Tag: Education

Field Stories

The final road to reach 2015 MDGs

As the 2015 target date looms for UN member countries to achieve the eight Millennium Development Goals – which range from providing universal primary education to combatting HIV/AIDS and other diseases – the UN Millennium Development Goals Report 2014 reveals what targets have been met, what areas are lacking and, with a final push, what goals are still in reach.  By Annika Burgess

Field Stories

Uganda leads in eLearning since 2005 – in 750+ secondary schools

Uganda is holding a secret. It is host to one of the largest implementations of eLearning in Africa to date. From urban uptown schools to village schools. Already in 2005 the Ministry of Education and Sports agreed to a pilot in 10 government secondary schools, deploying computerised Science and Mathematics software and virtual laboratory software. Having reached 250 schools, the ministry then joined hands with […]

Field Stories

Wikis in history education

Ugandan history teaching is becoming dangerously irrelevant. This is the concern of Dorothy Sebbowa, a lecturer in history education at Makerere University.  “The country risks losing knowledge of its own past,” she warns. But through changing the way history is taught, that knowledge can be saved. by Tewodros Alemayehu Makerere is Uganda’s largest university, and still uses a teaching model where one lecturer addresses […]

Opinions

The Three E’s of the Technology Revolution: Ecommerce, Entrepreneurship, and Education (repost)

We are in the midst of a new leg of the Technology Revolution: mobile technology. Emissaries, acolytes, and strategists have all converged, coming from diverse backgrounds, geographical locations, and age groups. They’ve all learned to creatively synthesize social media and various apps to literally mobilize the troops. The myriad foot soldiers who have been incubated in a petri dish of war, poverty, and a […]

Field Stories

Social Learning: a Namibian Experiment

In Sub-Saharan Africa, innovative approaches are constantly being developed to address the region’s acute education challenges. Low literacy levels, inadequate school facilities, and high dropout rates are felt acutely, particularly in rural areas. Despite government initiatives to tackle these issues, accessing education remains difficult for some, especially those who have abandoned their studies and find it difficult to re-join school or gain employment in […]

Field Stories

Knowledge repositories – building blocks for learning

A knowledge repository is an online database that organises, displays and categorises information. It can be used to provide support and management for many services, including encouraging open access to scholarly research, preserving digital materials for the long term and showcasing academic research. But whilst repositories are becoming increasingly commonplace in Africa and around the world as houses of shared institutional memory, information on […]

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The unsung local heroes who are really changing Africa

A revolution is occurring throughout African societies. While governments implement high-level, high-visibility ICT strategies, experts have recently identified far more radical, hidden changes occurring across the Continent. New technologies, when adopted, are adapted to local needs: a sort of under-the-radar innovation which is now pushing the boundaries of what is possible.