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Tag Archive for: development

One Tablet Per Child: Walter Bender Discusses Future of OLPC

While listening to Walter Bender, founder and executive director of Sugar Labs, speak last week at USAID’s Mobiles for Education (mEducation) Monthly Seminar Series in Washington, DC, it was difficult to decide if he was more interested in discussing the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC)program’s new XO 3.0 tablet, or the educational philosophy that has spurred its development.

By the end of his presentation, however, it was clear that both are inherent to launching an effective and sustainable program utilizing the new technology. As former co-founder of OLPC, Mr. Bender now focuses his time and energy on developing and improving Sugar, an open source desktop environment which promotes learning through connectivity, collaboration, and what Mr. Bender calls “off the grid accessibility”, the ability to take the computers into virtually any learning environment.

And the new tablet promises to do just that. Upon first look, the tablet doesn’t seem much different from the original laptop besides being thinner since there’s no keyboard. The lack of keyboard is a feature that Mr. Bender seemed torn about saying that keyboards are needed for developing writing skills but that the device should evolve with the introduction of new technologies, tablets being the big new innovation in mobile computers.

The easily recognizable bright green and white rugged exterior is still present but now the 8-inch screen is protected by a green silicone cover. The child-friendly tablet was designed with the same consideration for durability, cost, and conservation of power that has made the OLPC program so well known, but now it features solar panels on the inside of the cover to power it in addition to the power adapter and hand-crank powered battery from the previous laptop.

Of course, the education-specific user interface of Sugar still remains and can be baffling to anyone not already familiar with it’s icons, a wide array of small visual representations of each activity that doesn’t resemble Microsoft’s or Apple’s familiar icons. But in Sugar’s design lies Mr. Bender’s philosophy and aim: a simplicity so intuitive that children can understand it as well as modify it and create new programs for their own use.

As exciting as the introduction of the new tablet was for the small group of attendees at the seminar, Sugar was the focus of the discussion and one that Mr. Bender talked passionately about. Designed on OLPC’s principle of “Low floor, no ceiling”, it’s designed for inexperienced users, providing a platform, or low floor, on which to explore, create, and collaborate without any limits to its possibilities.

Exploration is key to Mr. Bender’s philosophy. Designing Sugar and the computers from a “constructivist” perspective, he referred to Swiss developmental psychologist, Jean Paiget, and his learning theory of “learning by doing” when discussing the intuitiveness of the system. “We want to raise a generation of independent thinkers and problem solvers, “ he said after displaying a picture of students taking apart and fixing one of OLPC’s laptops. “Every deployment has students who repair computers and they are designed so that students can fix them themselves.”

Already deployed in over 30 countries, the largest and most well known example is Uruguay with the largest saturation of one laptop per each of 395,000 children in primary school from grades 1-6. Now in its third year, Mr. Bender highlighted a few examples of how kids are becoming empowered through the technology and developing their own programs. Kids like 12 year old Augustine who created his own program called Simple Graph, one that creates just that. Mr. Bender said that innovations like this are examples of how students are becoming self-sufficient. “These are key indicators that something different is happening, something good.”

Walter Bender giving an example of how to create your own program

Photo Credit: Chrissy Kulenguski

But this portfolio assessment, one that emphasizes qualitative over quantitative results and what Mr. Bender calls a powerful and primary assessment tool, is one of several points for criticism of the OLPC program. Others include not providing enough, or any, teacher training and support when introducing the laptops and not being able to meet the original goal price of $100 per laptop that was set when the program first started.

More recently, a new low-cost competitor, the Aakash tablet, has entered this developing market. The Android-based computer has gained a lot of attention since it was first developed by the Indian government as part of the country’s aim to connect 25,000 colleges and 400 universities in an e-learning program and made available at subsidized prices. In accordance with OLPC’s open source philosophy, chairman Nicholas Negroponte already offered full access to OLPC technology at no cost to the Indian team of developers.

Sharing ideas and new innovations is also one of Mr. Bender’s learning goals for the OLPC program: to have students learn through “doing, reflecting, and collaboration”. He believes that the new XO 3.0 tablet has a prominent role in the emerging market of mobile computers for education. Though what that role will be exactly in the coming years of new innovations and innovators, has yet to be seen.

February 15, 2012/by actualize

Agriculture, Education, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

Open Education 101: Changing What You Know and How You Know It

If new developments in information communications technologies (ICT) are the bridge for the digital divide, what is the content — and, more importantly, the quality of it — that is going to be delivered?

