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Mobile Innovations for Agricultural Development: An Uncertain Trajectory

Photo Credit: The World Bank

There is no doubt that the current surge in mobile innovations for agricultural development is defying the normal progressive growth of agricultural technologies over the past decades. For centuries, innovations in agricultural technologies have been progressively slow. The emergent of information and communication technologies (ICTs) and their innovative use to support agricultural extension and advisory services has, however, changed the history forever. According to the World Bank report Information and Communications for Development 2012: Maximizing Mobile, close to 6 billion mobile phones are in use today, a jump from less than 1 billion subscriptions in 2003. About 77% of the 6 billion subscriptions is located in the developing nations in which 70% of the world’s poor whose main source of income and employment comes from the agricultural sector.

Agricultural Technologies and the Future In her 1991 paper “Beyond Tractors: The History of Technology in American Agriculture,” Deborah Fitzgerald, Professor of the History of Technology in the Program in Science, Technology, and Society (STS) at MIT, argued that the history of agricultural technology is in a very nascent stage of development, and it is difficult to predict the outlines of a more orderly, systematic future. Barely 20 years after her observation, the developments in mobile technology for agriculture have confirmed her argument. Little is known about any prediction of the current growth of mobile technologies, especially in the world’s poorest regions. It is also becoming more difficult to predict what the market will look like in the next decade given the fast pace at which the technology is growing.

So Why This Sudden Spurt? The 2nd chapter of the World Bank report referenced above titled “Mobilizing the Agricultural Value Chain” has identified a number of factors that are driving the increased adoption of mobile phones for agriculture in the developing nations:

Improved accessibility and affordability through expansion of mobile networks.
Increased capacity or bandwidth availability on mobile networks as the technology evolves.
Increasing data-enabled mobile devices with increasing affordability.
Innovative development of remote wireless sensors and identification technologies.
Increasing availability of specialized mobile services targeted to specific agricultural functions.

These and other factors, such as wide ownership of mobile phones, instant and convenient service delivery, increasing functions, and falling prices of mobile handsets, will continue to drive its adoption.

Looking into the Future of Mobile Innovations for Agriculture

Photo Credit: American Public Health Association

According to USAID, innovations must lead to substantial (not incremental) improvements in addressing development challenges. But this does not seem to be the case in the mobile agricultural sector. The role of mobile agricultural projects in addressing development challenges in the developing nations is yet to be empirically tested in most countries. Anecdotal results have been reported here and there, but there is little to cite about any substantial impact on agriculture and rural development. An interesting trend with the mobile innovations for agriculture pointed out by the report is that, the applications are usually designed locally and for specific target markets, with localized content specific to the languages, crop types, and farming methods. It continues that while these local designs may offer exciting opportunities for local content and applications development, they may also limit the economies of scale realizable from expanding from pilot programs into mass markets, potentially hindering the spread of new and promising applications and services. So while development practitioners are careful not to repeat the traditional “technology transfer” approach in the ICTs for development sector, they are also faced with the limitations of scalability of the locally developed mobile applications for agriculture.

Is Reverse Innovation a Possible Solution to Limited Scaling of Locally Developed Mobile Apps? The local app development market in the emerging economies is being boosted by the proliferation of Technology Hubs & Parks in these countries. But what are the approaches to development of applications within these hubs? How can we learn from the past challenges with technology transfer and the current scaling limitations of locally developed apps for agriculture? The concept of reverse innovation developed by Vijay Govindarajan, and Chris Trimble and explained in details with practical applications in their book, “Reverse Innovation: Create Far From Home, Win Everywhere”, could bring these two challenges together. A key component of the concept is about building Local Growth Teams (LGTs). Within the mobile agricultural sector, LGTs comprising of ICT developers, marketing specialists, and content developers in the emerging economies with strong link with global market could be developed. This will ensure that locally developed ICTs apps with inexpensive models and limited infrastructure to meet the needs of developing nations, can be easily repackaged as low-cost innovative goods for Western buyers. This could address the scaling challenge brought up by the report and at the same time limit the traditional diffusion of technologies from the developed to developing nations.

