ICTlogy

From Online Learning Update, as enlightening as always! :))

Jozef Hvorecký, from the Vysoká škola manažmentu, publishes in the European Journal of Distance Learning an article entitled Can E-learning break the Digital Divide? – not very optimistic, I dare say…

He starts stating some counterarguments against the optimistics’ vision of “students in Third-World countries. In accordance to well-known practices of e-learning the students would study on their own pace by self-learning”:

Language barrier: Evident, specially at primary school level.

Absence of prerequisites: Say, lack of national qualified teachers to carry on with (especially) e-learning.

Technology hurdles: Evident too. The author passes quickly over this subject – maybe it’s too evident to spend too much time – but there’s lot more problems than he states: power (electricity), hardware, software, connectivity, digital illiteracy…

Difficulties with translation: (I guess it is same point than the first one, but under a new point of view)

He then explains his own experience in teaching three courses and, with some statistical data collected in these courses, he concludes:

Economic and organizational aspects of e-learning are often overlooked by its proponents, the necessity of building a proper infrastructure as well (Hvorecký, Rebro, 2004). The expenses generated by e-learning are high (preparation of courses, instructor training, class control, costs of supporting software, reliable mainframe as the carrier of the communication, network expenditure, etc.). The tuition must be such, too. It is naïve to believe that this will change soon.

To profit from e-learning, one should live on “the right side” of the Digital Divide.

Oh, my… :(

In a post I wrote back in October (Is the free software model of production applicable to free educational content?) I talked about an article by Sergio Monge dealing with whether the free software model of production was applicable to free educational content.

Now, surfing around I get to a summary of the Special Interest Group Open Source for Education in Europe Seminar, held the 2nd October in the Universitat Pompeu Fabra.

There I’ve discovered a collaborative environment/tool to create e-Learning Objects called Eudukalibre:

Edukalibre is a project funded by the European Comission under the Socrates/Minerva program (aimed at the promotion of information and communications technology in education). Its main goal is to explore new ways of producing educational materials, based in the practices and procedures observed in the libre (free, open source) software development community.

Of course, the resulting software is F/OSS and it is being integrated with Moodle.

Anyway, the article by Sergio Monge was not about tools but more about strategy, policy and behavior of the community of authors, but I think a well designed tool can enhance the weakest points of this community.

By the way, I don’t know whether Edukalibre (“Freeducation”) is a good tool – they’re just in half their way through the project – but it looks, so far, a good start, but with a lot of work to be done.

Blogger Corps is born.

Put simple: bloggers related to NPO, cooperation for development, etc. acting as e-volunteers to foster blogging for nonprofit projects and organizations or, in their own words, matching bloggers with activists and non-profit groups who want to blog and need help getting started.

The idea first came out thanks to Rebecca MacKinnon and was put to practice by John Stanforth.

I talked about it on Monday and on Tuesday.

I wish them us the best of lucks in the new project. I’ve yet to know how but surely get involved one way or another. I thought it was a better idea to foster already established former online volunteering platforms, but once the project is out, we’d better help it out the best we can :)

Rebeca MacKinnon at RConversation:

socially conscious members of the blogging community (of all political persuasions) might want to organize a “Blogger Corps.” Through it, bloggers could donate their time to help poorly funded activists or non-profit groups to figure out what blogging tools are right for them, set up blogs, and develop effective blogging strategies

Nancy White at Full Circle Associates:

Do we need a Blogger Corps? Or do we need to continue to do a bit more overtly what already happens: help each other. Post short cuts and tips. Welcome each other. Point people to free resources. Read and comment on new bloggers’ blogs as a form of coaching and encouragement.

Working in the NPO/NGO community, I get a bit jaded about yet another group. Maybe we need to simply plug into existing groups? On the flip side, creating a service identity in the blogosphere has value as well.

In my opinion, there’s no need to create this specific volunteers group but add, in some other online volunteering sites, a new category related to blog coaching. And foster and foster online volunteering, besides if it develops web sites or designs online learning content.

Online Learning Environments is a list of links gathered by Tereça Almeida.

Not related with ICT4D or this ICT4D blog, but I thought I might want to look for it sometime later… and this is the best place that came in mind to store it ;)

[via OLDaily]

A report published by The Communication Initiative, by Warren Feek of The Communication Initiative with substantial support and guidance from Greg Long.

Focused in ICT4D in Health but it looks quite a good reading – very busy these days, just had time to have a quick look at its table of contents.

The Current and Future Applications of Information and Communication Technologies for Developmental Health Priorities (2,60 Mb)

[via incommunicado]