ICTlogy

It looks like ages since I ended my M.Phil.’s research project e-Learning for Development: a model. During last year (2006) I gave a conference about e-Learning and development based on open access and free software, and I also published a shortest Spanish version of the thesis in UPDATE – Dianova International e-magazine, again focusing on the “open” paradigm.

Even if the full digital version has been online for more than one year and a half, I’ve been having the uncomfortable sensation that — at least from my own point of view — my most important contribution in the paper has not had a lot of diffusion, exposure: provided there is really scarce literature on online volunteering, and most of it is from a practitioner’s approach, I thought my work on the taxonomy and typology of online volunteering provided some fresh air to the subject.

Now, it seems that the time for this issue to have an official coverage has come, and it will be, lucky me, in two ways at the same time.

First of all, my paper Online Volunteers: Knowledge Managers in Nonprofits has been accepted to be published in the first issue of the new Journal of Information Technology in Social Change, that is going to be presented at the 2007 Nonprofit Technology Conference by Michael Gilbert (along with the people at The Gilbert Center and NTEN, who have worked together to make it happen).

Second, a session devoted to the Journal will take place on Friday April 6th, 2007, at the conference, where some research gathered in this first issue will be presented to the attendants. As I cannot travel to Washington, DC, Michael Gilbert himself will be doing my speech for me using the material and notes I provided him with.

What is an online volunteer, what are the tasks that one would expect him to do, how are volunteering web portals treating the concept of online volunteering or how could this kind of contribution evolve in the future are questions that I try to answer in my paper and will be also shortly dealt with in the live presentation.

I really would like to sincerely thank Michael Gilbert, Katrin Verclas and Christine Dragonwyck for their help, patience and, over all, determination and drive to make things happen, even against all odds ;)

So, the online magazine UPDATE – Dianova International e-magazine has just published and article of mine entitled e-Learning para el desarrollo [e-Learning for Development].

The article is sort of a remake in Spanish of the Introduction to my paper e-Learning for Development: a model. Thus, there is really nothing new there, but if you can’t read English comfortably, well, you can use it as a good translation.

• e-Learning para el desarrollo (140 Kb)
• e-Learning for Development: a model (2,009 Kb)

Yesterday I got an e-mail that asked for some help on finding resources about online facilitation and networking for a volunteering course.

Just had 5 minutes for her, but guess the advice I gave her was fair enough to share:

Borges, Federico (2005). «La frustración del estudiante en línea. Causas y acciones preventivas». Digithum UOC. N.º 7.
<http://www.uoc.edu/digithum/7/dt/esp/borges.pdf> [cited 30/05/2005].

Baumgartner, Peter (2005). ‘How to choose a Content Management Tool according to a Learning Model’ In elearningeuropa.info, 17 May 2005. Brussels: European Commission
<http://www.elearningeuropa.info/index.php?page=doc&doc_id=6148&doclng=6&menuzone=0&focus=1&lng=en&go.x=13&go.y=9> [cited 23/05/2005]

Full Circle Associates, Nancy White’s page (www.fullcirc.com)

Online Facilitation distribution list:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/onlinefacilitation

Peña López, Ismael (2001). La coordinación y el trabajo en red. Gestión de las ONG, proyectos y formación webcéntricos: el Campus for Peace. Barcelona: UOC
<http://www.uoc.edu/web/esp/art/uoc/pena1201/pena1201.html> [cited 01/05/2005]

Sugrue, Brenda (2004). ‘Five Instructional Design Principles Worth Revisiting’ In The Criterion, Spring Issue 2004. Silver Spring: ISPI-FRC
<http://www.ispi-frc.org/newsletter/docs/Sugrue_Five_ID_Principles_final.pdf> [cited 01/06/2005]

White, Nancy(2004). Online Group Facilitation skills: An Evolving Practice. Draft.

Xarxanet:
http://www.xarxanet.org

The Fundación Bip-Bip has released the report “Estudio de diagnóstico sobre el nivel de utilización de las TIC en las entidades no lucrativas de acción social, que trabajan en pro de la inserción laboral en España” [Diagnosis Report on the degree of ICT use in social action nonprofits that work to promote job placements in Spain].

The report is 158 pages long and is really worth reading it.

Here comes a very illustrative highlight:

Only 14% of the analyzed organizations [370 in total] perform online training activities, and less than 19% uses teleworking as a possible option for its personnel [being most of them eventual online volunteers and not permanent staff]. Considering the hardware that most of the organizations do have, the deep degree of decentralization that most o them have (with headquarters in different cities and area of activity that only about a 10% just keep within the boundaries of their own city), the kind of work performed by most of their experts (that work directly in the terrain, increasing the mobility and geographic dispersion) and the particular characteristics of the composition of their staff (with a high percent of eventual and part time volunteers), we believe that this kind of organizations should lean on much more in the benefits that ICTs can bring to adopt models with a higher flexibility and adapted to the special needs of each organization.

It is, then, no nonsense what the Spanish National Volunteering Plan suggests about e-learning and online volunteering. For once in our lives, everyone agrees. Here’s to it!

• Report about the use of ICTs in NGOs(full text in Spanish) (2.93 Mb)
• Piece of news at Fundación Bip-Bip (in Spanish)
• Piece of news at OneWordl.net (in Catalan)

The III Spanish National Volunteering Plan, for years 2005 to 2009, is born.

Everybody’s congratulating each other because the plan is the result of a huge consensus among the Administration and NGOs. My sincere kudos :)

But my personal bias focus on two other things (bolds are mine):

From Strategic Line #3 to strengthen volunteering in different communities:

Support and foster new kinds of volunteering in the heart of organizations, such as online volunteering.

From Strategic Line #4 to support technically and financially the organizational and functional modenization of the Third Sector:

Enlargement of online training supply addressed to NGO participants, spreading and normalizing the access to this educational methodology.

Yes, this is really really good news. From strategic plans arise yearly director plans that decide on real policies, budgets, projects :)

• Spanish National Volunteering Plan(full text in Spanish) (135 Kb)
• Piece of news at OneWordl.net (in Catalan)
• Piece of news at Fundación Bip-Bip (in Spanish)

The United Nations Online Volunteeering Service announced just a week ago the winners of the “Online Volunteers of the Year” award for 2005.

Besides the prize itself, these events are interesting because they help to promote online volunteering and give real examples of what’s going on and what one can do volunteering through the Internet: translators, website management, fundrising, information and news reasearch, reporting on proceedings, team coordination, etc.

And also to remark not the results or the goals achived, but also how this was done. A couple of examples:

• One of the winners is, in fact, a four people team belonging to Australia, Pakistan, USA and India working in Syria. This kind of networking is just one of the things OV is about.
• Another winner is also a mother and son team, but the point here is that he’s got cerebral palsy and spastic quadriplegia and is using a wheelchair, he simply cannot “just” go to Zambia and volunteer on-site. As an online volunteer, he found himself actively involved in a development project that he had not imagined before to ever be able to be part of. And this is also one of the other things online volunteering can do: bring back people excluded from volunteering because of different reasons.

More info:

• Piece of news
• The winners