[GKD] African Telecenter Newsletter (Uganda)

[secretariat]

The African Telecenter Newsletter
**

This is a quarterly newsletter 
of the African Telecenter Helpnet (ATH) 
and is part of the broad communication strategy of the ATH. The Helpnet
is a peer support mechanism for the ICT for community development
institutions and programs targeting Telecenter practitioners, managers,
promoters and coordinators (and organizations supporting telecenters) in
Africa.

To subscribe/unsubscribe send message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Newsletter is managed by the UgaBYTES Initiative http://www.ugabytes.org

**

In this First Issue:

o Editorial - background to the African Telecenter Helpnet

o Making the case for Africa Telecenter Helpnet - Sarah Parkinson

o Reporting back from Maputo - Jonnie Akakpo

o Realizing the mission - The ATH Action Plan  - Sandra Roberts

o The role of the Interim Secretariat  - CUIEM - Polly Gaster

Editorial

Background to the African Telecenter Helpnet: Meddie Mayanja

The evolution of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) has
affected all forms of human activities (and is bound to transform
communities more rapidly than any other revolution ever witnessed). To
take up the challenge, IDRC Acacia program and UNESCO in partnership
with other development partners launched and supported a series of ICT
initiatives including Telecenters to enhance access to ICTs for
development in Africa. Recently the G8 augmented earlier efforts with
the launch of the Digital Opportunity Task Force in Okinawa to explore
innovative ways to exploit the new opportunities presented by ICTs in
developing countries. ICTs have also been acknowledged as critical
catalysts, tools and enablers for socio-economic growth and development
in all sectors such as health, education and agriculture. Consequently,
ICT was declared a priority in the Millennium Declaration of the United
Nations as an enabler for attainment of the Millennium Development Goals
(MDGs), particularly reducing by half the number of people living in
extreme poverty by the year 2015.

However for Africa, the road is still riddled with a number of obstacles
including lack of access to ICT infrastructure, appropriate content,
applications and management skills among others.

As a direct intervention to lack of access, several models of community
access centers (Community Telecenters and Learning Centers) have been
established as shared facilities with support of development agencies
notably IDRC, ITU, UNESCO, ICT for Education Program of the World Bank
Institute (formerly World Links for Development) and World Links
Organization. In the last three years there have been isolated capacity
building programs for managers and practitioners leading to varied
successes and efficiency across ICT community access centers in Africa.

There has been limited comparative learning amongst the practitioners
despite the fact that Africa has a large number of experts on
telecenters. The result has been an overall drop in the efficiency of
community access centers in meeting both the ever-changing demands of
their communities and in expanding the community access network, which
is critical for achieving universal access to ICTs in Africa.
Additionally a number of telecenters were threatening to close down
services in the recent years.

**
Making the Case: The African Telecenter Helpnet: Sarah Parkison
Creating public access and facilitating local development through
African telecenters is a novel idea that has been piloted during the
last 6 years. We now know that making telecenters work in the current
African context is a big challenge. Some of the very factors that
telecenters attempt to address often hinder their sustenance: poor
infrastructure and telecom service, high cost of connectivity, large
distances and lack of familiarity with ICTs.

I recently visited a number of telecenters and other ICT access centers
in South Africa and Uganda as part of a research project.  The majority
of the centers were facing major challenges in meeting even their basic
functionality.  Most lacked Internet and did not have a secure long-term
source of funding, self-generated or otherwise.  A number of telecenters
struggled to remain relevant to their local communities when they
couldn't provide basic services and were preoccupied with their own
survival, yet most community members across the five communities that we
surveyed strongly valued information and communication as potential
assets in their lives and believed that inclusion in the information
society offered them and their children greater opportunities for the
future.

One powerful strategy of supporting telecenters is to empower their
management and staff through knowledge-sharing, providing a resource
can

[GKD] Invitation to WSIS Video Conference & Online Discussion

[Oleg Petrov]

Dear Colleagues,

We would like to invite you to join this important event during WSIS.

Oleg

*

Geneva & Beyond: Operationalizing Recommendations of the World Summit on the
Information Society to Help Achieve Millennium Development Goals

Video Conference & On-Line Discussion

Thursday, December 11, from 9:00am to 11:00am (Washington, D.C. time)

On December 11, Development Gateway and the World Bank are sponsoring a
videoconference event linking India, Lebanon, Mexico, Romania, Russia,
Rwanda, Sri Lanka, Switzerland and the United States. We have partnered
with UNDP/UN ICT Task Force's ICT Development Network to organize online
discussions connected with this event. Please join us!