This question, at the heart of developing any ICT4Education program, seemed more relevant and crucial yesterday while listening to US Under Secretary of Education, Martha Kanter, give her keynote speech at the Open Source Higher Education event at the Center for American Progress here in Washington, DC.

Kanter clearly understands the potential value and opportunities for open educational resources (OER) as well as the government’s role in facilitating and monitoring their use. A long standing advocate for open education and government policies to make it sustainable, she and a panel of experts from several universities and OER interest groups discussed how these resources can impact the affordability and access to education in the US.

Giving a brief description of the current OER field, External Relations Director at MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW), Steve Carson, used The Hewlett Foundation’s definition of OER as “high-quality, openly licensed, online educational materials that offer an extraordinary opportunity for people everywhere to share, use, and reuse knowledge.” MIT’s OCW Consortium, a community of over 250 universities that offers roughly 17,000 courses in 20 languages, is just one of several examples of how institutions and education professionals are using this technology to build networks and pool information and resources that can be continually reviewed and revised, essential to setting high standards for the quality of the materials.

But how are OER programs and policies affecting the developing world? Sally Johnstone, Vice President for Academic Advancement at Western Governors University, spoke about a few exciting new initiatives such as the UNESCO/Commonwealth of Learning (COL) Guidelines on Open Educational Resources (OER) in Higher Education, a new framework for using OER in appropriate ways. UNESCO has also created an OER Wiki allowing the global OER community to share and collaborate on developing new resources, as well as an innovative OER Platform for sharing resources between teachers, learners, and education professionals.

In addition, Johnstone mentioned OER Africa, an revolutionary initiative and first of it’s kind in the region which was established by the South African Institute for Distance Education (SAIDE). Focusing on agriculture, health education, foundation courses, and teacher education, the program supports and develops digital materials to increase equitable and meaningful access to knowledge, skills and learning across the African continent.

It was clear by the end of the panelist’s discussion that open education is changing the way that classes and textbooks are being developed and accessed in America. However, some issues still need to be addressed such as creating standard quality evaluation techniques and developing policies for a sustainable market. The US government has already taken a step in this direction when the Department of Labor and the Department of Education created an education fund in January 2011 that would grant $2 billion to create OER materials for career training programs in community colleges.

Perhaps with more government initiatives such as this, as well as guidelines that encompass both OER and ICT technologies, open education will create more networks and cross more borders to make education accessible on a global scale. When discussing the government’s role in open education, Under Secretary Kanter quoted president Obama from a speech he gave at Macomb Community College in Michigan in 2009. “Even as we repair brick and mortar buildings, we have an opportunity to build a new virtual infrastructure to complement the education and training community colleges can offer. We’ll support the creation of a new online – and open-source – clearinghouse of courses so that community colleges across the country can offer more classes without building more classrooms.”

February 9, 2012/by actualize

Agriculture, Environment, Environmental Compliance, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

What is Ecotourism 2.0?

Photo Credit: MarineBio

By some accounts tourism is the world’s largest industry, accounting for more than 10% of total employment. Tourism can have a negative impact on the environment by leading to the degradation of habitats and landscapes, depleting natural resources, and generating waste and pollution.

As a response to these concerns, ecotourism has grown in popularity because of its emphasis on being ecologically and socially conscious by raising awareness and support for conservation and local culture. Responsible ecotourism includes programs that minimize the adverse effects of traditional tourism on the natural environment and enhance the cultural integrity of the local people. Ecotourism has great potential for the developing world as communities come together and get involved, enforcing their own standards for sustainability.

So what is ecotourism 2.0? Ecotourism 2.0 seeks to fill the gaps that exist in ineffective organizing structures of ecotour communities. There are three main characteristics of ecotourism 2.0:

1. Engagement and Education – tourism doesn’t have to be passive and there can be a take-home message

2. Social Media – access and communication of information

3. Radical Transparency – clear organization within communities and with their visitors

Social media has thoroughly changed marketing techniques, now “people aggregate themselves around causes and products they believe in and age, sex and other demographic information is more and more irrelevant as this new media environment takes over.” It also allows for easy access to specific information and advice from locals, extending the experience beyond a vacation with updated news and reminders of key concepts.

Let’s look at successful social media campaigns:

Laos – Ecotourism Laos‘s website has Google Groups for donor organizations, government agencies, NGOs and the private sector to exchange information on current projects and issues relating to ecotourism development in Laos. The website allows for transparency and easy access to information and recommendation for visitors.