Oversights: Mobile Solutions for R&D and Data Collection? I would like to recap my recent work on “Mapping ICTs Along the Agricultural Value Chain” for USAID’s Global Broadband and Innovations (GBI) program. Two key components of the value chain, which seem to be overlooked, are ICTs for agricultural research and development (R&D), and ICTs for data collection to inform monitoring and evaluation (M&E). Firstly, mobile technologies for agricultural R&D are emerging, but due to the traditional under-estimation and under-investment in agricultural R&D in developing countries, little attention is being paid to its potential. There is huge potential in the use of mobile technologies to support the work of agricultural researchers, agricultural science students, extension staffs, and farmers to facilitate access to scientific knowledge and exchange of information between and among these actors. Unfortunately, this has been overlooked by this important report. Secondly, mobile technologies are being used along the agricultural value chain for data collection in order to inform policy and decision-making. The report did mention briefly the importance of mobile in agricultural data collection, for example the work of Grameen Foundations Community Knowledge Worker (CKW) program in Uganda and the Reuters Market Light (RML) in India. But in addition to these programs, there are host of new mobile applications that are being used in this area that need to be acknowledged. Examples include iFormBuilder, EpiSurveyor, Open data Kit, among others. These new mobile applications are essential for the work of extension staff – both public and private to facilitate their work. Most importantly, timely and accurate data through these applications will lead to actions that will benefit the smallholder farmer in a number of ways, thereby increasing their productivity.

Conclusion The growth of mobile technologies for agriculture has outpaced the speed of past technological developments within the sector. While the invention of tractors in the 1800’s was acclaimed a significant breakthrough for agriculture, not even the green revolution in the 1900’s can be compared to the extensiveness and intensiveness of mobile technologies for agriculture. The World Bank report reference in this post has done excellent job by carefully selecting experts in the field of ICTs for development to delve into a number of cases worth following. Specifically on the second chapter that deals with mobile technologies and agriculture, I believe practitioners, researchers, technology developers, policy makers, and users of agriculture and mobile technologies should look critically into the recommendations given at the end – business models, ICT skills and the supporting infrastructure to insure the growth and sustenance of the revolution.

August 3, 2012/by actualize

Areas of Expertise, Environment & NRM

Did We Get “The Future We Want” from Rio+20?

In June 2012, the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development took place in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Marking the 20^th Anniversary of the Earth Summit, Rio+20 provided an opportunity for the world to reaffirm commitments to poverty erradication, sustainable development and environmental protection. Below, we explore various outcomes of Rio+20:

Photo credit: Voices of Youth

1. New Sustainable Development Goals

As a replacement for the Millennium Development Goals which end in 2015, the governments of Colombia and Guatemala have proposed Sustainable Development Goals. These goals would link environmental and human development concerns within broad categories such as changing consumption patterns, combating poverty, and advancing food security. While negotiations in Rio did not agree to specific themes, terms or commitments, an “open working group” of 30 nations was appointed to determine priorities for the pledge by September 2013.

2. Words, Words, Words

From cries of disgust and disappointment—Greenpeace deemed the summit “a failure of epic proportion” — to careful phrased optimism about sustainable development, Rio+20 was a war of words. Promises were made, fingers pointed, and cries of injustice abound, but in the end the most important words were found within “The Future We Want”. A non-binding communiqué ratified by all UN members that resulted in no financial commitments or concrete benchmarks.

Instead, much of the conference discourse centered around the dominant buzz word and concept of “the green economy.” We at Integra recently blogged about inclusive green growth efforts and sustainable development initiatives of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.

