About Me
I am Ismael Peña-López and I am lecturer at the Open University of Catalonia, School of Law and Political Science, working in the field of Public Policies for Development, with a special focus on ICT (so, ICT4D, digital divide and so). This site, that began as a blog (now I call it personal research portal), is intended to share with all of you the knowledge I might have gathered the last years and the thoughts that might have arisen.
My research interests can be written, more or less, this way:
- Digital Divide, e-Readiness, ICT4D
- ICTs in development cooperation, nonprofit technology, online volunteering
- e-Inclusion, digital capacitation
- e-Learning, e-Portfolios
- Open Access, Open Science, Access to Knowledge
Previous to this I was the founder and former Director of the Cooperation for Development Programme at the University, which is how this whole thing began.
During those (almost) five years I was terribly seduced by Information and Communication Technologies for Development (ICT4D) and little by little I started to shift to more academic issues: directing and giving courses, directing institutional technology transfer projects internationally, and some diffusion, innovation and research projects.
Teaching
I teach and/or coordinate the following subjects:
- Digital Literacy and e-Inclusion [bibliography]
- Political Transformations in the Information Society I
- Political Transformations in the Information Society II
- Introduction to Economics
- Technological Grounds Of The e-Administration [bibliography]
Works
Most of my work about these subjects has been uploaded onto this site (translated or in the original language). Hence, I invite you to browse the menu on the left to see what I’ve written and said.
Other places where I usually write (frequency depending on medium):
- Otro Blog Más [Spanish], professor César Corcoles’s blog on the Internet, technology, multimedia, programming… and a lot of geek stuff
- UOC UNESCO Chair in e-Learning blog
Places I contibuted with in the past:
- Comunicació 21 [Catalan], about the Information Society and its impact on mass media and communication in general.
- Educación y Cultura [Spanish], about Technological Innovation and Social Transformation in e-Europe
Committees
I am or have been part of the organizing committee, reviewer and/or editor and/or referee in the following publications, events, and/or calls (alphabetical order):
- ACCD grants
- ALT-C 2008 Conference - Rethinking the Digital Divide
- Congrés IDP – Internet, Dret i Política (II)
- Congrés IDP – Internet, Dret i Política (III)
- Congrés IDP – Internet, Dret i Política (IV)
- DEBEQ grants
- IDP, Revista d’Internet i Ciència Política
- Hawaii International Conference On System Sciences (HICSS)
- Information Technologies and International Development
- International Journal of E-Government Research
- International Journal of Information Communication Technologies and Human Development
- Social Software and Developing Community Ontologies
- Technology for Innovation and Education in Developing Countries 2008
- The Journal of Networks and Civil Society
- UOC UNESCO Chair in Elearning Fifth International Seminar
Other
I am also the (so far) only developer of the free software project BibCiter, a PHP+MySQL based bibliographic manager. I’m not a developer, so the code is not pretty good… but, hey, it looks cute at work, doesn’t it?. I’m also part of the Wordpress in catalan team.
I live near Barcelona, but I can usually be found here. My mother tongues are Catalan and Spanish, and I also speak English, French und ein bißchen German. I took a course and a half of Arabic, but had to leave it aside (not forever, I hope). I paraglide and play tenor sax — not at the same time (yet).
Of course, the contents on this site express my own opinion and not necessary my University’s.
Feel free to contact me by using this form (I know most people don’t like forms, but I’m not succeeding on liking spam…).
Works