India – Ecotourismkeralam.org provides access to information, specifically contact information for visitors to Kerala, India. Kerala is considered one of India’s most unspoiled corners prone to forest clearing.

Kenya – Eco Tourism Kenya is a multifaceted forum with updates and links to everything related to sustainable tourism.

Lebanon – This Baldati community is an ecotourism e-community for public announcements in the field.

February 8, 2012/by actualize

Education, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

How ICTs Can Empower Blind Students: Souktel’s New Audio Service in Palestine

Lately there has been a lot of talk about how mobile phones can improve the access to and quality of education in the classroom. But how has the technology affected students with special needs?

Souktel, an organization that designs and delivers mobile phone services for finding jobs and connecting aid agencies with communities in need, announced Tuesday that it has developed a new mobile audio service that is empowering blind and low-literacy communities. The voice messaging system allows users to record messages online and send them to multiple phones easily and efficiently. The messages can then be retrieved by the recipients through using a voice-activated service or touch-tone audio menu, allowing easy access to information for the visually impaired and illiterate.

As part of Souktel’s mission to give low-income communities the information they need to improve their lives, Nureddin Amro, founder of the Siraj al-Quds School in East Jerusalem for both blind and sighted students, is now able to use this innovation to record messages online and send them to the mobile phones of students, staff, and parents. “It saves a lot of time and money,” says Amro, “I love using it. We sent a message just yesterday [to several hundred people] announcing the launch of a new program and the services and activities that will start February 1st … And I’ll send another one out tomorrow to advertise the beginning of second semester.”

Nureddin, visually handicapped and an innovator himself, has pioneered a new integrated-education approach to teaching visually impaired students, allowing them equal opportunities in school and providing them with the necessary skills to becoming accepted and integrated into their communities. Recognized for his advocacy for disabled students’ rights and groundbreaking work at the school, Nurredin was named an Arab World Social Innovator by the Synergos Institue in New York, the organization which funded the Souktel project.

Using mobile phones in education is certainly not a new idea but mobile learning, commonly referred to as mLearning, is such a new opportunity for many schools within developing countries that searching for documented examples of it’s application to aid blind students yields few results. Computer-based technology, or eLearning, has already provided tools that are helping visually impaired students. In fact, Nureddin’s Siraj al-Quds School is already using ‘talking computer’ technology which uses an assistive learning computer program designed for blind students.

But through identifying more cases where Souktel’s services can be used, as well as exploring new creative ways in how mlearning can be introduced to help, not only blind students, but all students with special needs, these new technologies promise to aid education and informing low-literacy populations. “In almost every developing country, illiteracy and disability are massive challenges,” says Souktel president Jacob Korenblum. “When a large percentage of the community can’t read, they can’t get the basic information they need for daily life: Where to find a doctor, where to find emergency food supplies.” For Souktel, mobile audio services have become a growing part of its work and will be a major focus for 2012.

February 2, 2012/by actualize

Civil Society, Democracy & Governance, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

Digital mapping and governance: the stories behind the maps

This is a guest post from Jamie Lundine, who has been collaborating with Plan Kenya to support digital mapping and governance programming in Kwale and Mathare.

Throughout October and November 2011, Plan Kwale worked through Map Kibera Trust with Jamie Lundine and Primoz Kovacic, and 4 young people from Kibera and Mathare, to conduct digital mapping exercises to support ongoing youth-led development processes in Kwale county. One of the important lessons learned through the Trust’s work in Kibera and Mathare is that the stories behind the mapping work are important for understanding the processes that contribute to a situation as represented on a map. To tell these stories and to complement the data collection and mapping work done by the youth in Kwale, the Map Kibera Trust team worked with the Kwale youth to set up platforms to share this information nationally and internationally. Sharing the important work being done in Kwale will hopefully bring greater visibility to the issues which may in the longer term lead to greater impact.

Sharing stories of local governance

To support their work on social accountability, the Kwale Youth and Governance Consortium (KYGC) mapped over 100 publicly and privately funded community-based projects. The projects were supported by the Constituency Development Fund (CDF), Local Area Development Fund (LATF), NGOs and private donors. As one channel of sharing this information, the Consortium set up a blog called Nuru ya Kwale (Light of Kwale). According to KYGC the blog “features and addresses issues concerning promotion of demystified participatory community involvement in the governance processes towards sustainable development. We therefore expect interactivity on issues accruing around social accountability.” This involves sharing evidence about various projects and stories from the community.