Graphic displaying the Zero Hunger Challenge spectrum of milestones

Photo credit: UN

3. An Initiative to End Hunger

At the conference, UN General Secretary Ban Ki Moon launched the Zero Hunger Challenge, an initiative that aims to put an end to hunger, ensure resilient food systems, increase productivity and income of smallholder farmers, especially women, and eliminate food waste. The UN campaign is supported by the Food and Agriculture Organisation, the International Fund for Agricultural Development, the World Food Programme, Unicef, the World Bank, and various governments.

4. An Appreciation for the Energizing and Influential Power of Sideshow Events

More than 3,000 fringe events took place outside of the negotiations, producing significant outputs and exciting commitments. Passionate and innovative individuals, committed grassroots organizations, and forward thinking corporations were able to mold policy and influence international agreements in new and exciting ways. These outside movements energize and influence negotiations, and are an important reminder that individuals still have incredible influence on the state of the world.

5. Innovative Pledges from Unlikely Sources

While government negotiators could not agree to binding pledges, various corporations, individual states and industry groups committed to bold and creative ways of approaching the challenge of sustainable development. Some of the more interesting pledges include:

–Grenada announced its transport and electricity sectors will only use clean energy sources by 2030.

–Unilever promised to cut its greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2020 and find sustainable sources of beef, soy and palm oil to prevent the deforestation now stemming from production of these three major crops.

–Eight international development banks agreed to invest $175 billion to sustainable public transport systems over the next decade.

–European PVS industries made a commitment to recycle 800,000 tons of PVC each year through the VinylPlus programme.

–Microsoft will roll out an internal carbon fee on its operations in more than 100 countries, part of a plan to go carbon-neutral by 2013.

Photo credit: UNEP

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) was strengthened with more funding, stronger powers to initiate scientfic research, a leadership role in coordinating global environmental strategies, and a vote of confidence for the organization’s much publicized transition to a focus on creating a green economy backed by strong social provisions.

July 24, 2012/by actualize

Agriculture, Education, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

Tangerine: Early Grade Reading Assessments Go Digital

Photo Credit: eddataglobal.org

The Early Grade Reading Assessment (EGRA), a tool used in over 50 low-income countries and 70 languages to measure students’ progress toward learning to read, is going digital through its new Tangerine™ platform. The mobile software application designed by RTI International specifically for recording student responses during the administration of the EGRA can now be used by organizations and governments to simplify preparation and implementation of fieldwork, reduce measurement and data entry errors, and eliminate manual data entry.

The EGRA is a 15-minute test administered orally to students in the early grades of primary school. It was designed by RTI International under USAID’s EdDAta II project to help educators in low-income countries break the pattern of illiteracy among their poor. Since 2006, the EGRA has been used to evaluate students’ foundation literacy skills, including pre-reading skills like phonemic awareness and listening comprehension, which have been shown to predict later reading abilities. Using test results, education ministries and their donor partners are then able to identify and address learning barriers to develop strategies to improve literacy.

But now Tangerine has taken the paper-based EGRA tool to a new level of efficiency. The open-source electronic data collection software can be used on mobile computers, including netbooks, tablet computers and smartphones to enable assessment administrators to:

Simplify the preparation and implementation of field work
Reduce measurement and data entry errors
Eliminate costly, time-consuming manual data entry
Provide rapid turnaround of results

Through these advantages and the analysis of results of student populations, policy makers and organizations can respond even sooner to challenges within an education system. They can also develop appropriate strategies to improve early-age literacy rates, such as improving teacher training programs and curriculum materials.

In addition to the Tangerine EGRA software, RTI developers are currently developing two new tools that can be used by teachers themselves in their own classrooms:

Tangerine:Class – a version of Tangerine tailored specifically for teachers to assist in developing and administering classroom based math and reading assessments and interpreting results to inform their instructional practice.

Tangerine:Teach – a tool that can interpret results from Tangerine:Class to identify and develop learning materials to address student weaknesses.

To learn more about Tangerine:

The Edutech Debate posted a blog, ICT and the Early Grade Reading Assessment: From Testing to Teaching by RTI’s Carmen Strigel, which offers an in-depth analysis of Tangerine’s application and cost benefits.

