Viewpoints

To arrive at a robust solution we need to work through a range of socio-technical options.
Andy has produced a preliminary viewpoint analysis in terms of stakeholders, etc.

First Post: Some thoughts on my upcoming April Visit to Bolga NTC and a request for info

As my first post on the blog I'd like to share with you a document of Aims and Objectives drawn up after a meeting with Rosemary, William and Maggie from Bolga NTC on their recent visit to UWE. This document was presented to the UWE Steering Committee and met with approval on 19th March. The visit is planned from 7th to 21st April. Please have a read - I would welcome any comments or suggestions you have and any additional input. I realise that the document covers a lot of things - not all of which will be achievable in the short time (2 weeks) available for my visit.

word document: http://www.zailrand.com/bolgaNTC/Liza%20McCarron%20Bolga%20Visit%20April%202008.doc

The PC audit in full is also available:

excel document: http://www.zailrand.com/bolgaNTC/Bolga%20NTC%20PC%20audit%20nov%202007.xls


As you will read in my Aims and Objectives document I would like to introduce the idea of Open Source software to Bolga NTC. I have been researching the use of Open Source in Africa and have found it is not always welcomed - people perceive that the "developed" world is a Microsoft world and feel in some ways they are being given second best through Open Source. Microsoft appear to be encouraging this (1). However, I feel it is important from a sustainability point of view that this option is introduced in a positive way - there are many examples of the positive implementation of OSS in Africa (2) The ultimate decision about which systems to use will remain with Bolga NTC. I would appreciate the input of other members of this group in the following:

1. Recommending an Open Source OS - preferably one that has a "live" version (Currently I favour dsl 4.2.5 for it's small footprint, easy to use GUI and inclusion of an office suite)
   
2. Additional Open Source/free office and multimedia software for use on either Linux or Windows platforms (OpenOffice is the obvious choice for an Office replacement on both platforms)
   
3. A easy to use WYSIWIG Open Source/free html editor and website manager (I'm a bit out of touch with these as it's while since I did any proper websites and I still use a very old copy of Adobe GoLive)
   
4. Any free Anti Virus, Internet Security and Anti Spyware programs that you can recommend (Free AVG and Zone Alarm along with firewall on router are the ones I tend to use although the Zone Alarm Free version won't be licensed for use In Bolga NTC. Has anyone tried Comodo?)

Lastly, I'm hoping to take out some bits and pieces (and not much other luggage!) scrounged from old equipment within our faculty and some of the things I have hoarded (!) at home over the years - basically this will consist of

• a couple of 10 - 20 Gb HDD
• CD-R drives
• maybe a DVD-R drive
• some spare network cards
• a couple of wireless cards
• a wireless access point (for testing)
• some PC100 and PC133 128Mb Ram (if anyone has any 256 or 512 sticks available that would be much more use!)
• some long Cat5 cables (or possibly a cable drum, some crimpers and ends)
• some network wall points
• vga cables
• USB A-B cables
• PS2 mice
• @ 100 CD-R disks
• Possibly an external drive for backups (am still trying to source this - most of ours are lacies and I don't want to take one of them as in my experience they have a nasty habit of head crashing)
  

If anyone could suggest or donate anything else that would be great (or tell me what not to take...). I will of course be weighing everything carefully before I go!

Hope you all have/ have had great easters without too much snow :)

Best Regards

Liza

(1) http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/0,1000000121,39231004,00.htm

(2) http://opensource.mit.edu/papers/reijswoudtopi.pdf

THET link and summary of the Bolg NTC audit from Liza

The THET website is well worth looking at. Perhaps we need to look at the funding part closely? http//www.thet.org.uk

From Liza:
Basically they have @12 oldish Pcs (P3, between 64 and 256Mb Ram, HDD ranging from 4 to 20Gb, running win XP and Win 2k - CRT monitors), 9 of which currently boot reliably.