One example is the documentation of the Jorori Water project in Kwale; through the mapping work, the Governance team collected details of the constituency development fund (CDF) project. The funding allocated to upgrade the water supply for the community was 6,182,960 ksh (approximately 73,000.00 USD). From their research the KYGC identified that the Kenya Open Data site reported that the full funding amount has been spent.

A field visit to the site however revealed that project was incomplete and the community is still without a stable water supply, despite the fact that the funding has been “spent.”

Jorori Water Project, built using approximately 6.2 million shillings (73, 000.00 USD)

Read more about the questions the team raised in terms of the governance of CDF projects, including the detailed the project implementation process and some reflections on why the project stalled. This is information on community experiences (tacit information) that is well-known in a localized context but has not been documented and shared widely. New media tools, a blog in this case, provide free (if you have access to a computer and the internet) platforms for sharing this information with national and international audiences.

Addressing violence against children and child protection

Another blog was set up by the Kwale Young Journalists. The Young Journalists, registered in 2009, have been working with Plan Kwale on various projects, including Violence against Children campaigns. The group has been working to set up a community radio station in Kwale to report on children’s issues. Thus far, their application for a community radio frequency has encountered several challenges. New media provides an interim solution and will allow the team to share their stories and network with partners on a national and internal stage.

The Kwale Young Journalists worked with Jeff Mohammed, a young award-winning filmmaker from Mathare Valley. The YETAM project not only equips young people with skills, but through peer-learning establishes connections between young people working on community issues throughout Kenya. The programme also provides young people with life skills through experiential learning – Jeff reflects on his experience in Kwale and says:

Jeff and the Kwale Young Journalists shooting a scene from “The Enemy Within”

“My knowledge didn’t come from books and lecturers it came from interest, determination and persistence to know about filmmaking and this is what I was seeing in these Kwale youths. They numbered 12 and they were me. They are all in their twenties and all looking very energetic, they had the same spirit as mine and it was like looking at a mirror. I had to do the best I could to make sure that they grasp whatever I taught.”

Jeff worked with the Young Journalists on a short film called “the Enemy Within.” The film, shot with flip-cameras, tells the story of 12-year-old girl who is sold into indentured labour by her parents to earn money for her family. During the time she spends working, the young girl “falls prey of her employer (Mr.Mtie) who impregnates her when she is only 12 years old.” Jeff reflects that “early pregnancies are a norm in the rural Kwale area and what the young filmmakers wanted to do is to raise awareness to the people that its morally unacceptable to impregnate a very young girl, in Enemy Within the case didn’t go as far because the village chairman was bribed into silence and didn’t report the matter to higher authorities.” This is a common scenario in Kwale, and the young journalists plan to use the film in public screenings and debates as part of their advocacy work in the coming months.

Jeff and the Kwale Young Journalists shot the film in four days – they travelled to Penzamwenye, Kikoneni and also to Shimba Hills national park to shoot 7 scenes for the movie. Read more about Jeff’s reflections on working with the Kwale Young Journalists on his blog.

Sharing ecotourism resources

The Dzilaz ecotourism team – a group that encourages eco-cultural tourism in Samburu region of Kwale county — also integrated social media into their work. During the last week (November 8th-12th) the group set up a blog to market the community resources, services and products. They also plan to document eco-culture sites and the impact that eco-tourism can have on the community. As of November 10th, 2011 the Dzilaz team had already directed potential clients to their website and thus secured a booking through the information they had posted.

The importance of telling the stories behind the maps

One important component to mapping work is to tell the stories behind the map. The three groups in Kwale are working to build platforms to amplify their grassroots level work in order to share stories and lessons learned. The information documented on the various platforms will develop over time and contribute to a greater understanding of the processes at a local level where youth as young leaders can intervene to begin to change the dynamics of community development.

January 31, 2012/by actualize

Education, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

Mobile Learning Week: Paving the Way for Policy Development

Nearly 200 mobile technology experts and international education leaders met at the first annual UNESCO Mobile Learning Week last month, December 12-16, at UNESCO’s headquarters in Paris. This was the first such UNESCO meeting in which mobile technology took center stage.

Ministry of Educations’ officials, along with other experts from the fields of mobile technology and education, discussed the potential uses and benefits of mobile technology within the field of education in developing countries which has been informally debated and discussed the world over, the technology’s limited accessibility often hindering sustainable policy-changing actions. The meeting was prompted in part because of the growing access to mobile networks now available to 90% of the world’s population and 80% of the population living in rural areas, according to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in its “The World in 2010” report.

