ICTlogy

Keynote: Amen Ra Mashariki, Chief Analytics Officer, New York City

After several milestones on open data and open governmetn, in 2015 New York City released its Open Data For All programme. Its aim, to actually increase the use and reuse of open data by all citizens, not just a bunch of them. Open data has to be available for all, meaning that data should be able to be used by anyone, anywhere and anytime.

Start with users

NYC made some research on who the users were and how did they use data.

Human-centered design was applied to improve the portal, and think on the portal not as a repository, but as a service.

In partnership with New York University, the portal made that you —as an individual, as a community— you could find yourself in the data, you have to feel that you are represented there. If a policy is implemented and you are not there, the policy will not affect you. So, main issues/problems/needs were identified and the date was put into motion to illustrate or lay the foundations of these issues and the policies to address them.

For instance, an Open Data Powerty model was designed using data on community concerns, infrastructures, representation, demographics, etc.

Encourage purposeful engagement

e.g. Organise hackathons and other ways of constructive engagement that has a meaning not for the city, but for the individual citizen too.

Empower agencies

Agencies have many missions and goals, and opening data usually is not one of them. Thus, they will not dedicate a part of the budget to it, no matter how insistent you are on that. So, how do we bring agencies to open up data? And make it meaningful to them?

First thing is to address standards. Try and have agencies applying standards in their data management, so that they can be reused elsewhere, or that they can “talk” to other data sets. This will sooner or later create synergies and help agencies not to open data but to achieve their own goals, which is what they really care about.

Treat publishing as the middle of opening data

When you get data from an agency, most of it does not make sense to you, out of the agency’s context. So you partner with them and try to understand their data so that you can bring them to light. For the agency, publishing data is the end; for you, publishing data is just the middle, as there is a lot of work to be done still.

Integrate Open Data into citywide processes

Case: The NYPD Was Systematically Ticketing Legally Parked Cars for Millions of Dollars a Year — Open Data Just Put an End to It. If citizens can have access to open data, they can help improve the city in many ways. So, it is not only about “data journalism” and publishing news, etc. but also about engaging in citizen processes.

You have to work to change the complexion of the community. You have to work to empower people to believe that they can make a change, that they can participate, that they can help to improve the city.

Learn, test, standardize — and learn again

Reflect about the whole process and improve it.

Random notes during the session:

Strengthening global coordination

Coordination for what? Why coordination?

Strengths

• Ability to bridge the top-down approach with the bottom-up approach.

Weaknesses

• Regional representatives

Opportunities

• Need for asset-mapping in communities to create communities.

Threats

• Making connections shouldn’t be left to chance.
• We talk about open data but have no open resources or open tools.

The role of multi-donor coordination in open data field

Strengths

• Emerging network.
• Different expertise.
• Research done.

Weaknesses

• How donors communicate with each other.
• Target countries.
• Mainstream use of data.

Opportunities

• Better use of open data.
• Leverage existing investments in the field.
• Sectorial problem solving.
• Consolidate as a resource.

Threats

• Different proposals to different donors
• Make it sustainable
• Proliferation of global initiatives that forget about the local
• Disperse information

Exploring how we can improve gender outcomes and drive new gender and data projects

Strengths

Weaknesses

• Gender unbalances can mask the real impact of open data.

Opportunities

Threats

Random notes during the session:

Setting up regional initiatives

Stop talking about open data and begin talking about issues.

Open data should not be an end in itself.

How do we cope with encouraging regional initiatives while keeping the interest in the local impact. How do we keep the regional nodes locally grounded.

• Having other stakeholders in the projects so that they can make it socially sustainable, like data journalists.
• Connect researchers and practitioners.
• Establish fellowship programmes.
• Repository of best practices.
• We have to do the open data revolution from below. We have to start infiltrating the system.

Instead of putting out solutions, put the spotlight on problems, create conditions/spaces where problems can be shared: crowdsourcing, crowdfunding, hackathong, etc. so that people that have the solutions can joint the people that have the problems. Putting out the solutions will not necessarily attract people with the problems.

• Be more able to connect people: citizens, sectors, governments, etc.
• Pre-events have been very successful.
• Have to make connections more continuously, with consistent engagement.

More collaboration.

More sectorial work. Infiltrate sectors. Adaptive approach.

Better research. Map out good practices.

Re-use of apps.

Supporting Governments

What format is useful, what content.

How to go beyond the programme.

• Not lobbying, but helping governments to manage change.
• Focus on use, focus on the demand side. How do we stimulate the demand?
• Sector focused initiatives.
• How to embed our thinking as a tool to achieve governments’ goals.

