the communication between the physicists and their patients. Goals Train educators about these diseases… and how to educate about them Sensitize youngsters about prevention Mobilize policy makers The main successes are, above all, the speed and spread of information and training, with a strong focus on prevention, which is where information can actually make a difference. Tools: a platform with three axes (1) content (2) spaces for debate (3) online assistance María Jesús MedinaCybervolunteering at Iníci@te Programme [note: in...

Conference by Martha Cleveland-Innes, from Athabasca University, at UOC headquarters. Martha Cleveland-Innes: Disciplinary differences and the impact on online design and delivery Martha Cleveland-Innes Different disciplines have different approaches on e.g. what quality is. And there is little research assessing what are the points of view of such disciplines concerning digital learning. So, there is a need to investigate the disciplinary effects on quality definitions, what are the quality factors, etc. Can we draw a common online quality matrix? The practitioners’ point if view is that we have to focus on the student and his learning experience. On the other hand, while there doesn’t seem to be a unique use for a specific technology, evidence shows that peer-to-peer...

Teemu Leinonen posted on Monday at FLOSSE Posse both an acknowledgment and a critique to the One Laptop per Child project: Thank you OLPC - Maybe now we may start to talk about education again. While I’m no unconditional defender of the OLPC initiative — i.e. there are things I like, things I don’t, so I still don’t have a strong position for or against — I believe there are some statements Leinonen makes in his post that, IMHO, are not absolutely fair with the project. I share most of his arguments but I don’t agree with some of them: On one hand, I don’t think the project pretends that children “own” (in the sense of exclusive ownership he talks about) a computer. I honestly think is a matter of identifying the main user. Actually, the...

My article El portal personal del profesor: El claustro virtual o la red tras las aulas [The Teacher’s Personal Portal: the Virtual Faculty or the Net behind the Classrooms] has just been published in the last issue (#223) of Comunicación y Pedagogía, a monographic about Social Networks in the framework of communication and education. For those already familiar with my recent interests in open access, open science and open education, you’ll find the article is based on my former The personal research portal: web 2.0 driven individual commitment with open access for development, though this one is lighter (in all senses), fresher, and includes a new section about Open Educational Resources (OER). Acknowledgments As it always happens, I had already submitted the article when I...

Conference by John Seely Brown at UOC headquarters in the framework of the University’s Innovation Forums. John Seely Brown: Creating a Culture of Learning. Leveraging and Extending Open Educational Resources How to go beyond course material in the field of Open Access. Is there anything more in “open” and learning than Open Educational Resources? Understanding is socially constructed. Social software, especially social networking sites, are making possible more and better networks, groups to build understanding, knowledge together. Michael Polanyi’s dimensions of knowledge: learning about (explicit) vs. learning to be (tacit). Normally, the flow is from explicit to tacit, but we should be able to reverse this flow, and first learn how to be and shape, then,...

It is beyond question that development and education are tightly bound one to each other. And if Information and Communication Technologies are quickly becoming an important vector for development too, having the three concepts under the same roof — Development, Education and ICTs — really does make a lot of sense. This is what the Association for Learning Technology (you can call it ALT) is planning to do on September 2008 at the ALT-C 2008: Rethinking the digital divide International Conference. The event is having eight dimensions: global or local; institutional or individual; pedagogy or technology; access or exclusion; open or proprietary; private or public; for the learner or by the learner; or other aspects of the digital divide. On the other hand, I have been honored to be...

After some Skype sessions — and the invaluable of a friend in common (thanks again, Edgar) — I’ve been invited to be a guest lecturer at the Open Seminar 2.0, coordinated by Cristóbal Cobo and John Moravec, organized by the College of Education and Human Development at the University of Minnesota, FLACSO-México, FLACSO-Ecuador, and FLACSO-Chile. The syllabus of the seminar is terrific and one of the one’s you’d like to be taught, so I’m doubly thrilled in taking part in it. The format is also interesting: onsite sessions at both Mexico and the US, virtual asynchronous lectures by means of videos and presentations, and online synchronous sessions using VoIP and other devices and joining all the participants in the same virtual space, thus highly enriching...

When preparing my speech about The Web 2.0 and the role of the University for the UOC UNESCO Chair in Elearning Fourth International Seminar: Web 2.0 and Education, I gathered a good bunch of references to prepare what I wanted to say. You can find all the references I used — and some more, added after — after this words. But as this is an evolving selection, the up-to-date version of this list can always be consulted here: A Reader on Web 2.0 and Education. Feel free to write back to me with proposals for inclusion in the list and/or corrections for found errors. The collection is far more than just “Education” or “University” or “Web 2.0″ but pretends to give a framework comprehensive enough to approach the Education 2.0 phenomenon. I personally...