These figures have certainly gained the attention of top-policy makers. Discussions on how to use mobile technologies to transform educational processes will contribute to the anticipated Guidelines on Mobile Learning Policy which is currently being developed by UNESCO and due to be released in 2012. The guidelines will help to develop the future of mobile learning beyond the UNESCO global movement of Education For All (EFA) goals.

The weeklong meeting was split into two events. Leading officials in the ICT field gathered for the International Experts Meeting on Mobile Learning which was limited to selected attendees. Following the meeting, representatives from Nokia, Pearson Foundation, SK Telecom, ISTE, iLearn4Free, ICTP, Microsoft, Commonwealth of Learning, Alcatel-Lucent, Orange, Intel, Ericsson, KERIS and the Mobiles for Education (mEducation) Alliance showcased recent developments in mobile technologies and projects on mobile learning from the field during the UNESCO Symposium on Mobile Learning.

Several keynote speakers at the symposium identified and discussed major challenges to implementing policies and innovative ideas for creating sustainable solutions. Stephane Boyera, Lead Program Manager of the World Wide Web Foundation, stressed the importance of considering the sustainability, scalability, and replicability of mobile learning initiatives during his presentation, “Mobile Technologies, Education and Socio-Economic Development”. He indicated that the main obstacles to development are directly linked to policy makers’ understanding of specific cultural needs.

Dr. Paul Kim, Chief Technology Officer and Assistant Dean for Stanford University School of Education, spoke about the contextualized innovations in education and mobile empowerment design in his presentation, “Future Trends in Mobile Technology Development: What Can We Expect in the Next 5, 10, and 15 Years?”

The event achieved UNESCO’s goal of promoting the potential contribution of mobile technology to education and promises to lead to positive changes in policy development. Working papers that were developed during the event are due to be released sometime in early 2012.

January 18, 2012/by actualize

Agriculture, Basic Education, Education, Education, Higher Education, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

Brookings: 7 Principles for ICTs in Ed

Photo Credit: National University of Singapore

A new working paper released by the Global Economy and Development at Brookings concludes that if smartly and strategically deployed, modern information and communications technology (ICT) holds great promise in helping bring quality learning to some of the world’s poorest and hardest-to reach communities.

As part of the Brooke Shearer Working Paper Series, the paper entitled “A New Face of Education Bringing Technology into the Classroom in the Developing World” focused on the potentials of using information and communication technologies to improve teaching and learning in the developing nations.

Using two examples of ICTs application in education from Peru and Pakistan – “failed” and “successful”, the paper stated that experience shows that while there are numerous examples of how technology is used to the great benefit of teachers and learners alike, there are also many cases in which it does little to impact educational processes and outcomes.

The example from Peru, South America recalls a number of colorful laptops sitting in a corner of a classroom covered with dust. It argues that the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) program which was arranged by the Ministry of Education, had the good intention of improving students’ information communication technology (ICT) skills, as well as their content-related skills through the laptops. But because there was no proper support for teacher training in how the laptops are to be used; no follow-up or repair and maintenance contingencies; and with outdated and bug-infested software, the laptops are seen as unusable and serve little purpose.

On the other hand, the successful example recalled a young girl in the small village of Hafizibad in Pakistan using her mobile phone to send an SMS message in Urdu to her teacher. After sending, she receives messages from her teacher in response, which she diligently copies by hand in her notebook to practice her writing skills. She does this from the safety of her home, and with her parents’ permission. The girl is part of a Mobilink-UNESCO program to increase literacy skills among girls in Pakistan which has shown some positive improvements so far.

Based on the above examples, the authors identified some barriers to quality education in the developing world.

Barriers to Learning for All – Primary, Secondary & Higher Education

Distance and Cost – limited availability of schools in remote, inaccessible, or particularly impoverished regions of developing countries with direct and indirect costs barriers.
Quality of Faculty/Teachers – poor quality of teacher training programs, lack of in-service training for those on the field, and lack of graduate level faculty members affect how much time teachers spend and how they teach.
Resources, Materials and Language – limited budget for tertiary education leads to poor quality teaching and learning materials, in appropriate format and language are barriers especially to the early learners.
Management – poor education system management including unwieldy teacher payment systems, limited information collection and management capabilities, and poor learning assessment processes.
Students Academically Unprepared – due to the poor quality of education at the basic and secondary levels, students entering higher education are unprepared and usually with poor performance.