The technicalities of open data is not the most important thing.

Help communities how to have good ideas and how to use open data to achieve them.

Having a champion is very important.

The best way to foster the supply side is to support the demand side.

We have to stop talking about ‘open data’ and focus instead on vertical communities: e.g. open data and agriculture, open data and transportation, etc.

In some countries is not anymore a matter of evangelization: governments are convinced. Thus, it is again a matter of technology, of providing (technical) solutions.

We have to institutionalize open data initiatives, make them mainstream at the highest government levels.

How to institutionalize it, though? Help governments to actually implement things.

• Political will and capacities.
• Continuity, stability.
• Think about demand and how to contribute to it: developers, data scientists, etc.

Still working in silos. Support open culture across governments.

Use and reuse of data

If government discloses only what’s convenient, this leads nowhere.

Demand mapping: open data availability is different from usefulness.

Citizens don’t necessarily use data –> build capacity of intermediaries.

Offline engagement is critical.

Open data for transparency, how to?

Fellow selection is critical.

Reuse will benefit from problem-solving.

Data collection is a crucial skill. Data literacy.

Data collaboration.

Measurement and impact

Institutionalization.

How governments are investing, what actions they are taking.

Indices.

None of these indices are talking to each other. How to define measuring.

Infomediaries/intermediaries.

Data does not produce impact: people produce impact.

What is the immediate outcome and what is the long-term effect of open data.

Different levels of impact: economic impact, social impact, etc.

One of the first places to look for impact is in the flow of feedback and what the demand side is saying about open data.

Back up for Online Tutors and Mentors

Chairperson: Robert Kisalama, Belgian Technical Cooperation, Uganda

Ismael Peña-López, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, Spain
eSupervision: A Four-tier Applied Model

(more…)

Creating Communities of Practice for Teachers

Would you like to hear about the methods and tools to enhance teachers’ pedagogical skills? Learn how communities of practice, by and for teachers, can influence professional development.

Chairperson: Mohamed Ahmed, Mansoura University, Egypt

Hela Nafti, Tunisian Education and Resource Network TEARN, Tunisia
Achieving Peace by Building Sustainable Global Online Learning Communities

SDG Goal 4: Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all.

Learners have to acquire skills and, most especially, attitudes and values — because information is everywhere.

iEARN: 130 countries, 30 languages, 40,000 educators, 2 million youth. iEARN (International Education and Resource Network) is the world’s largest non-profit global network that enables teachers and youth to use the Internet and other technologies to collaborate on projects that enhance learning and make a difference in the world.

Learning Circles promote theme-based project work integrated with the classroom curriculum. Working with Learning Circle partners from around the world help students develop important interpersonal skills. Learning Circles also encourage interactions among teachers providing a very different model of professional development.

A Learning Circle is created by a team of 6-8 teachers and their classes joined in the virtual space of an electronic classroom. The groups remains together over a 3-4 month period working on projects drawn from the curriculum of each of the classrooms organized around a selected theme. At the end of the term the group collects and publishes its work. Then, just as any class of students does, the Learning Circle comes to an end. Each session begins with new groupings of classes into Learning Circles.

Created a Tunisian circle to deal about peace and sustainable development.

Capacity building, teacher training is the most relevant thing for teachers: you can not teach if you do not know how to.

Paul Waibochi, CEMASTEA, Kenya,
Using Social Media (Whatsapp) in Enhancing Teacher Pedagogical Competencies: Case Study Cemastea – Lesson Study Model

How can we improve teachers’ competences in how to deliver the curriculum through m-learning: how to use Whatsapp for education and learning purposes.

In infrastructure matters, Kenya is ready: 80% mobile uptake, high bandwidth per person, familiarity with mobile services (e.g. m-pesa), etc.

Process of teachers working in teams to develop lessons to adress an identified problem amongst learners. The developed lesson is taught by one of the teachers while others observe. The team discusses the taught lesson and make improvements.

The purpose of m-learning is more access (you save travelling of both students and teachers), more efficiency and quality. Now lessons are not only face-to-face, so they are not so much time-constrained, and happen instead on a blended-learning basis.

Another good thing about Whatsapp is that it supports multimedia: the teacher can teach and videotape the lesson and then share it through Whatsapp where other teachers can observe and comment.

Finally, the idea is to create a community of teachers that engage in the project, help each other, share their outputs. In parallel to that, the teachers acquire or strengthen 21st century skills, like communication, collaboration, critical thinking, etc. in addition to constant professional development and regular orientation and training.