You can participate in several ways:

*  Join the Videoconference in person in one of the participating
countries

* View the Webcast at
http://webcast-ext.wordlbank.org/streaming/live.ram (the videconference
will be broadcast live from 9 to 11 am on Dec. 11)
* Participate in on-line discussions at  by
registering and following the link to "Videoconference Support:
Operationalizing the Recommendations of WSIS"
* Send your discussion questions and comments by email to Barbara Fillip
at [EMAIL PROTECTED]

All of this information and a more detailed agenda for the
videoconference/webcast will be posted shortly on the Development
Gateway's ICT for Development portal
 as well as on the relevant
online discussion page

Note that you are also welcome to join other related on-line discussions
once you have logged on as a member.

Draft Agenda:

9-9.15 am Welcome, introductions of participating sites - Country
facilitators 9.15-9.20 am Opening Remarks by Mohamed Muhsin
(Vice-President and CIO, World Bank Group)
9.20 - 10 am Geneva presentations (Nagy Hanna, Carlos Braga, Ernest
Wilson, Prof. Swaminathan, Sid Kane, 2-3 others to be confirmed)
10 am - 10.45 am Country remarks and questions (India, Lebanon, Mexico,
Romania, Russia, Rwanda, Sri Lanka,  USA - DC, USA - Santa Clara)
10.45-10.55 Questions and remarks from the Internet participants
summarized by Barbara Fillip (online discussion moderator)
10.55-11.00 am Closing remarks and credits

Register & Participate in the Videconference:

Contact the following country facilitators by Dec. 10:

·   India:Maneesha Gupta at <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
·   Lebanon:  Lina Abou Habib at <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
·   Mexico:   Alejandro Pisanty at <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
·   Romania:  Laurian Tanasescu at <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
·   Russia:   Mikhail Bunchuk at <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
·   Rwanda:   Rose Mukankomeje at <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
·   Sri Lanka:Athula Pushpakumara at <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
·   Switzerland:  Robert Guerra at <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
·   USA:  Oleg Petrov at <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>  (Washington, DC) 
and Anil Srivastava at <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>   (Santa Clara, CA)

Register & Participate in Online Discussions:

The "Help" link on the upper menu bar of ICT Development Network 
 provides instructions for how to register
and participate in online discussions. The following steps are a quick
guide:

a. Become a Member:  Under "User" left hand side of the site, click on
"Become a Member" and follow the instructions (note that there are two
pages). You should do this prior to the live discussions Thursday.

b. Join the Discussion: Follow the link to "Videoconference Support:
Operationalizing the Recommendations of WSIS" and join the discussion.
You are encouraged to post comments/questions prior to the video
conference on Thursday as well as during the event.

c. Follow-up Discussions: related discussions and on-line follow-up will
take place on other discussion forums of the ICT for Development
Network. Continue to visit this site for more information.

Moderator:  The online discussions will be moderated by Barbara Fillip
and John Daly.  A period of time towards the end of the videoconference
will be specifically allocated for questions from online participants to
be addressed by the main speakers.

Feel free to contact Barbara Fillip at [EMAIL PROTECTED] if you
have any questions!





***GKD is solely supported by EDC, a Non-Profit Organization***
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[GKD] The Digital Divide in Switzerland and Copyright Issues

[Richard Gerster]

Dear GKD Members,

We invite you to have a look at our updated homepage: See


1.  How Switzerland Diminishes its Digital Divide: A  new study by
Richard Gerster and Andrea Haag, "Diminishing the Digital Divide in
Switzerland. ICT-Policies, Practices and Lessons Learnt", examines the
case of Switzerland from a development policy perspective. It is
published by the Swiss Development Cooperation (SDC) in view of the
World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in Geneva, 10-12 December
2003. The main question examined is how Switzerland deals with its own
internal, regional and social disparities regarding policies for
information and communication technologies (ICTs). What lessons are to
be learnt from the Swiss experience by economically weaker and poverty
stricken developing countries on their way to information societies?

2.  A new graph on Copyright and the erosion of the public domain:
Copyright laws define the duration of protection of works - novels,
music, software,etc. After that period the copyright ends and the works
become part of the public domain. The public domain stagnates, private
interests expand. This trend is typical for intellectual property
legislation. The copyright reforms of the United States play a leading
role. Graph in English, full text and graph in German.