The paper continues that even with the extraordinary growth in access to ICT, its use in multiple sectors of society is uneven because of certain interconnected conditions that needs to be taken care of including the following:

Enabling Conditions for Effective Technology (ICT) Use

Access to Electricity – the use of ICTs requires access to power such as electricity, solar power, batteries, etc.
Internet Connectivity – access to the Internet and wireless capabilities is key for the use of ICTs in classroom
Human Resource Capacity – the need to attract, recruit and train skilled and qualified IT professionals
Political will and Management – development of national and institutional ICT policies and the will to act on them
Financial Resources – most of the developing countries need external support in implementing successful ICT projects in the educational sector
Link between Infrastructure Availability and Ability to Integrate – these countries also need to effectively integrate ICTs into the various sectors once the infrastructure is in place.

The paper then mentioned different types of ICTs for use in education in the developing nations.

Technology Types and their Prevalence

Radio – Even though is being referred to as “old technology,” radio and radio instruction such as Interactive Radio Instruction (IRI) has been utilized across the developing world as a tool to help facilitate learning and increase access to educational opportunities.
Television – Television is used to supplement classroom instruction with educational videos that teach and support lessons in language learning, mathematics, history, life skills and among other subjects.
Computers – Personal computers (PCs) are one of the most frequently cited and used forms of technology in education in the developing world and act as indicators of technological progress.
Mobile Phones – Cell phones and smart phones have been seen as increasingly useful educational tools in developing countries.
Tablets and E-readers – Tablet PCs like the iPad and ereaders are becoming a trend in education technology, and many experts see an important future for them in developing countries, due to the relatively low procurement cost.
Multimedia Projectors – These are devices used to project documents and/or computer images onto a wall in an effort to display the image to an entire classroom and allow the teacher to interact with the material along with the students, etc.
Open Educational Resources (OER) – OER are “teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits the free use and repurposing by others”.
Cloud Computing – Cloud computing allows organizations to increase computing capacity or add computing capabilities without needing to invest in infrastructure or train additional personnel.

The paper suggests seven guiding principles for the use of ICTs in education to be able to achieve the intended teaching and learning goal.

Seven Principles for Smart use of Technology in Education

Educational Problem First – First, identify the educational problem that needs to be addressed, and then assess which, if any, is the best technology to do the job.
Added Value – make sure that the technology will add value to other existing solutions.
Sustainability – Carefully consider the full range of enabling conditions such as the total cost of ownership, the ultimate relevance of the technology to the particular location, access to appropriate infrastructure, and human resource capacity.
Multiple Uses -Where possible, select a technology and design an intervention so that the technology can be used for multiple purposes.
Lowest Cost – While there may be many different types of technologies that can provide the assistance sought, other things being equal, it is best to select the least expensive option for the job(s) desired.
Reliability – Before deploying a technology, ensure it is reliable and will not rapidly break down. Nothing slows a project down more than unresolved problems.
Ease of Use – Finally, in educational interventions, technology should be easy to use.

It concludes that, if these principles are followed it can help avoid many future problems and, more importantly help leverage the power of ICT in educating young people in some of the poorest regions of the world.

The full paper can be accessed here.

January 6, 2012/by actualize

Democracy & Governance, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

PLURAL+: Visualizing Youth Perceptions Worldwide

There are more than 1.2 billion young people aged between 15 and 24 years in the world, accounting for about 18 per cent of the world population, but living thousands of miles apart, rarely engaging with one another.

Multimedia platforms, like video, help the young, bright leaders of tomorrow engage in intercultural conversations—speaking beyond language barriers to provide a subjective youthful view of their countries and reducing cultural tensions for future generations.

The United Nations Alliance and the International Organization for Migration has united to celebrate the International Youth Day’s theme—Our Year, Our Voice—with their PLURAL+ Video Festival.

The video festival is an empowering tool for young people aged 9-25 to speak out about their opinions and experiences with migration and diversity.

“My video is about how I see diversity,” said 10-year-old Aarohi Mahesh Mehendale, winner of the PLURAL + 2010 International Jury Award (Age 9-12).

It would be amazing if we could live in peace and harmony and accept differences. I chose to do the video because I felt strongly about the topic

Through five-minute films, the applicants use their own views and voices to explore subjects about migrant integration, inclusiveness, identity, diversity, human rights and social unity, in an effort to foster globalized social harmony.

Developing countries are home to 87 per cent of youth who face challenges of limited access to resources, healthcare, education, training, employment and economic opportunities.

The PLURAL+ Video Festival is a form of video advocacy, a means for youth from developed countries to explore the challenges experienced by those in developing countries, and empathize with their struggles.

Although this project has good intent, the logistics of the equipment and details on how to film are largely inaccessible and problematic.

