Re: [GKD] Why aren't more people online?

[Perry Morrison]

John Lawrence <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

 > Perry, thanks for expressing the crucial message underlying this thread...
 > i.e. how can we be smart and experienced enough to avoid the pitfalls of
 > past `revolutionary' innovations...I think why I have so much faith in the
 > Internet is its fundamental democratic promise admittedly not anywhere
 > near realized yet since so few are using it... but I couldn't drive my own
 > little train along the railroads, nor can I shout, cry or laugh to my
 > friends/colleagues or anyone else on TV except under circumstances that
 > are entirely controlled by the moguls..but the Internet (potentially) allows
 > individual expression a creative freedom, reciprocity, reach and scope that
 > seems unparalleled in human history...my idealistic reading of these
 > tealeaves leads me (personally) towards fostering/supporting wherever
 > possible the extension of that (new?) human capacity and empirical study
 > of its dissemination and impacts is certainly a factor...

There's a lot to these issues. Here's my "take" for what it's worth:

THE major issue involved in the evolution of the Internet over the next
few decades is as ancient as civilisation itself - centralisation vs
decentralisation, or economic and political monopoly vs the alternatives
The communications theorist of the 1950s -Harold Innes ("Empire and
Communication")- who was McLuhan's mentor, said a lot that was relevant.

Innes attributed the destruction of the knowledge monopoly of the church
to the invention of movable type - all of a sudden lots of people could
reproduce knowledge -not just institutions with people who could use a
quill- and they could do it faster.

Innes also draws significant attention to the inherent conflict between
decentralising and centralising tendencies in comms technologies. Clearly,
some technologies are inherently centralised (e.g. despite the 1950s
popular mechanics mags - you were NEVER going to have a nuclear reactor for
a home furnace). Some are highly decentralised- e.g. the original internet
based on UUCP protocol and dial up, store and forward propagation. Indeed
the original ARPANET was actually designed to be decentralised to
withstand a nuclear attack.

I guess it's just a flavour of technological determinism to say that lots
of technologies have the capacity to be either centralised or
decentralised - depending on the contexts and influences that shape them.
In the case of the current internet/web, that is certainly true. In one
corner we have the Larry Ellison (Oracle) CENTRALISED approach to using
the web as the medium and the message - the web stores your data and
serves your applications as you need them.

In the other corner we have Uncle Bill Gates' original DECENTRALISED
"Shrink Wrapped Individualism" in the form of MS operating systems and
applications. Both of these are heavyweight contenders, however it is
important to note that Bill's strategic position has significantly shifted
toward Ellison's model in recent times. A third contender is the flashy,
smart mouthed, but skinny pugilist- Linux/Open Source/Free Software- with
its array of towel bearers including civil liberties/civil society groups,
social advocates, international aid people etc.

The big question is how will this all pan out? To understand that, we have
to understand some motives and gains. And of course, I'm just guessing as
much as anyone else.

If we take the issues of consumer demand and technology push, I speculate
that a number of things will become true for the western industrialised
world:

1. The Death of "The Home Mechanic".

Those with the incomes to afford communications services will become
increasingly harried, stressed and pushed in their daily life. The
prospect of maintaining increasingly sophisticated hardware and software
in home computational/Comms devices will eventually become too tedious,
difficult and specialised. Like a new car, you will eventually become too
busy and too unskilled to maintain it to even the most basic level needed.
Besides, systems of the future will be designed NOT to be touched by you.
A model T Ford can be maintained by you. A chip controlled fuel injected
car of now can't. As for IT devices of the future- you won't have the
hardware or proprietary software tools and you'd void the warranty anyway.
OK, so you work fulltime as a "knowledge worker" and "could" do it. So
what? If you have neither the time, or would prefer to be doing other
things with your leisure - you won't. If you want to have fun tinkering,
then buy an old VW. Otherwise get a new computerised Toyota, get it
serviced and put the spanners away.