There is also a brief video of EGRA being administered using Tangerine.

May 2, 2012/by actualize

Humanitarian Assistance, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

ICT for Cholera Prevention and Outbreak Management in Haiti

Photo credit: www.vaccinenewsdaily.com

With the rainy season off to an early start in Haiti this spring, can technology help stave off the rising cholera epidemic?

That’s what several international aid and health organizations are considering now that the advantages of ICT — innovation, efficiency, fast-response time — are needed to meet the impending rainy season which promises to bring flooding and ultimately more cases of cholera. Since the earthquake in 2010, more than 530,000 Haitians have fallen ill with cholera, and more than 7,000 have died — staggering numbers when considering the amount of international aid and health projects that have descended upon the country within the past two years. ICT in all of its forms and all that it enables — low-cost mobile devices, open data and access, social media — could improve the response time and efficiency of health initiatives in the cholera crisis if properly implemented.

One example of how ICT is already being utilized to prevent more cases of cholera is a new vaccine campaign by GHESKIO, a health organization based in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, in collaboration with Partners in Health, a non-profit healthcare organization that is well known for their efforts against the spread of cholera. In order to identify recipients for the vaccines as efficiently and quickly as possible within a country where travel is difficult, community health workers went door-to-door collecting information about the potential recipients via smartphones. The information was then aggregated into a database to locate and distribute the vaccines to the 100,000 chosen recipients — a process that has just begun after a series of delays.

Utilizing mobile technology to combat the spread of cholera is not a new concept to Partners in Health. In a campaign started just last year, community health workers have been using specially programmed phones to help track information about cholera patients in isolated communities throughout Haiti’s Central Plateau – an important step in gathering up-to-date infection data that could prevent more deaths. “Receiving real-time cholera information from community health workers is crucial,” says Cate Oswald, Partner in Health’s Haiti-based program coordinator for community health. “We need accurate and up-to-date reports in order to best prevent more cases and respond to quick spread of the epidemic.”

Social media has also played a large role in detecting and tracking the incidence of cholera outbreaks. A study released in January by the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene reported that Twitter actually provided data that was faster and more accurate in some cases than traditional methods in tracking the cholera epidemic. Not only does social media provide a fast response time, it “is cost-effective, rapid, and can be used to reach populations that otherwise wouldn’t have access to traditional healthcare or would not seek it”, said Rumi Chunara, a research fellow at HealthMap and Harvard Medical School in the US, and lead author of the study.

Image from haiti.mphise.net

HealthMap, an automated electronic information system for monitoring, organizing, and visualizing reports of global disease outbreaks according to geography, time, and infectious diseases, has been an important tool in helping inform Partners in Health and other health organizations about the spread of cholera in Haiti. Not only does HealthMap track the spread of cholera, it also identifies new safe water installations, health facilities, cholera treatment centers, and emergency shelters.

April 15, 2012/by actualize

Education, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

Addressing the Digital Divide in Latin American and Caribbean Schools

Photo credit: Katie Marney/The McGill Daily

Are schools in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) network ready? If so, what does it mean for improving the equity and quality of education in that part of the world?

This is a complicated question, no doubt, and one that is going to be asked more frequently with the introduction of the new Broadband Partnership of the Americas which promises to provide connectivity to schools that generally have been considered disconnected from the rest of the world. Moreover, this question seemingly ignores the unique cultural context and infrastructure of each country within the LAC region. Providing internet access in schools is just one important variable in a complex equation that the Information and Communication Technology for Education (ICT4E) community struggles to understand when attempting to integrate technology into the classroom. Does connectivity + ICT devices + digital content = better education? Many would vehemently argue no when considering differences in quality and methods of delivery.

