Author Archive
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The recent Technology Salon “Will the new .Africa domain name have development impact?” represented for me an above average collision of minds over the matters of life and learning and the impact that domain ownership and the concerns for development bear on them. The dialogue was so robust that I found myself stepping over the…
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Recently, ICANN, the organization that controls the Internet naming system, made it possible for groups to apply for new gTLDs (names to the right of the dot, like .com, .org and .edu). Nearly 2000 applications were submitted, from business ideas (like .shop and .app) to causes (.green) to the only slightly bizarre .sucks. Still, after…
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One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) has been a part of a larger ICT4E discussion, which has included ongoing debate over the effectiveness of the XO and its various deployments. Since its inception, OLPC has relied mainly on aspirations, visions, and projections to support investment from various partners across the globe. Pilots programs were conducted at…
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This month’s Technology Salon ICT4Ag – Enriching rural coffee farmers via iPads raised a couple of eyebrows from the outset. How can Exprima Media and Sustainable Harvest realistically improve rural coffee farming via iPads? Initially, it struck me as another attempt to use the latest and greatest technology to tackle longstanding challenges within the value…
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I am Charles Kenny, and I spent part of yesterday at a United Nations Foundation meeting with Dr Maura O’Neill, Chief Innovation Officer at USAID.
There was a lot of discussion of development applications using mobile phones (m-development) and how to do them better – things like interoperability and collecting models in an ‘m-app marketplace.’ And there was the usual back-and-forth between those who wanted to see more transformative projects where IT reformed whole agencies and ministries and those who thought that way madness (or at least obscene overruns) lay.
But I thought the most interesting discussion was around learning from experience -particularly in an area where technology is evolving rapidly, so a robust evaluation may not be completed before the project itself looks as dated as an integrated rural development scheme or a structural adjustment loan. The randomized trial result suggesting limited evidence of educational spillovers from a distribution program of Nintendo 64’s might not carry too much weight for those wanting to hand out Wiis as part of a youth fitness program.
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We at SSG Advisors are currently incubating a new approach to the delivery of higher education services that leverages both new technology and disruptive business models. We presented this model at last week’s eLearning Technology Salon and I am very grateful for all of the thoughtful and useful input received The Salon was a great…