Discussion

Q: How do we select the teachers? Waibochi: they come from the same grade, and from the same topic to be taught at a particular class.

Q: how do you eliminate “noise” from Whatsapp groups? Waibochi: it is about defining well what is going to be the topics of conversation, and stick with them.

Q: how do you measure the expected outcomes in the communities of practice? How do you evaluate results? Waibochi: there are screening surveys that are used to evaluate what the students knew before and after the intervention.

Q: Why not your own chatting platform? Waibochi: not only Whatsapp, but also Facebook accounts. The technology is already there and everybody is using it.

Plenary: Entrepreneurialism, Capacity Development and the Role of Education in Accelerating Change

Economic growth and technological innovations are beginning to change Africa but how can the transformation be made permanent? How can the pace of change be quickened? How can we ensure that Africa is not just transformed but able to compete in tomorrow’s markets? How can we encourage a new spirit of entrepreneurialism? How can we boost capacity development, to ensure that Africans are ready to seize new opportunities in the future? How can we empower African educators and give them the tools they need to teach new skills? How can we enable students to make the most of a new world of learning? How can we put education and training at the heart of Africa’s transformation? These are just some of the questions which our panel of experts will address.

Chairperson: Hossam El Gamal, Chairman of the Information and Decision Support Centre (IDSC), Egypt

Dr Tarek Shawki, Secretary General of Presidential Specialised Councils, Egypt,
Keynote Address

Education in our lifetime requires great innovation and collaboration. We need to understand what is required from the ecosystem.

What is the relationship between the economy and education? We have to make this issue surface and take over the public debate. And the the social justice that should come with education.

It is likely that the assessment system is quite guilty for this dissociation between education and the economy, between earning a diploma and learning.

People lack autonomy because the system is ruled with a totalitarian approach. This lack of freedom implies that some decisions are left unmade.

A new project by the Egyptian government, the Egyptian knowledge bank, has been buying a massive amount of digital content (scientific, educational, etc.) from major publishers and put it online for free (for Egyptian IPs). But not only that, new textbooks are pointing at these resources, so that the content of the textbooks is enhanced by the one online.

The project is framed within a macro strategy to redesign Egyptian Education as an Education 2.0.

Prof Moses Oketch, Professor of International Education Policy and Development at UCL, UK
Perspectives on ICT, Lifelong Learning and Endogenous Development in Africa

Besides moneraty benefits of human capital, there are non-monetary benefits, like better health, etc. And, in addition to that, there is non-monetary social benefits (vs. individual benefits). It is time to put these concepts in the forefront of the public debate.

And technology has become crucial in the human capital formation. And not only human capital, but endogenous development. And this is crucial for sustainable development, while also reducing diminishing returns of investment.

Last, technology is changing the very concept of lifelong learning: you are actually learning all the time.

Four key connections:

• Identify and support incentives for ICT and lifelong learning.
• Overcome barriers arising from investment externalities.
• Encourage and support endogenous technology/applications that are locally relevant and scale them up.
• Enhance ICT inclusivity in learning and teaching to overcome structural inequalities and skills deficit.

Dr Rania Reda, Founder & CEO of ITQAN for Smart Solutions, Egypt
We Can Dream Bigger Now

To transform education we have to take into account all education stakeholders: students, educators, parents, administrators, etc. And entrepreneurs come and try and fill the gaps that these stakeholders might have to unleash their full potential, to optimize performance. Assessing the stakeholders’ needs is the first step for transforming education.

Augmented reality can certainly help to improve education. By projecting things that do not exist into real life, learning can be much more engaging, a requisite for real learning. Visualization, quite often, helps to understand complex concepts, eases the assimilation of content.

How to use augmented reality in schools: help with homework (e.g. a video is displayed when a page of homework is scanned), book reviews (e.g. the student can annotate a book and anyone can read/hear/see it), parent virtual inspiration (e.g. record parent encouraging their child), yearbooks (e.g. bring photos back to life), word walls, lab safety, deaf and hard of hearing flashcards.

Discussion

Oketch: how do we measure the impact of technology in matters of learning outcomes? We have to begin to measure learning in different ways as we do now. We haven’t figured out yet how to do it, and it will certainly be the next frontier.

Rania Reda: besides infrastructure — which is crucial — mentoring is very important: many times one knows what to do, but does not exactly how. And here is where coaching an entrepreneur can lead to very good results.

In a very near future, learners will be much more learner-centered in their learning. When information is abundant, one begins to learn how to access and manage information, and to use it for learning.