2. The Rise of "Home Delivered Pizza"

People like defaults. They like decisions being taken away from them -
especially if they are busy and the decisions are about issues they think
are unimportant and/or need intellectual investment. About 60% of a
complex user interface is never used by most users. They accept the
defaults, us

[GKD] From software to microcomputers - new tools for teaching

[Frederick Noronha]

FROM SOFTWARE TO MICROCOMPUTERS... FINDING NEW TOOLS FOR TEACHING

By Frederick Noronha
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

INNOVATION is helping educators from across the globe to try out
new solutions to old problems. ICTs (information and
communication technologies) are helping to make classrooms more
interesting, and concepts easier to convey.

 >From the UK to India, from software to microcomputers... many
experiments are underway in the classroom. This was reported in a
recent international conference held in Goa, called ICSTME 2001.
It focussed on harnessing science, technology and mathematics
education for human development.

Science Across the World is one innovative example. It is being
called an 'international education programme' that encourages
communication and 'shared learning'. It links up different
societies to look at crucial environmental and social science
issues.

In this project, students use a unique series of resource topics
-- like Keeping Healthy, Drinking Water, biodiversity, and
Chemistry in Our Lives -- in upto 18 languages. Students collect
data, facts and opinions locally.

Some 6000 schools have been registered with Science Across the
World over the past three years. It can be contacted via
www.scienceacross.org On average, 1500 schools with over 2000
teachers and 74000 students aged 12 to 16 in some 45 countries
work with its material at any given time, according to Marianne
Cutler of the Hatfield-UK based Association for Science Education.

On the other hand, computer-based lessons, or CBL, can help to
centre education on learner-activity, argues S.S.Kalbag of the
Pune-based Vigyan Ashram. Kalbag says other advantages of
computer-based lessons include savings in time and money,
eliminating differences between formal and non-formal, rich and
poor, and urban and rural in matters of quality of education.

"India needs to rapidly expand our education network to cover
nearly 25% of the population. We shall need a minimum of 1.5
million computers. And these will have to be financed by the
community, on the basis of minimum results assured. The drop-out
rate must reduce. The consequent savings will make the scheme
self-propelled," argues Kalbag.

Researchers Shakila Thakurpersad and Reshma Sookrajh from South
African's University of Durban-Westville, point to the role of
education in learning. They quote scholars who note that the
World Wide Web is "one of the most effective information and
communication technology (ICT) to provide an integrated open
system of learning". There is a growing trend to use WWW
technologies in education.

Mumbai-based Sangeeta Deokattey, of the Indian Women Scientists'
Association, has undertaken an effort to select Internet sites
and "find out their potential usefulness" in an Indian context.
She points to her findings for searches on three subject areas --
primary health, primary education and appropriate technology.

As Deokattey points out: "Educational resources -- in the form of
textbooks, tool kits, posters, audio-visual presentations, etc --
are in constant demand by adult education and health workers.
Tapping the web potential to supplement existing resources will
be a viable alternative."

"Of all the subjects taught at schools and college level,
mathematics offers probably the most scope for using technology,"
says Douglas Butler of the ICT Training Centre in Peterborough,
UK. He explains how new software and hardware "can combine to
give teachers a wonderful new medium with which to visualise the
basic principles and to improve their personal productivity".

Butler says there is a "rich source" of software types in
mathematics -- including spreadsheets, symbolic algebra and
dynamic geometry packages. Autograph is a new dynamic coordinate
geometry and statistics package.

Butler also points out that teachers can use the Internet at two
levels. Firstly, using the Net to provide "high quality" teaching
resources, graphics, text and data which can be copied off the
Net. But take care: doing this well can be tricky sometimes!
Then, using Web sites in the classroom... there are a growing
number of web resources that "provide good interactive
visualisations".

Technology is also entering the Indian classroom, even if only at
the elite level. For several years, first year Mathematics
students of the IIT B.Tech course in Mumbai were taught using
traditional chalk-board methods. Each class had 80 students in a
division. But, now larger divisions take in about 250 students.

This means, the chalkboard is no longer useful. Instead,
instructional material is being created beforehand, converted
into HTML (webpage) format, and put out on the Web, explains
Sudhir Ghorpade of IIT-Mumbai.

