2008-09-27

Electing a US President

Given the recent worldwide interest in the Presidential elections in the USA, this explanation of "Electing a US President in Plain English" by Lee LeFever of CommonCraft is timely.





Seems like a complicated and unfair way to conduct an election, but I guess I'm not a politician.

I recommend visiting the CommonCraft site to see all the other explanatory videos available.

2008-09-25

Community Media for Learning

From WikiEducator

The Commonwealth of Learning (COL) "Media for Learning" programme aims to make media to be an effective part of the larger Open and Distance Learning process, especially at the community level and particularly in relation to COL's mandate to enable learning for development.

Learning about what? Whatever a community's needs and priorities are. For some this means health issues, like HIV/AIDS, malaria or diabetes. For others, it means supplementing secondary school education in English, math and science.

How do communities learn using media? By engaging with media to design innovative programmes to address specific needs, e.g. improving agricultural practices, and linking to groups, both in the community and externally, to access useful and appropriate knowledge sources.

What does COL focus on in this area?
  1. Building the capacities of media; and
  2. Supporting the establishment and growth of knowledge and learning networks.
Some of COL's initiatives include:
  1. Developing effective learning programmes; Good practice: Community Radio Madanpokhara; Recent activity: Jet FM in Jeffrey Town
  2. Strengthening organisation: community ownership and participation, policies, sustainability planning; Upcoming activity: Radio Mang'elete
  3. Smart technology choices
  4. Open sourcing community media; Good practice: KRUU FM
For more details go to: http://www.wikieducator.org/Media_for_Learning

2008-09-11

Web 2.0 for Agricultural Development

Here is an eight minute Business Africa/CTA video production documenting actual cases on the use of Web 2.0 applications in the development sector, specifically among farmers in Africa.





Business Africa is produced by People Television and broadcast on a network of more than 45 African and 5 european partner channels.


CTA is an ACP-EU institution working in the field of information for development. It was set up in 1984 with the task of improving the flow of information among stakeholders in agricultural and rural development in African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries. Its work focuses on three key areas:

  • providing information products and services (e.g., publications, question-and-answer services and database services)
  • promoting the integrated use of communication channels, old and new, to improve the flow of information (e.g., e-communities, web portals, seminars, and study visits)
  • building ACP capacity in information and communication management (ICM), mainly through training and partnerships with ACP bodies