But the LAC region on the whole appears to have a different equation altogether and one that seemingly receives less attention than other “developing” parts of the world, such as parts of Africa that tend to be the testing ground for many new ICT4E initiatives. When Latin America is mentioned in the ICT4E community, many often think of recent projects like OLPC deployments in Peru or Seeds of Empowerment’s initiatives in Argentina and Uruguay. But these are mainly device-based programs and, without increased internet coverage in the region, many of the valuable open educational resources and distance learning opportunities available through internet access remain out of reach.

Internet Access in Schools from the World Economic Forum

According to the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) new 2012 Global Information Technology Report, a comprehensive assessment of the preparedness of economies to leverage the networked economy, LAC’s Internet access in schools ranks well below its developed neighbors (see map on the right). This is just one of many factors, along with education quality, level of adult literacy, and rate of secondary education enrollment, that the WEF considers when determining the “network readiness” of a country.

“Network readiness”, as defined by a complex framework which translates into the Network Readiness Index, is comprised of four subindexes that measure the environment for ICT; the readiness of a society to use ICT; the actual usage of all main stakeholders; and, finally, the impacts that ICT generates in the economy and society. The report found that LAC’s network readiness ranking is lagging far behind “developed” countries for a number of reasons:

“Although the region is vast and heterogeneous, three shared reasons for this lag can be identified: these countries all exhibit an insufficient investment in developing their ICT infrastructure, a weak skill base in the population because of poor educational systems that hinder society’s capacity to make an effective use of these technologies, and unfavorable business conditions that do not support the spur of entrepreneurship and innovation. Addressing these weaknesses will be crucial for improving the region’s competitiveness and shifting its economies toward more knowledge-based activities.”

Network Readiness Index from the World Economic Forum

Addressing the weaknesses in the educational systems throughout the LAC region creates a complicated question when considering the role that ICT4E plays: How can technology be used effectively to improve an education system if the current system’s weaknesses and lack of technology expertise prevent technology from being integrated into the classrooms in the first place? Obviously, a country’s network readiness — or even ICT4E readiness — is complex and addressing it requires a multifaceted approach. For schools in the LAC region, improving internet access and expanding broadband technologies will address at least one aspect of the digital divide in education.

More information about ICT4E policies in LAC:

A database of ICT for education policies around the world — including the LAC region — from the GESCI
Public policies for the information society: a shared vision? from the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean

April 14, 2012/by actualize

Education, Originally posted on the GBI Portal, Workforce Development, Youth Development

USAID’s EQUIP3 Introduces Youth ICT Employment Training & Placement Toolkit

Photo Credit: www.camara.ie

USAID’s Educational Quality Improvement Program 3 (EQUIP3) has released a new digital toolkit that will empower local partners to successfully implement youth employability programs. The Youth ICT Employment Training & Placement Toolkit provides guidance and support to partner institutions in the design of these programs and presents profiles of jobs in three sectors — ICT, health, and agriculture — which were identified as growth industries with a high potential for employing youth in Africa.

EQUIP3, a program led by the Education Development Center (EDC), partnered with the International Youth Foundation (IYF) to assess the labor markets, consult with numerous stakeholders in Kenya and Rwanda, and identify viable youth livelihood opportunities in the three sectors. By gathering quantitative and qualitative information on the needs, interests, and capacities of employers, youth, and others, these assessments identified specific ICT-related occupations that offer significant entry-level employment or entrepreneurial opportunities for disadvantaged youth in the target countries.

The Kenya and Rwanda country assessments found numerous employment and entrepreneurial opportunities for youth who have basic to advanced ICT skills, such as in hardware maintenance and repair, network maintenance, multimedia production, and database management. Through these findings, the development team identified the agriculture and health sectors as those which ICT skills have the most potential. In the agricultural sector, for instance, youth can use ICT skills to increase the efficiency of farms, shops, and suppliers. In the health sector, opportunities for youth exist in supporting health management information systems, among other opportunities.

The toolkit can be accessed online, in PDF, or in printed form for those without access to the Internet. Each sector profile provides program managers with detailed information on how to establish training programs that will impart to youth the skills required to secure formal employment or to start their own businesses.