In class, the instructor uses projections onto a large screen
from the relevant webpage. He teaches with a remote mouse in his
hand instead of chalk. This brings up the question: should modern
technology alter the approach and content in teaching 'classical'
subjects like Algebra and Cal

Re: [GKD] Corruption claim against GDG

[Saltanat Shalakhmetova]

Dear colleagues,

On behalf of Kazakhstan Gateway team, as a project coordinator for
Gateway country-level component: Kazakhstan Development Gateway, I
would like to express our attitude towards the criticism and
claims raised in Mr. Bissio and Dr. Abin's message. I believe that
most of other country teams will support our opinion and will share
their own views and experience.

As one could note from the message of the respected claimants, they
did conduct a detailed analysis of the financial aspects of the
project. But what was left out is the whole ideology and actual
achievements of the teams both on global and country levels, which is
offensive for the people, who made their best and put tremendous
efforts to launch and lead this initiative for almost 2 years through
the thorny path aggregated by different conditions in the countries.

The philosophy of the Gateway does not imply the creation of the
Portal per se, but aims at much wider multifaceted e-development
program to be implemented in participating countries. But even
speaking of this key element: the Portal, we believe that saying that
it is "unneeded initiative, which will compete unfairly and in a
damaging manner with existing country-and topic-focused Internet
sites" is absolutely groundless. To take the Kazakhstan situation,
the results of extensive studies, researches and consultations
conducted by Kazakhstan Gateway team revealed that 60% of Kazakhstan
Internet users identified the lack of interesting and useful
country-specific resources as a major obstacle for more extensive
Internet popularization and usage. In addition, our main objective is
not creating an ultimate Portal but to promote the existing ones,
assist in enhancing their quality and facilitate creation of more and
more local Internet resources and launch of additional locally
initiated e-development projects. And we've been working in this
direction within KzDG project activities.

I'd like to say that we are proud of being a part of this truly global
initiative, which currently unites the efforts of such a great number
of dedicated partners and significantly contributes to the development
process in more than 30 countries worldwide. And these Country Gateways
actually make the backbone of the whole Development Gateway ideology
and program. We are witnessing repercussion of widening the digital
gap between our countries and developed world and realize better than
anybody else the importance of such initiative as Development Gateway
and experience the results of its activities at the firsthand.  Here,
in Kazakhstan, just like in most of other countries involved, Gateway
is going through its planning and start-up phases. Despite such a
short period of time this initiative attracted genuine interest and
support of representatives of various communities and is being
actively developed by highly enthusiastic and committed people. Thus,
thanks to Development Gateway initiative and InfoDev grant allocated
through this program to launch Kazakhstan Development Gateway, we
managed to accomplish a huge number of activities to consolidate
efforts of representatives of local communities interested in
E-development of the country and establish an E-development
Association - a professional legal entity co-founded by 20
organizations, which will take a lead to achieve the goals established
by Development Gateway in our country.

An important factor is that in most of the participating countries,
which gained their independence and started the democratization
process not so long ago, the ideas of e-development (development
through application of information technologies) are also still very
young, not adopted and well-known. Even given the fact that it already
found strong acknowledgement on the side of local communities, they
still have a "fear" of the openness and opportunities, which can be
provided by new economy, and Development Gateway is called to help
them to overcome this fear through educating and sharing the knowledge
and best practices. Thus, support of World Bank and future Development
Gateway Foundation as a key facilitator is indeed vital for Country
Gateways at this point. Therefore, to wrap up this project would mean
to berry the results achieved in the countries so far.



Best regards,
Saltanat Shalakhmetova,
Project Coordinator
Kazakhstan Development Gateway
tel:  office 7-3272-583691
   cell 7-300-722-5528




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[GKD] Africa goes online

[Clay G. Wescott]

An excellent series on Internet challenges for Africa is in the Boston
Globe. The first article is at
.

Clay Wescott
Senior Public Administration Specialist
Asian Development Bank
PO Box 789
Manila, Philippines 0980
email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.adb.org/Governance
http://www.adb.org/wgpsr/default.html





***GKD is an initiative of the Global Knowledge Partnership***
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To subscribe or unsubscribe, send a message to:
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