ICTlogy

Colleges and universities are engaging in virtual projects with developing countries throughout the world. Such projects give faculty an opportunity to collaborate with their peers, to conduct research, and to strengthen their organizations. Students who enroll in virtual internships or who participate in the project are able to gain experience in employing “appropriate technology” e-solutions in places where information sharing, education, training, and community and health support are desperately needed.

I found this in XPlanaZine

There’s a cute example following the lines I quoted but I don’t see whether it is a real example, ’cause it all starts with “colleges and universities are engaging in virtual projects” but I cannot see further information or links to some of these projects.

Anyway, the post is worth reading it and it’s just about a thing I’ve commented here zillions of times: content, content, content and services, services, services, this time carried on by students acting non-profit (well, they get some marks, but at least it is not about money)

By the way, Xplana has changed recently so now you just have to syndicate once and not three times (articles, whitepapers, interviews) as before.

Plenty of stuff in two articles by Graeme Daniel at wwwtools for education, with information about MITs OpenCourseWare and Open Knowledge Initiative.

Worth reading or, at least, scanning.

• MIT’s OpenCourseWare Project – 2004 Update
• The Open Knowledge Initiative – Update 2004

[via sierto]

Who Needs Multimedia discusses some of the myths surrounding media use for elearning. I think the focus is off. The real question of media use is not “is the technology sufficiently advanced”, but “does it help the learner and improve the learning experience”. If it doesn’t add to the learning experience, don’t use it…doesn’t matter how “cool” or cutting edge it is. I’ve come to view the deselection of formats/concepts/activities in the learning design process as (almost) more important than the formats/concepts/activities that are included.

From Open Artifact and him from elearnspace and him from L&T Magazine

If you add to “If it doesn’t add to the learning experience, don’t use it” the fact that sometimes this multimedia stuff makes it thougher to people with bad connectivity or poor desktops, specially in underdevelopped countries, it gets really important to take in consideration the use of multimedia no “matter how “cool” or cutting edge it is”. And I guess some of the myths the article tries to demythologize still are not that clear in some whereabouts.

Next week I’ll be at Virtual Educa, “a strategic international annual conference – a multilateral forum – where experts from the education, government and business sectors analyze and share their expertise on the application of new technologies, information and communication systems to the education and training fields while examining the role of e-learning on today’s knowledge society”

I’ve yet to decide what I will exactly be assisting, but it looks like I’m interested in:

Wednesday, 16th june, 15:30 – 17:30
Internet and rural development

Wednesday, 16th june, 17:30 – 19:00
International Organizations and their contributions to Educational IT

Thursday, 17th june, 15:30-17:30
Cooperation for Development and professional training

Friday, 18th june, 09:00-10:00
ICTs and Comprehensive development

Friday, 18th june, 15:30-18:00
e-Training for accessibility and social exclusion avoidance

As always, anything interesting I might find there, I’d try and post.

Feel free to meet me. Barcelona’s quite nice these days :)

I finally joined the Free Open Source Software for E-learning Forum.

The schedule of the Forum is as follows:

Session 1 (1-11 June)

• FOSS ? what is it and what should you know about it?
• FOSS for e-learning ? what are the pros and cons?

Session 2 (14-25 June)

• FOSS solutions for e-learning

The debate is quite interesting, but I’d rather catch up will all the messages I’ve got pending of reading :(

Hope I can post here the conclusions :)

Yet another Linux distribution for educational purposes, now by the Community of Madrid Government.

Linex, Lliurex, MAX… what’s next?
The first time I heard of it (Linex) I was excited. Now, I’m concerned: why not find synergies and save energies and enhance the previous distributions instead of making brand new ones? I wonder it’s because every single politician must profit the “return of investment” of his own political actions. Sad, so sad. They’re just blowing up the most basic principles of free software and the internet commons: collaboration.

No details in MAX Web Site, so don’t know if they joined efforts with the other mentioned projects. Any one knows?

[thanks to Yolanda Franco for the point :) ]