The PLURAL+ project intends to engage youth in video advocacy to foster understanding, but is missing a vital element—providing the actual video cameras and training on how to use them.

Although there are “useful links” on the website, this project should really consider partnering with an organization like WITNESS, who specialized in video projects in developing regions.

Having an alliance with an organization in this area of expertise can help prevent problems that PLURAL+ may encounter—making the project more useful for those youth in developing countries whose perceptions should truly be seen and heard.

August 12, 2011/by actualize

Economic Growth & Trade, Originally posted on the GBI Portal, Workforce Development

Incubating IT programming capacity in the West Bank

In downtown Ramallah, West Bank, five programmers at the Palestine Information and Communications Technology Incubator (PICTI) are forging a new future for the Palestinian IT industry through a unique collaboration with US-based tech giant Microsoft. The partnership between Microsoft’s Innovation Labs (or iLabs) in Tel Aviv, Israel, and USAID’s Enterprise Development and Investment Promotion project (managed by CARANA) led to a one-year outsourcing pilot, new iLabs products and the evolution of a long-term relationship—as well as a model for private sector alliances between Israeli and Palestinian firms.

Palestinian programmers at work on the iLabs project

Since 2009, the PICTI-based team has developed three new products for iLabs to be marketed globally: Mixer, which links users’ online profiles (e.g., Facebook) with their registered Bluetooth devices to recognize them when they enter a room; Ark, which gathers online information about movies and television shows to make personalized recommendations, including an active learning component that adapts to user likes and dislikes; and HomeVideoX, which applies face-recognition capability to videos.

Microsoft recently spoke with PICTI about creating another five-person team in Ramallah to work on Bing Mobile applications. Ultimately, the PICTI team hopes to form an independent Microsoft research center in Palestine. The collaboration has exposed Palestinian IT professionals to new technologies, helping the industry developing a more qualified labor force and demonstrating Palestinians’ ability to work with leading global technology firms. Team members have also become an in-house resource for PICTI, helping the incubator evaluate new projects and coach future entrepreneurs.

The collaboration leverages the unique situation in the West Bank—including proximity to Israel’s leading IT industry and the willingness of both parties to set aside political differences for business success. The Microsoft initiative and similar projects with other leading IT innovators such as Cisco and Salesforce.com are fostering an important new Palestinian industry.

“I see the future of the IT sector in this vital project with Microsoft which proves that Palestinians have huge talent, skill and expertise not only in the deployment of IT services but also in the research and Development field,” said PICTI’s chairman, Hassan Kassem. “This is the real path for development in Palestine.”

This post was originally published in July 2011 by Carana Corporation.

August 11, 2011/by actualize

Anti-corruption, Civil Society, Democracy & Governance, Elections, Governances, Originally posted on the GBI Portal, Rule of Law

Measuring and Assessing Gov 2.0, Election Monitoring, & Citizen Media

This summer I have wrote a lot about good governance programs to fight corruption, improve government effectiveness and accountability, and how they they are crucial to developing countries economic development, overall prosperity, and empowerment of civil society. One issue, however, can be the monitoring and evaluation of democracy and governance projects, which can sometimes be difficult–public opinion surveys as a form of measurement can be fraudulent, or uneven, and systems can be disorderly. Although ICTs are not a panacea for a development, they can help to streamline democratic and good governance strategies, and embolden civil society to play a participatory role. Some of the ways ICTs can be employed in democracy and governance projects, such as e-government strategies, election monitoring systems and enabling citizen media, can drastically improve the efficiency of these initiatives. Based on what I have learned so far, below are suggestions for monitoring and evaluation for an e-governance strategy, how to implement an election monitoring system from the beginning til the end, and how best to measure the effectiveness of citizen media:

1. E-government and Participation

Benefits: Transparency can be enhanced through the free sharing of government data based on open standards. Citizens are empowered to question the actions of regulators and bring up issues. The ability of e-government to handle speed and complexity can also underpin regulatory reform. E-government can add agility to public service delivery to help governments respond to an expanded set of demands even as revenues fall short.

First, on the project level, question if the inputs used for implementation and direct deliverables were actually produced. The government’s progression or regression should not rely solely on this because there are other outside variables. For the overall implementation, ask if the resources requested in place, and were the benchmarks that were set reached? Featured below is a timeline on how to implement a good e-government strategy.