Julià Minguillón draws some conclusions (that I adapt too): The web is changing (us): from centralized information crunching to distributed personal presence, in a pervasive networked environment. Learning happens everywhere, and in the space between — in part thanks to new (mobile) devices — and accordingly learning spaces must adapt. Institutions are far behind users, but not all users are 2.0 yet. 2.0 is: much more than technology a cultural change doing new things with new tools (not old things with new tools) crowdsourcing, innovation, creation The person is the center. Of the learning process. Of his network. Thus the personal learning environment or space is crucial. And crucial to gather the knowledge that has split outside the walls of the university. BUT, all this...

Round Table: Carmen Candioti, Head of web contents and educational Television, CNICE (Spain); , Jordi Vivancos, Head of the ICT Educational Projects Office. Education Department, Generalitat de Catalunya (Spain); Ismael Peña-López, Law and Political Sciences School, UOC, (Spain) Web 2.0 and the role of the public sector Carmen Candioti Need for new skills, abilities, competences — the digital competence — that need to be taken into account on curricula design. The role of the instructor as a mentor, a facilitator, a mediator… and maybe even the creator of his own didactic resources. On the other hand, the student can no more learn alone, but in a shared/sharing environment. Do ICTs favour learning? Motivation Interest in the subject Collaborative work and environment Problem...

Brian Lamb, Department of Emerging Technologies & Digital Content, University of British Columbia (Canada) Brian Lamb: It’s all coming apart Originality is overrated: Glenn Gould, William Shakespeare, Rick Prelinger… in one way or another have faced the fact of originality… or if there’s none. Being open is not a matter of altruism, but a good practice for your self and your own efficiency. Use information as a flow, not like a thing, Stephen Downes in managing information overload. The power of positive narcissism: you discover interesting content, people by just tracking back your content, what it’s been told about you, etc. There’s a problem with that lot of different licenses, confusing the user/creator. And people not using them...

Ambjörn Naeve, Head of Knowledge Management Research Group, KTH/Nada/Media (Sweden) The Human Semantic Web - Increasing the Global Organizational Performance of Humanity Inc. From teacher-centric, curricular-oriented “knowledge push” to learner-centric, interest-oriented “knowledge pull”. The Semantic Web opens the gate towards the globally annotated information age, in opposition to recorded or transmitted information age. We all become librarians. Being a generalist (knowing less about more things) or a specialist (knowing more about less things). You have to choose, but cannot be both. The question is: how to solve problems when you do need both kind of knowledges? We need to improve the representation of reality, to make it more and more simple. Reinventing...

Keynote speech: Graham Attwell, Director of Pontydysgu (UK) Web 2.0, Personal Learning Environments and the future of schooling We are probably in the biggest Industrial Revolution, and we’re living it [I couldn’t agree more]. In Wales, the First Industrial revolution (1830-1950) took 50 years (1890-1900) to impact education: universal education, etc. In this industrial revolution, the impact has taken place in just 10 years maximum and in a broader scope and deeper changes. BUT someone from the XIXth century would enter a XXIth century classroom and recognize it: classroom has changed very very little in more than 150 years. Bizarre effect: while in the instructional technology debate there’s an agreement that Virtual Learning Environments (VLE) are dead, our schools,...

Larry Johnson, Chief Executive Officer. New Media Consortium (USA) Case Study 1. Second Life as an educational space Larry Johnson speaks about the experience of the NMC at Second Life for educational purposes. NMC Virtual Worlds to help build Second Life, to build things in Second Life. For instance, Second Health, to explore new ways for health systems, and shifting from hospitals for ill people to hospitals for healthy people. Second Life was useful to create different stories by filming series of videos — machinima — and then deliver them outside Second Life. The stories were also created as teaching materials simulating heart attacks, limps, etc. Second Health: Polyclinic Tour   Second Health: Emergency and Specialist Care Traffic data about Second Life use in NMC...

Juan Freire, Universidade de A Coruña (Spain) Web 2.0: institutional challenges | View | Upload your own Promises and reality Change in learning paradigms: from the teacher centered to the creation of networks. Strong focus in learning by doing and collaborative and active learning. Problem: web 2.0 explorers exist, but not backed up institutionally, creating a digital divide inside universities, between individuals and the institutions. Beyond technology Web 2.0 more than a technology: social change. Many different tools, open and linked one to each other, connected, easy to use… thus creating a whole ecosystem. Important question: the crossover between people and content that takes place in the Web 2.0, hence bringing in the capability for social creation of content. If...

Live notes at UOC UNESCO Chair in Elearning Fourth International Seminar: Web 2.0 and Education, held in Barcelona, Spain, 17, 18 and 19 October 2007. Keynote speech: Phil Long, Assoc. Director of the Office of Educational Innovation and Technology. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (USA) Web 2.0 and education: an overall look Connectivity will be pervasive: everywhere everywhen we’ll be connected. (Phil Long goes over a good bunch of Web 2.0 apps) Web 2.0: to leverage the sociability and human characteristics of the web users. Creation of a notion of a sixth sense: connected to your extended network, your online and offline presences tracked, etc. Social networking sites really pervasive among youngsters, massively accessed not only through the web but also through mobile...