Each profile includes:

A brief job description
The employment outlook
The “big picture” training considerations (recommended training location, target beneficiaries, average length of course, maximum class size)
Desired training outcomes
Student prerequisites for training (e.g. English level, critical thinking skills, basic numeracy skills)
Qualifications to look for in trainers
Specific curriculum and resources
The technology resources needed to provide training
Optimal instructional methodologies
Internship and job placement strategies
Additional resources, including links to online resources

The development team worked with NGOs and the government in each country to identify the needs of out-of-school youth, investigate job opportunities in the private sector, and identify pre-existing training materials. The research and consideration for country context that has gone into the design of the toolkit has made it a promising resource in providing youth with the skills necessary to participate in the emerging job market of technology-based positions. Moreover, the development team designed the toolkit to be able to evolve with the emergence of new open source resources and different ICT-related employment opportunities within the three sectors’ value chains to enhance the curriculum and ensure the project’s sustainability.

And this is just the beginning — consider it the 1.0 version of this training resource. The development team is looking to expand the toolkit to encompass other sectors and are already investigating examples of ICT usage in Senegal, Kenya, and Rwanda.

April 10, 2012/by actualize

Agriculture, Education, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

Wikidata: Breaking Down Language Barriers for Students Around the World

Image from Wikipedia

Over the last decade, Wikipedia has become as ubiquitous a research tool for the modern American student as the encyclopedia was for their parents — though even that has changed now that the Encyclopedia Britannica has gone completely digital. But Wikipedia has remained largely inaccessible for students in remote corners of the world where English, German, French and Dutch are not spoken — languages that receive the most Wikipedia coverage.

Wikidata, a new project from the Wikimedia Foundation, plans to change that by creating a free knowledge base about the world that can be read and edited by humans and machines alike, making updating and translating processes easier and more efficient. Through this new project, Wikipedia will provide data in all of the languages of other Wikimedia projects. Announced in February at the Semantic Tech & Business Conference in Berlin, the new project promises to be groundbreaking in both its approach and scope of its audience:

“Wikidata is a simple and smart idea, and an ingenious next step in the evolution of Wikipedia,” said Dr. Mark Greaves, Vice President of the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence. “It will transform the way that encyclopedia data is published, made available, and used by a global audience. Wikidata will build on semantic technology that we have long supported, will accelerate the pace of scientific discovery, and will create an extraordinary new data resource for the world.”

Photo Credit: www.thehindu.com

And that’s including parts of the world that have long been left out of Wikipedia coverage because of language barriers and the digital divide. Though the project is still in its initial stages, the first phase of the project will take place over the next several months as the development team creates one Wikidata page for each Wikipedia entry for over 280 supported languages. By using a unified data management system, data entered in any language will immediately be available in all other languages and editing in any language will be possible and encouraged by the projects completion, slated for March 2013.

The initial development of Wikidata is being funded in part by the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation through its Science program, both of which see enormous potential for Wikidata and the role it will play in creating common formats for online data:

“It is important for science,” said Chris Mentzel, Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation science program officer. “Wikidata will both provide an important data service on top of Wikipedia, and also be an easy-to-use, downloadable software tool for researchers, to help them manage and gain value from the increasing volume and complexity of scientific data.”

Wikipedia’s development team is not new to revolutionary ideas and raising standards. Jimmy Wales, one of the founders of Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation, was quoted several years ago for his vision of “a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge.” For students in parts of the world where online educational resources in their native language are far and few between, Wikidata promises to take one step closer to this goal.

April 4, 2012/by actualize

Business Enabling Environment, Economic Growth & Trade, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

Innovation Africa Digital Summit gets underway in Ethiopia

One of Africa’s largest ICT gatherings got underway in Ethiopia today with the kick-off of the Innovation Africa Digital Summit in the capital Addis Ababa.

