The Drum Beat 420 - Education
From The Communication Initiative Network - where communication and media are central to social and economic development.
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This issue of the Drum Beat takes a closer look at education as a development issue. In addition to projects linking educators and institutions, the issue includes information about distance education and online curricula, the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in education, avian influenza curricular materials, school-based HIV/AIDS education, and education research.
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NETWORKING EDUCATORS AND INSTITUTIONS
1. International Professors Project (IPP) - Global
The International Professors Project (IPP) is a non-profit global network of professors who have begun working on university campuses in the so-called "developing world" - teaching, mentoring, and conducting local research as they internationalise college and university faculties in their respective host countries. A core goal of IPP is to enhance international and regional perspectives of developing and developed world universities, while meeting the developing world's need for professors and instructors. The project consists of an interconnected web of academics, post-doctorates, independent scholars, and graduate students. The members provide global information, ideas, and knowledge channels - using both information and communication technologies (ICTs) and face-to-face interactions to share ideas, information, and knowledge of country and regional variations in teaching, learning, research, and living.
Contact Dr. Ron Krate info@internationalprofs.org
2. Think.com - Global
Launched in 1999 as part of Oracle's Education Initiatives programme, Think.com is an online educational environment designed for primary (ages 7 to 12) and secondary (ages 13 to 16) school students and teachers. It aims to allow students to publish websites, interact with peers, ask questions, and make friends around the world. Teachers can use the website to develop collaborative activities and promote cross-cultural learning. Only students and teachers from member schools can enter a password-protected learning community.
3. Young Minds - Europe
This is an internet-based project in which young people from a number of countries in Europe communicate with each other and explore links between youth, culture, and health. Organisers hope that this project will inspire young people, teachers, and schools to engage in educational dialogue aiming at both promoting meaningful learning and making a difference with regard to health. For example, work on the issue of alcohol began with a brainstorming period in each country: participants wrote a list of common interesting questions concerning young people and alcohol. Students then began to find answers to these questions by interviewing experts, creating surveys, reading statistics online, and pursuing other information sources. Action plans were then developed, which led to various projects in Finland, Sweden, and Spain.
Contact Bjarne Bruun Jensen bjbj@dpu.dk or Venka Simovska vs@dpu.dk
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DISTANCE EDUCATION AND ONLINE CURRICULA
4. K-Perak E-learning Cluster (KPEC) Project - Malaysia
The K-Perak E-Learning Cluster (KPEC) project is a school-based programme designed to provide professional development for teachers and to build e-learning capability in a cluster of 5 selected schools in the state of Perak, Malaysia. Launched in March 2007, the pilot 3-month programme focused on building teacher capability in terms of ICT knowledge, skill, and paedagogical practice in order to foster more effective use of ICT in teaching and learning at both primary and secondary education levels. The project was managed by the Innovation New Zealand Education (iNZed) group, which is a consortium of providers of e-learning products and services, including CORE Education, a not-for-profit educational research and development organisation based in Christchurch, New Zealand. This initiative drew on both face-to-face capacity building and specialist online support in an effort to bridge the digital divide, build online communities, foster intercultural understanding, and improve capacity in the use of ICT for educational purposes.
Contact Derek Wenmoth derek.wenmoth@core-ed.net
5. Youth Networking, Education and Communications Channels Across the Circumpolar Region: A Preliminary Exploration
by Heather Creech
This study explores and documents youth networks across the Arctic, together with the communications channels they use and their access to formal and informal education channels. The intent is to develop a better understanding of how to reach and engage youth across the Arctic region. The principal effort described here is the Circumpolar Young Leaders Program, which is an initiative for young Northerners that combines training in Arctic issues, communications, and leadership with peer networking and work experience at international organisations involved with circumpolar affairs. The International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) added distance education to the programme (providing the initial training modules in partnership with the University of the Arctic) and opportunities for face-to-face meetings among the participants during their internships.
6. Discovery Channel Global Education Partnership - Global
Launched in 1997, the United-States-based Discovery Channel Global Education Partnership is a non-profit organisation that brings together partners from the public and private sectors to support an international grassroots education and technology project serving populations left out of the information age. The Partnership's flagship programme, the Learning Center Initiative, involves providing under-resourced schools and communities with access to educational television and video, along with the training and monitoring thought necessary to enable such educational programming to become self-sustaining in each context. This effort to bridge the global information divide with tools and training is designed to reach children, teachers, parents, local HIV/AIDS and health care organisations, community development groups, and others who seek to receive or distribute information via television and video. Television is envisioned by the Partnership as a powerful tool in that it: reaches large groups of people at one time and in their own language; communicates effectively to young children and illiterate adults; conveys information simply and accurately; and is easy to operate and sustainable over time.
