Recent news

Trends

VLEs enhance education

Pearson Fronter specialises in simple tools for secure online education and collaboration in specific virtual ‘rooms’. Its Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) gives students, teachers and parents access to communications, assignment submission, planning and shared resources. Here, eLearning Africa shows how introducing this platform in a school in the United Arab Emirates is helping to meet the educational needs of the children and connect the […]

Trends

Beating the power deficit to boost eLearning in Tanzania

When the 650 million dollar Seacom undersea cable was hauled ashore on Kunduchi beach near Dar es Salaam, its high-capacity bandwidth offered Tanzania the glittering opportunity of becoming a knowledge-based economy. But the country needs more than just fast broadband from the 17,000 km of largely African-owned fibre-optic cable that has linked South Africa, Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda and Mozambique with Europe and Asia since […]

Map of Nigeria
Field Stories

Nigerians learn new campaigning skills

  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.

UNICEF
General

UNICEF report: “Adolescence – An Age of Opportunity”

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 […]

Eve Obara
Opinions

The future is digital, says Kenya Literature Bureau CEO

  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 […]

General

To Be Young, Unemployed and African in UNICEF’s ‘Age of Opportunity’

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 […]

Tarkan Maner
Opinions

Tarkan Maner on thin solutions and ‘fat’ PCs

  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 […]

Conference sneak preview

Professor Sugata Mitra to deliver keynote speech at eLearning Africa 2011

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 […]

Field Stories

AVU launches online Open Education Resources portal

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 […]

General

China’s mighty telecom footprint in Africa

  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 […]