Aida Opoku-Mensah, Officer-In-Charge of UNECA speaking at a podium

Aida Opoku-Mensah, Officer-In-Charge of UNECA (image: Charlie Fripp)

Now in its tenth year, the summit aims to promote digital connectivity across all spectrums to the benefit of Africa as a whole. The event will also provide for a platform for Ethiopia to share more details on the country’s plans to for develope one of Africa’s largest and most ambitious ICT parks.

“This is an opportunity for us to share our best ideas, to learn about the latest developments and to form powerful partnerships. The theme of creating sustainable national and international ICT ecosystems is indeed a powerful concept which will transform the global socio-economic environment,” conference chair Madanmohan Rao said.

Aida Opoku-Mensah, Officer-In-Charge of UNECA (United Nations Economic Conditions for Africa) added to the welcome address by saying, “it gives me great pleasure to be addressing the tenth Innovation Africa Digital Summit, which comes at a moment when the African continent is experiencing tumultuous advances in the growth and development of the telecoms and ICT sector. We are of the view that in order to unleash Africa’s potential, special attention needs to be paid to innovation, particularly in ICT innovation”.

MTN CEO Sifiso Dabengwa said growth in the sector has been enormous over the years. “Africa has more mobile phones than fixed lines and is still growing. Mobile phones have become the defacto standard for telecommunications on our continent. The growth has had an enormous impact on commerce, connectivity and all other streams of life. The enormity of the socio-economic impact of the mobile sector in Africa cannot be over emphasized.”

IT News Africa is currently in Ethiopia covering and participating in the summit which runs until Thursday 29 March 2012.

Charlie Fripp – Online editor

March 28, 2012/by actualize

Agriculture, Education, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

NMC Horizon Report for Higher Education: What to Expect from ICT in the Next 5 Years

Photo Credit: hsctoolkit.bis.gov.uk

Of all of the new innovations in ICTs — mobile apps and games, open educational resources (OER), and everything else related to ICT for education (ICT4E) — which will be the most important in the next five years?

That’s just one of the questions that the new NMC Horizon Report: 2012 Higher Education Edition aims to answer. The report was released last month by the New Media Consortium (NCM), an international community of experts in educational technology, and Educause, a nonprofit association which aims to advance higher education by promoting intelligent use of information technology.

The report charts the path of emerging technology innovations, trends, and challenges in higher education from around the world to highlight which have the most potential for impact within the next several years. It’s the ninth edition of a decade-long research project and over 450 technology and education experts from more than 30 countries have contributed to the research, discussions, and conclusions made in the report since the NMC Horizon Project began in 2002.

What to expect within the next 12 months:

Mobile Apps

As the fastest growing component of mobile technology, students are using these for formal and informal learning, teachers are using them to be more efficient and innovative in their classrooms, and both are enabling apps for research, ePublishing, recording, etc.

Tablet Computing:

Now preferred in a growing number of classrooms in the developed world, tablets cause less disruption than mobile phones, can be easily stowed and used for field and lab work, and allow one-to-one computing opportunities, usually at an affordable price.

2-3 Years:

Game-Based Learning

This has been a fast-growing field within recent years and there are now more studies and reports that offer quantitative data on its effectiveness in education. The report highlights educational gaming as an important tool for fostering student collaboration and engagement in the learning process.

Learning Analytics

A valuable tool for teachers, this allows educators to record, process, and track student achievement and engagement. This data can lead to curricula revision, teaching assessments, and improved teaching methodologies.

4-5 Years

Gesture-Based Computing

This enables students to learn by doing. From touchscreens to voice interpretation software, students use gesture-based computing to expand their ICT-enabled learning opportunities to encompass embodied learning. The report expects that this technology will soon develop to allow numerous students to use large multi-touch displays for collaborative learning.

The Internet of Things

This emerging technology provides online data about an object’s unique characteristics and allows students to record, study, and learn about the physical world around them. The potential benefits for this technology in education are still being explored.