Contact partnership_info@discoveryglobaled.org
7. Radical Math – United States
Launched in April 2006 by a United States-based teacher of Math and Community Organizing, Radical Math is an online initiative to support teachers of kindergarten (K)-through 12th grade math in helping their students develop mathematical literacy by learning to understand and address community problems. The immediate goal is to support and inspire educators to integrate issues of political, economic, and social justice into their math classes, thereby (it is hoped) fostering a love of and capacity for mathematics in their students while shaping them into concerned, committed citizens. A broader aim is to revolutionise the way people think about mathematics education in the United States. ICT is here used as a tool to provide materials for teachers seeking to encourage their students to ask questions such as: "What are the problems that my community is facing, and how can I use math to understand and help solve them?", and "Does race play a factor in who is getting mortgage loans in our city?".
Contact Jonathan Osler jonathan@radicalmath.org
8. myEUROPE - Europe
Launched in May 2000, myEUROPE is a web-based project which aims to help teachers raise their pupils' awareness of what it means to be a young citizen in Europe. By involving a network of more than 4500 schools, myEUROPE brings the diversity of Europe into the classroom via the internet and curriculum-based interpersonal activities. The main audience of the project is students from 5 to 20 years old, but the project also reaches out to students' parents and local communities. Online activities and classroom practice examples are used to create a network of schools in Europe by enabling contact between teachers and their classes from Member States, new Member States and Candidate Countries, and by involving students in collaborative educational projects and activities.
Contact Petru Dumitru myeurope@eun.org
9. This is My Home: A Minnesota Human Rights Education Experience – United States
This is My Home is a multi-faceted human rights education (HRE) curriculum for primary and secondary students that is being distributed statewide to all Minnesota schools and globally via the internet free of charge. Centring around a multi-media Tool Kit as well as workshops for educators and an interactive website, this HRE resource includes online model units for grades K-12, a student-centred education process, and a wide scope of additional resources to share and monitor emerging practices and tools. The goal is to promote human rights and create a culture of human rights advocacy that will lead students, teachers, families, and other members of the school administration and staff to "incorporate human rights-related vocabulary into their everyday language and actions", enabling them "to refer to major human rights documents and their contents as well."
Contact Natela Jordan home@umn.edu
10. POTRET - Indonesia
The Aceh, Indonesia-based local non-governmental organisation (NGO) Center for Community Development and Education (CCDE) is working to empower and strengthen women by building a writing culture. CCDE is equipping women in Aceh with knowledge and skills related to creative writing in an effort to bring them actively into the public media. The result is "POTRET", a printed and online magazine designed to be a medium for women to share their perspectives. CCDE uses the medium of writing as a tool for breaking the silence and solving the problems of women. Face-to-face sessions are designed to build the capacity of women to express themselves, and a printed publication is intended to share their voices.
Contact Tabrani Yunis tabrani_y@yahoo.com and ccde.aceh@gmail.com
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For ICT POLICIES AND STUDIES that include a focus on EDUCATION, please see the ICT Policies & Studies Theme Site: click here!
And particularly, this section: click here!
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RESEARCH
11. Early Childhood and Primary Education: Transitions in the Lives of Young Children
by Martin Woodhead and Peter Moss
Early Childhood in Focus is a developing toolkit for child rights advocates, which intends to set out clear messages emerging from academic research. This issue deals with the global challenges of 'education for all' children, looking at the implications of growth in early childhood education and care (ECEC), including a reappraisal of traditional concepts of school readiness, and a review of strategies required to ensure continuity in children's experiences of successful transitions.The issue focuses on the continuity or discontinuity of transitions from ECEC to primary schools and whether a vision of partnership can provide appropriate solutions for young children.
12. Technology, Information Access, and Social and Economic Inclusion
by Nigel Poole
This project report, describes research intended to analyse the impact of televised, nationally-produced secondary school classes - telesecundarias - on the social and economic inclusion of indigenous communities in Chiapas, Mexico. This is a region where, according to the author, the Zapatista uprising of the 1990's has highlighted social inequities and the need for indigenous empowerment and inclusion. Researchers collected data through surveys from students in telesecundarias in Chiapas communities in the spring and summer of 2006 and held community workshops with parents to discuss and validate their findings. They based their surveys on a conceptual framework, illustrated in the document, that shows the links between 27 key indicators - such as improved housing, sanitation, and water supply; improved primary education performance; reduced drug and alcohol use; livelihood diversification and economic risk reduction; validation and use of traditional knowledge; and reduced intergenerational conflict.
