FYI, this item from the PPGIS list may be of interest ...
Don Osborn
Bisharat.net
PanAfrican Localisation Project
Volume 25 of the Electronic Journal of Information Systems in Developing
Countries is now available from http://www.ejisdc.org
Volume 25 of the Electronic Journal of Information Sys
There's another level on which I read this short piece - that of different
Office systems/suites. Having opted to try OpenOffice (OOo) instead of
purchasing MS Office for a laptop several months ago I have to say that
as nice
as it performs generally there are bugs - I find it crashes a lot whe
Hi Allison, You should also ask on the Indigenous Language and Technology List
(ILAT). See http://www.u.arizona.edu/~cashcash/ILAT.html
Don Osborn
Bisharat.net
PanAfrican Localisation Project
Quoting Allison McDermott <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
Hi all,
Does anybody know of any specific research/a
Having been caught up in meeting a deadline I missed getting out a more timely
mention of International Mother Language Day (Feb. 21). Its theme this year is
relevant to this thread: linguistic diversity in cyberspace. For more info, see
http://portal.unesco.org/education/en/ev.php-URL_ID=45647&URL
Andy, thanks for this. There are some interesting ideas circulating re Wikipedia
(some in reaction to some negative press the latter has received). For
instance, in a thread on H-Africa, there is discussion of how scholars, and
instructors & students in universities can generate new content and cor
FYI, this effort to make statistics on development more accessible may be of
interest. (URL in text below; site is mainly in English.) DZO
- Forwarded message from rakotonoera denis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> -
Date: Sun, 6 Nov 2005 23:46:23 +0100 (CET)
From: rakotonoera denis <[EMAIL P
Bonnie, Thanks for this info. I'll comment on the AED report and girls'
education below...
Re the AED report, I was surprised in my scanning (and word searches) of the
document not to find a single mention of language(s) of instruction. This would
be a big omission in a report of this importance,
I wasn't going to get into this one, but will offer that I've stopped using
"Third World" for some time. It's a legacy term, if you will, and it's not
surprising that it is still in circulation (and it's better than some other
legacy terms in the field, like "underdeveloped"). I understand its orig
Consider also journals dealing with multilingual computing and localization.
Generally these are or began as trade journals and not academic ones, but they
do sometimes treat issues relevant to digital divide work in international
development contexts. For example:
Localisation Focus (quarterly of
Some time ago I suggested that the much discussed "bridging" of the divide was
actually more like its replication on more local levels. Others have pointed
out that the digital divide emerges along lines of older socioeconomic,
cultural and linguistic divides. So this news doesn't come as much of a
I'm going to do a little blogging from a couple of conferences on the road - and
other meetings in between:
*The IDN & Unicode in Africa conference (maintenant "réunion technique") in
Dakar, today, and
*The Localisation Research Centre's 10th annual conference (LRC-X) at the
University of Limerick
FYI... DZO
- Forwarded message from Andrew Cunningham <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> -
Date: Tue, 6 Sep 2005 15:15:53 +0100
From: Andrew Cunningham <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Reply-To: Andrew Cunningham <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: [A12n-forum] [IFLA-L] Open Road 2006 - Call for papers
To:
There is a list hosted by Dgroups that may be of interest - PPGIS (for public
participatory GIS). There are a number of people and projects doing interesting
work in this area and the list is active. See: http://www.ppgis.net (though I
had trouble accessing just now; probably unrelated, but the li
FYI (Fwd from Afrik-IT. I have no further info on this - please contact Dr.
Heeks at the address given below)... DZO
-
Just a reminder that we will shortly be holding what I believe to be the largest
UK event on information, ICTs and development.
This is the 2005 UK Development Studies A
FYI (fwd from ILAT; please pardon the crossposts)... DZO
Cornell Conference on Language and Poverty
October 14-16, 2005
This conference, organized by the linguistics department at Cornell University,
has two central objectives:
(1) to highlight the complex interconnections of language and pov
Highway Africa News Agency (South Africa) http://www.highwayafrica.org.za/hana/
published an interesting item last May entitled "Blogging: a Way to 'Decolonise
Cyberspace'" which discusses an effort by a Tanzanian, Ndesanjo Macha, to
promote blogging in African languages. He has a blog in Swahili a
The belowmentioned article in this online journal offers an interesting
perspective on blogging. (Fwd from the Linguist list) DZO
Date: 06-Jul-2005
From: Alex Bergs <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Vol. 1 (2005)
Publisher: Heinrich-Heine-Universitaet Duesseldorf / English Languag
The link to the Denver Post article was working when I checked. The verbal
exchange reported in it speaks volumes about some popular attitudes about
language and identity in the US and perhaps beyond (though such activism for
monolingualism may be mainly an American phenomenon):
-
"You need
FYI... DZO
- Forwarded message from LRC <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> -
Date: Tue, 9 Aug 2005 12:22:06 +0100
From: LRC <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Reply-To: LRC <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: FW: [LRC Press Release] LRC Best Global Website Award - Deadline
Extension
To: "'[EMAIL PRO
A quick follow on question to Subbiah's request for information - how have
various language issues been dealt with by the Akshaya e-literacy project
(localizing user interfaces, language options available [Malayalam, English,
Hindi, ...], etc.). TIA...
