ICTlogy

Today I had a meeting with Carlota Franco (Fundación Chandra), Xavier Capdevila and Guillermo Rojo (Fundació Fias), David Corominas (Red con Voz) and Eduardo Sánchez (Ingeniería Sin Fronteras).

We’re trying to organize the II Conference on Internet and Solidarity (more info soon) and in the course of the meeting four force ideas arose (first three by Eduardo, last on by David):

• Technology must be at society’s service (not the contrary)
• Universal access to technology/Internet is desirable
• (Universal) access is a right (not charity)
• Territories are socially builded; thus, they must be socially managed

Second and third points might seem the same, but are not: second one deals with access itself, but not the means of this access; third point deals with the (political, conceptual) means.

Fourth point deals with all kinds of territories, including virtual ones.

Reading a post by Ethan Zuckerman I’ve found a terrific tool I hadn’t heard of.

The Human Development Report search tools let you build your own table by chosing the countries, data, etc. you want, crossing them they way you want and exporting them in CSV files or other spreadsheet formats. Impressive, really impressive. I wonder if I’ll ever overcome my deepest ignorance :P

Some highlights/bookmarks of the information there:

• Human Development Reports, the Human Development Report Office web site
• All data from the Human Development Report
• Searchable data and customized searches – and output!
• Other data sources from different UN agencies
• Update:
  World Bank World Development Indicators.

This finding will be very useful :) :) :)

A study of 5 digital libraries in elearningeuropa.info: Online Resources Repositories for Distance Learning I found reading Ray Schroeder.

I have a deep dilemma: when I find information like this one, what do I do?

• Bookmark the article?
• Bookmark every single learning object repository (even if it sometimes is not exactly a repository) in the article?
• Keep a list of gateways or repositories of repositories?
• Bookmark a Google search by e-learning objects repositories?
• Or just keep a list (whatever method) of ICT4D learning objects, which is my area of interest?

I have to write down what I understand by “ICT4D learning objects” and start having a criterion of my own…

Katrin Verclas has a very good post about the use of free software in nonprofits. While the post is entitled Non-Profit Use of Open Source, as it mainly deals with the free software philosophy, I’d rather re-entitle it that way – if Richard Stallman ever reads this, I’ll surely make his day ;)

Katrin’s post has its origins in some musings around the NOSI Open Source Primer for Nonprofits, but then adds plenty of resources dealing with Free Software and Open Source solutions that nonprofits can use to enhance their capacity.

Worth bookmarking it :)

Learning from Information and Communication Technology for Development (ICT4D) Research to Enhance Policymaking ( Philippines )” is a joint project of the Department of Science and technology (DOST) and the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) of Canada . The project aims to identify the transformational impact of ICT on Philippine society and from the learnings distilled from the different ICT4D projects undertaken, transform these learnings into policies and actions

Nevertheless, their Resource Center is full with good resouces not only related to Philipines.

The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health is pleased to welcome you to the initial phase of its pilot OpenCourseWare (OCW) project, providing free and open access to the School’s most popular courses to students, self learners, and educators anywhere in the world. […]

[…] As part of its mission to protect health and prevent disease and disability, the School feels a moral imperative to provide equal and open access to information and knowledge about the obstacles to the public’s health and their potential solutions.

[via Stephen]