13. Education through Multimedia among Agricultural Diploma School Students: An Impact Study
by Ashok Ambalal Patel and Dharmendra D. Patel
Published in the International Journal of Education and Development using Information and Communication Technology (IJEDICT), this paper shares details of a study conducted in 2003 in the Gujarat State of India to assess the effectiveness of the use of a multimedia compact disk (CD) about paddy cultivation in the educational system. Developed by the Cyber Extension Cell of Gujarat Agricultural University (GAU) in the Gujarati (vernacular) language, this "multimedia" (as the authors refer to it) was designed to effectively communicate information about useful agricultural technologies to Agricultural Diploma School students, whom the authors believe will in the future be the key transfer of technology (TOT) agents. An additional aim is to share this updated information with farmers themselves.
14. PANdora - South, South East, and East Asia
From 2005 - 2008, the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) is funding a series of distance education (DE) learning studies. Nine collaborative projects are underway in Bhutan, Cambodia, China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Laos, Mongolia, Pakistan, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Vietnam. The projects emphasise ICTs appropriate to Asian DE, and cover a wide range of practical and policy topics, including the use of open-source software (OSS), mobile technologies, learning object materials (LOM), and online assessment methods. "PANdora" represents "PAN Asia Networking Distance and Open Resource Access". It is administered by the Virtual University of Pakistan and Universitas Terbuka in Indonesia, with a faculty member of Canada's Athabasca University also working on the team. The goal is to develop practices and policies enhancing the use of distance learning technologies (DLT) in Asia.
Contact Maria Ng Lee Hoon MNg@idrc.org.sg
15. ICT Test Bed: 2006 Annual Report
This report, documenting a 4-year United Kingdom (UK) study of the impact of computers on educational attainment, concludes that having a high level of technology for learning equipment will dramatically improve performance, as long as there is the right support and enthusiasm to embrace it. The report provides evidence for policy-makers on the impact of providing very high levels of ICT to schools and further education (FE) colleges on: teaching and learning; leadership and management; workforce development; cross-cluster relationships; and home and community links. As detailed here, the ICT Test Bed project (2002-06) was initiated by the Department for Education and Skills (DfES) to explore how ICT can be used to support the UK Government's wider agenda for education reform. Managed by Becta, the project took a holistic approach to ICT implementation in 28 ICT Test Bed schools (23 primary schools and 5 secondary schools) and 3 FE colleges within areas of relative socio-economic deprivation. The goal was to investigate whether making technology an integral part of learning in schools and colleges could improve learner attainment levels, classroom practice, and school and college development.
16. A Critical Analysis of the Adoption and Utilization of the Internet in Thailand for Educational Purposes
by Noppadol Prammanee
According to this case study, Thailand has benefited significantly from its adoption of the internet in the 1990s, demonstrated in improvements to the country’s quality of education, economic growth, and science and technology development. The primary information technology (IT) organisation in Thailand, the National Electronics and Computer Center (NECTEC), has promoted internet use extensively and founded the country-wide network Thaisarn to promote networking technology research. In order to stimulate the country’s development, the Thai government acknowledged the necessity of developing a more educated population. The potential of the internet to provide high-quality mass, quality education to the masses conveniently and cheaply is well recognised, as demonstrated in the Thai government's efforts to provide connectivity to universities and schools and thus achieve basic universal literacy.
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Access all information on ICTs for Development through the ICT for Development Theme Site on The CI by clicking on the tag labeled "Theme Sites" at the top of each page on the site, or by directly visiting this URL:
ICT for Development - click here!
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ICTs IN EDUCATION
17. New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) e-Schools - Africa
The NEPAD e-Schools Initiative is a multi-country, multi-stakeholder, continental initiative that is designed to impart ICT skills to Africans in primary and secondary schools. The goal is to enable African teachers to use ICTs to improve the provision of education in schools. Led by the NEPAD e-Africa Commission (a NEPAD task team responsible for developing the NEPAD ICT programme and implementing its projects) it aims to reach 600,000 schools across the continent. The NEPAD e-Schools objectives are to:
- provide ICT skills and knowledge to primary and secondary school students that will enable them to function in the emerging information society and knowledge economy;
- make every learner health literate;
- provide teachers with ICT skills to enable them to use these tools to enhance teaching and learning; and
- provide school managers with ICT skills so as to facilitate efficient management and administration in the school.
