Sunday, December 22, 2024
New communications technology and social networking are about to influence the politics of the African continent once again. This time it is Nigeria, whose leaders are rapidly coming to terms with the political significance of new forms of communication and networking sites, such as Facebook and Twitter, as the country prepares to go to the polls in April.
On February 25, 2011, UNICEF published its new flagship report “Adolescence: An Age of Opportunity” suggesting that Information and Communication Technologies could help save young people from being ‘left adrift by globalization’. On that very day Egyptian agitators used eMail, Twitter and Facebook to bring tens of thousands of teenage demonstrators into Tahrir Square for a synchronised demonstration with Egyptian and Tunisian flags. The […]
Kenya Literature Bureau (KLB) is one of the largest publishing houses in East Africa. In 2009 , the state corporation broke new ground by launching eBooks on the local market ahead of any of the other players in the business. eLearning Africa had the opportunity to talk with Eve Obara, KLB’s Chief Executive Officer, about the recent changes in educational publishing, the boom […]
On February 25, 2011, the day Egyptian agitators used eMail, Twitter and Facebook to bring tens of thousands of teenage demonstrators into Tahrir Square for a synchronised demonstration with Egyptian and Tunisian flags, UNICEF published its new report on adolescence suggesting that Information Communications Technologies could help save young people from being ‘left adrift by globalization’. Their report foresaw falling fertility rates in low-income […]
He is a man with a mission: Tarkan Maner, President and CEO of Wyse Technology, the global provider of cloud client computing hardware, software and solutions. It is his true conviction that cloud client solutions democratise technology. Unlike ‘fat’ PCs which are expensive and require a lot of maintenance, Wyse’s thin, zero or cloud devices do not store data – all files and […]
Sugata Mitra is currently Professor of Educational Technology at Newcastle University. Considered a pioneer in his field, Professor Mitra is best known for his “Hole In The Wall” experiment, whereby he studied the potential of minimally invasive education by placing an Internet-enabled PC in the wall of an Indian slum, leaving it there for anyone to use. In this interview, Professor Mitra helps us […]
The African Virtual University (AVU) launched the interactive Open Education Resources portal OER@AVU in January this year. The portal can be accessed at http://oer.avu.org and contains quality resources developed together with twelve universities in ten African countries. The resources are released under the Creative Commons open licence. Through the portal, AVU will enable academics throughout the African Continent and beyond to share, distribute and disseminate […]
China plays a major role financing and supplying telecom and ICT equipment to Africa, a precondition for eLearning. Chinese companies have broken the monopoly of Western telecom giants in Africa, helped to bring down charges and contributed to the triumphal success of mobile phones on the continent. They have also donated educational communications hardware worth millions of dollars. However, China’s engagement has attracted […]
The Kenyan Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports is currently constructing one hundred greenhouses in various Youth Polytechnics across the country so that students can be trained in greenhouse farming. This is one of the measures undertaken by the Ministry in order to plug the skills gap among the country’s young people. “For Kenya to develop, we need technicians, technologists and engineers,” says Dr […]
In May this year, just before the eLearning Africa conference, a diverse group of eLearning professionals from across the globe will join their African colleagues to climb Mount Meru, in Tanzania, as part of the EAST Challenge. The aim of the challenge is to raise scholarship funding for low-income African teachers and education professionals to attend the eLearning Africa conference in Dar es Salaam […]