Don Osborn
Bisharat.net
Quoting Subbiah Aru
The PanAfrican Localisation workshop held in Casablanca, June 13-15, brought
together localisation experts and representatives of localisation projects from
various countries in Africa and some beyond. We considered the state of
localisation on the continent, key issues, and ideas for facilitating
FYI, this conference may be of interest. Note call for papers (CFP), for which
the deadline is 30 May... DZO
LRCX
The Global Initiative for Local Computing
The 10th Annual Internationalisation and Localisation Conference organised by
the Localisation Research Centre
13-14 September 2005
Un
The following article from the ITWeb news service was seen on AllAfrica.com at
http://allafrica.com/stories/200505091322.html . The comic book format is a
useful one for a number of educational purposes and a set of illustrations are
easily adapted to diverse languages and incorporated in multimedi
True that the telephone is accessible, but at least in the US, phoning many
government services gets one into a tree (thicket) of recorded menus and canned
answers. Sometimes useful but a simple question can take an age to find the
answer to, and anything more complex becomes an exercise in frustra
Thanks for bringing this up. This event addresses a vital topic that deserves
more attention (which it is gradually getting, as attested to by UNESCO and
ACALAN's initiative in setting this up).
Will others on these groups be attending - and out of those any blogging? If so,
it would be great to h
FYI (seen in Pambazuka News 204 - 28 April 2005)...
Don Osborn
Bisharat.net
GENARDIS SMALL GRANTS FUND
The GenARDIS small grants fund was initiated in 2002 by CTA, IICD and IDRC, to
support work on gender-related issues in ICTs for ACP agricultural and rural
development. The programme was devel
The following message from Julie Fesenmaier of Temple University's Business
School (Philadelphia, US) was seen on the list of the Australian chapter of the
Community Development Society (which I subscribed to as an info source for a
class I taught, and have stayed on since the traffic is low and it
Andy, Thanks for posting this. Here are a few quick comments. Though the article
does reflect the increasing interest in African language use in software and
web content, it also seems a little off or incomplete on some aspects.
First, one has the impression that among commercial software interest
The following may be of interest. (Reposted from the PPGIS group)... DZO
___
Dear author
We are pleased to announce the launch of a new refereed e-journal:
"International Journal of Education and Development using Information and
Communication Technology (IJEDICT)" locat
Michael, Here are two quick suggested additions from an international
viewpoint:
> * Digital Literacy
Change to:
* Literacies
** Basic
** Digital
[others can be added]
> * Access
> ** Connectivity (Local Infrastructure)
> ** Hardware for the People
> ** Accessibility for those with disabil
I had the opportunity to participate in the just concluded LocalisationDev
workshop in Warsaw. This is to forward a brief explanation of the event and
invitation to contribute to its wiki and mailing list (appended below).
Don Osborn
Bisharat.net
**
The following item on trends towards a multilingual web may be of interest (seen
in SANTEC November 2004 Information Update No. 2). DZO
Taken from UNESCO WebWorld Newsletter - 5 November 2004
---
UNESCO Sponsored Research Finds WWW Fracturing Into Language
FYI (reposted from the Linguist list)... DZO
Date: 26-Oct-2004
From: Dieter Stein <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: New E-Journal: Language & Internet
Arguably the innovation that is having the greatest cultural, societal, economic
and political impact is the Internet. As a consequence, there are f
Claude, Belated thanks for your note and kind remarks. I'll reply below to part
of your letter...
Quoting Claude Almansi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
> > My impression is that bandwidth issues are improving in a lot of places in
> the
> > global South [ . . . ]. However many such
> > places will likely re
This news release may be of interest.
Don Osborn
Bisharat.net
- Forwarded message from phil cash cash <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> -
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 2004 12:34:01 -0700
From: phil cash cash <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Reply-To: Indigenous Languages and Technology <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: N
Claude, I'm glad you made the points you did, but I also see two sides to this.
Having lived for a while in Niger, with poor connectivity and at the time
relying on the parastatal telecom monopoly for the only connections, I know the
frustration of encountering blithely high bandwidth web presentat
FYI, a request for information (seen in Pambazuka news #178, 14 Oct. 2004)...
Don Osborn
Bisharat.net
AFRICA: DATABASE OF COMMUNITY RADIO STATIONS
The University of Guelph is conducting a research project to collect information
to develop a database of community radio stations in Africa. To be i
FYI... Although broadband is beyond what most of the world can access, I wonder
if the evolution in internet phoning epitomized today by Skype is yet another
indication of the audio potential in the new ICTs for everyone. The NY Times
article mentioned below will be freely available on their site (
Thanks, David. It would be interesting to know about what software you are
using, or if the users are simply recoding .wav or .mp3 files to attach to
e-mail.
Beyond that I wonder if there's not a need for more clarity about the field and
how its changing. There is also voice mail - since a long ti
Does anyone have examples of use of voice/audio e-mail software by ICT4D /
digital divide projects (e.g., in community telecenters)? Voice e-mail is not
so popular in Northern countries but would seem to have potential in parts of
the global South where literacy rates are not so high and/or oral c
Translate.org.za is a recognized leader in software language localization in
Africa. Although not strictly speaking the first African language
wordprocessors (see comments at
http://lists.kabissa.org/lists/archives/public/a12n-forum/msg00149.html ), its
products seem to be setting the standard for
A related evolution that doesn't seem to get as much attention is that of
Unicode / ISO-10646 which facilitates use of diverse scripts/writing systems on
computers and the internet. In the early days of e-mail one was limited to
ASCII (basically the English alphabet characters on a typewriter keybo
There are many interlocking issues of course. Education for all sounds great and
is a lofty goal but is not so simple. As you point out in your paper on the
subject (at http://www.ics.uci.edu/~bork/efa.htm), primary education should
ideally be/start in children's first language, but in many if not
Appended below are several items of posible interest. The first four are recent
news stories concerning or mentioning the importance of African languages in
development. The linguistic aspects of the "digital divide" in multilingual
societies such as those in Africa merit increased attention, esp.
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