Source: ITU

2. Strengthen Rule of Law with Crowdsource Election monitoring:

Benefits: Support for election monitoring may be provided prior to and/or during national or local elections and can encourage citizens to share reports from their community about voting crimes, ballot stuffing and map these crimes using Ushahidi. By documenting election crimes, it can provide evidence of corrupt practices by election officials, and empower citizens to become more engaged.
Drawbacks: Publicizing information to the broad public means without checking the information’s validity these systems can be abused in favor of one political party or the other, and elections can be highly contested.

Photo Credit: movement.org

Below are systematic instructions on how to implement the “all other stuff” needed for a election monitoring system, like Ushahidi:

Step 1. Create a timeline that includes goals you have accomplished by different marker points leading up to the election, and reaching target audiences

Step 2. The more information reports the better for the platform, but consider a primary goal and focus on filtering information about that goal to the platform, put it in the About section.

Step 3. Target your audience and know how they can be reached for example

Community partners
Crowd
Volunteers

Step 4. Figure out who your allies are—NGOs and civil society organizations that will want to support, and provide resources for more free and fair elections in your country. Figure out what groups would be best for voter education, voter registration drives, civic engagement or anti-corruption. Building a new strategy on top of the already existing ones will help to promote the campaign and making it more sustainable overtime.

Step 5. Reach out and meet with the groups you have targeted—and make sure to identify people from that country living abroad, reach out to the diaspora. Ask yourself the following questions when the program is implemented: should all reports be part of the same platform? Should reports come in before voting begins or just offenses taking place during elections? What about outreach after the election takes place for follow-up M&E?

Step 6. Get the word out to as many citizens as possible using flyers, local media, and target online influencers, such as those on Twitter or Facebook. Attract volunteers to assist in the overall outreach and publicity plan—a volunteer coordinator, technical advisor and, if possible, a verification team or local representatives, to relay and confirm what monitoring the electoral processes is all about.

Step 7. Information sources:

Mobiles: Frontline SMS can work as reception software for submissions via text.
Email/Twitter/Facebook: Consider creating a web form to link people to on social networks which asks for everything you need, including, detailed location information, category and multimedia.
Media Reports and Journalists: Have volunteers look in the news for relevant information to be included in the reports
Verification team: Either a local organization or journalist works best—on site that is able to receive alerts from the platform on events happening around their polling stations to be able to verify what is going on. Cuidemos el Voto modeled Ushahidi slightly for incoming reports from whitelisted people to show up automatically, for example non-governmental election monitoring organizations.

Step 9. Monitoring and Evaluation

Closing the loop of information: How will you show citizens who provided information on electoral fraud that you received it? Have a system in place to tell community representatives that the information was received and it will be acted upon.
How will you act on that information in the country’s courtrooms, though? Make sure to preserve the documentation of election fraud that your platform has received so that it can serve to hold the perpetrators accountable in court.

3. Citizen Media

Citizen media allows content to be produced by private citizens outside of large media conglomerates and state run media outlets to tell their stories and provide bottom up information. Also known as citizen journalism, participatory media, and democratic media, citizen media is burgeoning with all of the technological tools and systems available that simplify the production and distribution of media

Benefits: In addition to the above-mentioned benefits, citizen media also allows a sense of community where up-to date news covers a variety of angles, stories, and topics found in hard to reach places.
Drawbacks: It can be risky for the citizens journalists and their supporters. They can be identified and targeted by members of the oppression, where they will be put in jail or tortured. There is no gatekeeping, verifying, or regulating the information—this is not a problem when it comes to video or photos, but definitely with information. Also, connectivity issues may not allow citizens to upload the information.
Helpful Resources: This journalist’s toolkit is a training site for multimedia and online journalists.
Monitoring and Evaluation for citizen media projects: Governments have foreign policy and economic agendas that guide their choices on how they fund projects, therefore, it’s important that the grantees and activists understand and share the same objectives. This is also beneficial to learn from projects over time to avoid redundancy and enhance efficiency of implementation.
Measurement approaches—Some corporate funding agencies like the Gates Foundation, Skoll Foundation, and Omidyar Network insist on measuring citizen media projects, while other funding agencies like the Knight Foundation insist less on measurement. It’s important to measure both quantitative and qualitative outcomes and give constructive feedback to the contributors so that they can become more effective.

Quantitative—Objectives may sometimes change in response to your context, but keep the end goal in mind, continue to measure yourself against the objectives. This can be done through web analytics or web metrics—website performance monitoring service to understand and optimize website usage
Qualitative—Primarily anecdotal and used to shift policy objectives. In the end, however, it’s about visualizing the change you are trying to bring in the world, and making it happen.

August 4, 2011/by actualize

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