Contact Samuel Mikenga SMikenga@eafricacommission.org
18. Initiating and Managing SchoolNets: Lessons Learned Vol. 3
by Ellie Meleisea
Beginning with an overview of SchoolNets, what they are, and why they are set up, this book then briefly describes the United Nations Educational, Cultural and Scientific Organization (UNESCO) SchoolNet project's objectives and key outcomes. Next, a number of examples of existing SchoolNets are provided and the features of successful SchoolNets are identified. Following this, the main factors to be considered when initiating and managing a SchoolNet are examined, including:
- Preparing for the SchoolNet;
- Establishing partnerships;
- Acquiring funding, ICT tools, digital resources, and technical support;
- Building the capacity of teachers; and
- Initiating telecollaboration and other online learning activities.
19. Computer Mediated Communication for Effective Teaching-Learning of Coastal Zone Management Module
by Mohammad I. Santally and Roshan T. Ramessur
From the International Journal of Education and Development Using ICT (2007), this document on e-learning and mobile learning activities for coastal zone management (CZM) describes the use of asynchronous forums and mobile technology for communication. This paper recommends the blending of a paedagogical approach in CZM to support mobile learners because it adds more flexibility to the learning process. The authors describe the CZM learning module as a collaborative environment for multiple interactions (tutor-students and students-students), unlike traditional classroom settings. It has two forums, one for content discussions on the module and one for technical issues concerning the module. The website of the virtual platform i-learn was put made available to students so that they could access the study guide and related information about the module.
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Access all information on Avian Influenza through the Avian Influenza Theme Site on The CI by clicking on the tag labeled "Theme Sites" at the top of each page on the site, or by directly visiting this URL:
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SCHOOL-BASED AVIAN INFLUENZA EDUCATION
20. School-based Approach to Avian Influenza Prevention and Pandemic Influenza Preparedness and Response in Thailand - Thailand
In October 2006, Thailand's Ministry of Education (MOE) launched a nationwide school-based campaign drawing on various communication components in an effort to encourage Thai children and their families to protect themselves from the threat of both human and avian influenza (AI). The campaign will cover all 40,000 elementary and secondary schools in the country and will focus on promoting frequent hand washing, rapid reporting of sick and dead poultry, and other key behaviours needed to prevent the spread of the H5N1 virus that causes bird flu. This campaign is based on the premise that implementation of a curriculum/instructional package on AI and human influenza is an integral part (prevention/mitigation stage) of a comprehensive pandemic (emergency) preparedness and response plan for the education system. The project will develop, test, disseminate, monitor, and assess curriculum guidelines and an instructional package with lesson plans and materials for child-centred learning activities designed for both public and private school students (and their families) grouped into 4 grade interval levels (grades kindergarten-3; grades 4-6; grades 7-9; and grades 10-12).
Contact Ms. Pornthida Padthong ppadthong@unicef.org
21. Zandi's Song Teaching Resources for Avian Influenza
The Academy for Educational Development (AED) has developed an illustrated children's storybook and other educational materials for schools in Africa to use to raise awareness among children about avian influenza and to involve them in educating their communities. "Zandi's Song," resources include a teacher's guide, posters, and bookmarks – all available online, free of charge. AED believes that providing free and fast access to "Zandi's Song" will encourage avian flu and education programmes in Africa to consider using the materials to increase awareness about the disease among schoolchildren and communities.
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Access all information on HIV/AIDS through the HIV/AIDS Theme Site on The CI by clicking on the tag labeled "Theme Sites" at the top of each page on the site, or by directly visiting this URL:
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SCHOOL-BASED HIV/AIDS EDUCATION
22. HIV/Sexual and Reproductive Health Program for HIV Prevention: The Youth-Adult Partnership with Schools Approach
by Warunee Fongkaew, Kangwan Fongkaew, and Marjorie Muecke
Published in the Journal of the Medical Association of Thailand, this paper describes the development and evaluation of a programme designed to prevent HIV/AIDS in Thailand by empowering early adolescents through participatory, school-based peer education. The programme was designed to address a communication problem: lack of accurate information about sex and the difficulty in keeping up with changing patterns and values that make it difficult for Thai parents to talk about sex in the family. Under such conditions, the researchers note, adolescents often seek access to information via the mass media and friends - which may be inaccurate, riddled with misconceptions, and/or rife with sexually suggestive messages.
23. AIDS Education for Tanzanian Youth: A Mediation Analysis
by Melissa H. Stigler, K. C. Kugler, K. A. Komro, M. T. Leshabari, and K. I. Klepp
"Mediation analysis is a statistical technique that can be used to identify mechanisms by which intervention programmes achieve their effects. This paper presents the results of a mediation analysis of Ngao, an acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) education programme that was implemented with school children in Grades 6 and 7 in Tanzania in the mid-1990s and evaluated using a controlled, group-randomised trial. The study examined which variables mediated the effect Ngao had in regard to fostering positive attitudes towards people living with AIDS decreasing intentions to be sexually active in the near future.
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This issue was written by Julie Levy.
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