Key Trends:

A rise in student expectations to be able to work and study whenever and wherever they want
More advances in cloud-based technologies and applications
An increase in student collaboration as project-structures change with new technologies
Teachers will continue to be challenged and redefine their roles with the addition of new resources and relationships
New models of learning, like hybrid and online learning, will change education paradigms
Teachers will use more active and challenge-based learning methods

Photo credit: www.latestdigitals.com

Current Challenges:

Traditional Models of teaching are being challenged by new ones enhanced by technology; often the two compete to find a balance that ensures the quality of education.
Research, authoring, and publishing methods are expanding with the growing use of social media in research; many academics still do not accept these new methods as valid.
Demand for digital media literacy continues to rise in work and educational settings, however it is still rare in teacher education and training.
Emerging technologies are slow to be adopted by teachers on a large scale because of their conflict with traditional teaching models and their self-perceived role and comfort level.
University Libraries are challenged with determining how to categorize and support scholarly resources made available through social media and open content, and how to evolve with this growing trend.

For further reading, each section of the report concludes with a list of resources and examples of how the technology is already being used in higher education. In addition, these and additional resources can be found in an online database on the NMC Horizon Project Navigator website.

March 28, 2012/by actualize

Agriculture, Education, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

GraphoGAME: ICT-Enabled Game is Improving Literacy in Low-Income Countries

Photo Credit: TodayHeads.com

Remember “Hooked on Phonics“? The famous infomercials from the 90’s that promised an educational video series could improve children’s reading scores through phonic-based learning methods?

GraphoGAME, a digital-based phonics learning game developed in Finland, is proving to be just as effective for children in low-income countries and as easily accessible through an array of ICT devices. Developed at the Agora Human Technology Center of the University of Jyväskylä in collaboration with the Niilo Mäki Institute, the game has already been developed in numerous languages — Bantu Languages in Africa, English, Spanish, Chinese, Arabic, Hindi, etc. — to improve literacy where access to sources of high-quality education is limited.

GraphoGAME promotes literacy development by teaching children to form letter-sound associations instead of simply memorizing letter symbols and names. By using fun and entertaining activities, the child becomes engaged and progresses as the game becomes increasingly difficult according to their progress. It starts by introducing basic sounds and gradually progresses to complicated sound combinations.

The research team and developers didn’t design GraphoGAME to replace the role of teachers in literacy learning, but instead promote its value as a powerful learning aid when placed in an educational setting where there are challenges to literacy development. For example, it would be a valuable resource in classrooms where teachers use rote learning — often considered a barrier to meaningful learning and is pervasive throughout the developing world.

The idea for GraphoGAME was introduced in the early 1990’s after Finnish researcher, Heikki Lyytinen, conducted a series of studies on children with dyslexia to identify predictors that could anticipate problems in literacy education. Using these findings and with funding from the Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture, the research team developed the first version of the educational game for children in Finland, and in 2011 expanded the project to address illiteracy in other countries.

Image from GraphoGAME

To support the expansion, the GraphoGAME developers created a larger project called the Grapho Learning Initiative which is divided into four focus areas: GraphoGAME, GraphoWORLD, GraphoREAD, and GraphoLEARN.

GraphoWORLD is a network of university professors and researchers from around the world who are working together to develop non-commercial technologies to improve literacy. In order to address each country’s unique orthography (system of spelling) and general learning environment, researchers conduct studies and assessments to support the effictiveness of GraphoGAME within that particular country.

GraphoREAD is a promising research project on eReading platforms and the business models to support them within low-income countries. This is a valuable addition to the GraphoGAME project and the research team is working to ensure that high-quality reading materials are made available for children developing literacy skills.

GraphoLEARN is an entity that will be created after the GraphoREAD research is completed and analysed to support the production of the learning materials identified in the research.

There are a number of videos online that can offer a brief introduction to the format of the games and the educational philosophy behind them. You can also go to the GraphoGAME website to try some of the games yourself.

March 23, 2012/by actualize

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