Linda

Links to interesting views and feedback on ICT and Africa

The digital villages plan will encourage and facilitate ICT growth. Africa Research Bulletin: Economic, Financial & Technical Series, 11/16/2007, Vol. 44 Issue 11, p17639-17639, 1/3p; (AN 28550979)

ICT for education and development. By: Casal, Carlos Rodriguez. Info, 2007, Vol. 9 Issue 4, p3-9, 7p; DOI: 10.1108/14636690710762093; (AN 25905906)

Added

ICT on the Margins: Lessons for Ugandan Education. By: Mutonyi, Harriet; Norton, Bonny. Language & Education: An International Journal, 2007, Vol. 21 Issue 3, p264-270, 7p; (AN 25492583)

Collaborative Partnerships and the Transformation of Secondary Education through ICTs in South Africa. By: Evoh, Chijioke J.. Educational Media International, Jun2007, Vol. 44 Issue 2, p81-98, 18p, 2 charts, 1 diagram; DOI: 10.1080/09523980701295091; (AN 24904107)

Empowering Africa's development using ICT in a knowledge management approach. By: Jain, Priti. Electronic Library, 2006, Vol. 24 Issue 1, p51-67, 17p, 1 diagram; DOI: 10.1108/02640470610649245; (AN 20509441)

Developing the ICT Infrastructure for Africa: Overview of Barriers to Harnessing the Full Power of the Internet. By: Alemneh, Daniel Gelaw; Hastings, Samantha Kelly. Journal of Education for Library & Information Science, Winter2006, Vol. 47 Issue 1, p4-16, 13p, 2 graphs; (AN 21211429)

Getting information to disadvantaged rural communities: the centre approach. By: Snyman, Maritha; Snyman, Retha. South African Journal of Library & Information Science, 2003, Vol. 69 Issue 2, p95-107, 13p, 4 charts; (AN 12662398)

Hope you find this useful
Linda

OU Africa Projects

The OU has a number of projects in Africa. For information on some of them, see the OU Africa website.

Some thoughts on uses of ICT

While I agree with the points made by Frank on 11th January (Thoughts on a first visit), about not starting with a solution in mind, I think it would be useful to explore the sorts of things that ICT might be used for in this context.

I've been at the OU since 1986, so have watched - been part of - the integration of ICT into our teaching. Here are some quick personal observations which I hope might stimulate discussion.

(I'm assuming everyone is broadly familiar with what the OU does - at least that it is all distance education, students study at home and, though they have tutors and there are optional tutorials that they can attend, the main means of study is a printed text produced by us. For more info see http://www.open.ac.uk/)

Anyway, the sorts of things we use ICT for:

1) CBL: computer-based learning packages.
We've been doing this for a long time, producing packages delivered on floppy disks..., DVDs and now online for many years. We have in-house specialists in writing educational software but it is very expensive to produce good teaching material, only justified by our economies of scale (course with 1000s of student per year).

2) Delivering our teaching material to students.

2.1) All our printed texts are now also made available to students as PDF files on a course website. Students find this useful in addition to being sent the paper copies. If they are not sent paper copies they print it all out. Maybe this is changing, or will change, but generally few people like reading large amounts of text on screen.

2.2) Teaching material written to be studied at the computer. Overlaps with (1), but here I'm thinking of mainly text-based material that is formatted to be suitable for reading on a computer screen. Eg small 'chunks' of text that fit on one screen at a time. Unless there is 'added value' in putting it on the computer (eg, using lots of graphics, incorporating lots of activities, links to outside material), I don't think there is any advantage of this over printed text. Again, we find students often want to print it out, even if it doesn't come out very nicely in print.

3) Access to 'third-party' resources

The OU has negotiated very good access to online journals for our students. This is an excellent facility, but in practice is only useful to (undergraduate) students when they are given very detailed guidance on how to use it in OU courses.

Students also make extensive use of the web to find alternative explanations of topic taught in our courses.

4) Online conferences and email.

4.1) Tutors answering questions/teaching in (asynchronous) online conferences. Supplements the telephone access to tutors that they have always had.

4.2) 'Self help' (students answering each others questions) within online conferences. In my experience, this has worked very well, and I would argue might be the most useful application of ICT for OU students.

5) Multimedia.

TV broadcasts as direct teaching (as distinct from joint ventures with the BBC, such as 'Coast' and 'James May's Twentieth Century') have been replaced by video sent on DVDs. We now also make quite a lot of use of podcasts and other audio material, either delivered on DVDs or online on course websites. In my experience - and I think this differs quite a bit from one subject the next - this is a very useful 'added extra', but does not replace the core, still largely text-based, teaching material.

Docs from last meeting

Linda posted these minutes and a paper on the Story Bank project which was mentioned at that meeting.