Richard Gerster
--
Gerster Consulting
Göldistrasse 1, CH-8805 Richterswil
Switzerland
Phone +41 (0)1 784 83 08
Fax   +41 (0)1 784 83 17
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
www.gersterconsulting.ch






***GKD is solely supported by EDC, a Non-Profit Organization***
To post a message, send it to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To subscribe or unsubscribe, send a message to:
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. In the 1st line of the message type:
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Archives of previous GKD messages can be found at:

[GKD] Using ICT to Improve Education (India)

[Frederick Noronha (FN)]

IN A WORLD WHERE THOSE WHO CAN'T TEACH, I.T. CAN

by Frederick Noronha

CAN IT AND THE INTERNET help teacher's teach better, design courses
better, build improved learning environments, and support the learner
more adequately? Yes, say the experiences of technologists working in
various parts of India on issues such as these.

Online content is leading to flexible learning, web-based course-ware is
being worked on, as are novel authoring tools for course-ware design.
There's even attempts to design a digitally-enabled self-learning course
for adults.

These are other initiatives came up in a little-noticed international
conference on online learning, held some months back at Mumbai, called
Vidyakash. Let's look at some of them:

Mumbai-based Tata Consultancy Services points to it's authoring tool
called eVOLv, as a possible means of promoting e-learning. Madhuri
Sawant of TCS says this is a world with a "learn, unlearn and re-learn"
mantra, and the need for updating knowledge is very strongly felt in a
changing world.

eVOLVe has a video window which displays a movie. It gives audio too.
Synchronised information appears in an adjacent window. Thumb-nails
allow the learner to navigate through the course. There's an inbuilt
quiz tool -- to test the learner's knowledge. Streaming video technology
shortens download time, and helps cope with bandwidth constraint. You
get the transcript of the script, in sync with the video. There are also
other functionalities that you can avail of while learning -- links,
email, help and note-pad.

IIM-Bangalore, the Indian Institute of Management from the garden city,
has also been working on its own model of e-learning.

Say T R Madanmohan and Jai Ganesh of IIMB: "The Internet has enormous
power to improve the educational process. By using the Internet,
education can be personalised to each user, so that each student is
given a targeted set of materials based on his or her specific
educational goals and previous achievements. At the same time, the
Internet allows material to be updated dynamically, which creates an
up-to-the minute resource for students."

IIMB, a 30-year-old institution considered to be one of India's best
business schools, keeps in touch with its alumni through e-mail and
other forms of feedback. They've been trying to address concerns of
alumni for the need for upgradation of skills.

So, their customised model offers tailor-made material, study guides,
activities and discussions formed around existing material -- textbooks,
CD-ROM resources, or tutorials. Online interactions and discussions
occupy about half the students' time, with predetermined content filling
the other half.

There are other solutions, like eCollege (an e-learning software and
services provider). Suggests the IIMB team: "Technology has created a
powerful set of tools for us to use in the educational world...  Based
on the experience, technology is not the limiting factor, but making
inroads into the habit of learning (is). Most of us are habituated to
lecture-based and other direct methods, and most of the assignments are
group-based."

IIMB's researchers also point out that some academics and educators
"are, and will, continue to be opposed to e-learning in principle.
Academics and educators have expressed concerns regarding the perceived
loss of control over the education process that can result from the
out-sourcing of e-learning campuses and courses, and the possibility for
lower-quality learning outcomes. Some of the concerns may be genuine and
need to be addressed at an institutional level."

Meanwhile, Acharya is an intelligent tutoring system for teaching SQL.
Acharya provides an "intelligent problem-solving environment" where
students can try out solutions to SQL problems posed by the system, and
get qualitative feedback. This has been focussed on by Sandhya Bhagat,
Latesh Bhagat, Jojumon Kavalan and M Sasikumar of NCST at Navi Mumbai.

Says this team: "The essential differences of an intelligent-tutoring
system and a computer-based tutoring system are in the level and detail
with which the subject is represented and the use of a student model.
Intelligent-tutoring systems were a dormant subject during the last
decade, after a long period of significant interest among the artificial
intelligence community."

In their paper, they describe the architecture of Acharya -- using Java
servlet technology and a web-based front-end and POSTgreSQL at the
back-end. They argue: "Acharya is based on guided discovery. A student
should be given opportunities to discover things themselves, rather than
being told about them."

>From Rajasthan, we are told of Prabodh, a distributed online Hindi
grammar teaching-learning system. Prabodh is an intelligent tutoring
system, which tries to teach elementary level Hindi grammar following
the principles of pedagogy. It allows geographically-scattered expert
tutors to create lessons and exercises, based on Hindi grammar concepts,
through GUIs (graphica