The African Knowledge Exchange (AKE), a multi-country workshop, was organised by the Global e-Schools Communities Initiative (GeSCI) on 3rd – 4th December 2007, in Nairobi, Kenya.

Information and Communication Technologies (ICT)-supported education is currently a core component of the development plans of most African governments. ICTs are being integrated into many national educational systems in order to reach the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of “Education for All” (EFA).

Towards this end, the Global e-Schools Communities Initiative (GeSCI), founded by UNICT Task Force and based out of Dublin, Ireland has introduced the Africa Knowledge Exchange (AKE) initiative to build dialogue and establish processes and mechanisms of knowledge exchange amongst participating countries and provide assistance in building competencies in adopting ICT in education policies, programmes and projects. Keeping in view of the recent and rapid developments of ICT in Africa, GeSCI aims to co-ordinate the ICT and e-Learning progress and activities for achieving educational goals.

The Organiser
GeSCI was established in 2004 with the mission to assist developing countries reduce poverty by improving education through the use of ICTs. To achieve this mission, GeSCI works directly with developing country governments in partner countries, and specifically their Ministries of Education and other stakeholders using a comprehensive, demand driven, contextualised, coordinated and multi-stakeholder approach. GeSCI's work is based on real needs and demands of stakeholders. Based on information collected through various methods, e.g. workshops, surveys, interviews and experiences in partner countries, 3 key gaps were identified in ICT in education initiatives and addressing these gaps have formed the core of GeSCI activities:

• Designing and implementing ICT in Education policies and plans
• Building capacities within Ministries of Education to effectively implement their ICT policies and plans;
• Utilising ICTs cost-effectively to achieve educational objectives.

GeSCI conducted a multi-country workshop on Teacher Professional Development (TPD) in Namibia in September 2006. The countries represented at the workshop were Ghana, Kenya, Mozambique, Namibia, Senegal, South Africa, Tanzania and Uganda. Based on the recurring issues discussed during that workshop, the conclusion from the workshop was that GeSCI would include a work stream on ICTs in Teaching and Learning amongst its other work streams to respond to the needs of its partner countries while addressing the key gaps indicated above.

Workshop Objectives
The strategic objective of the African Knowledge Exchange workshop was to explore the domain e-Learning for increasing access to education in the Sub-Saharan region. It aimed to understand the requirements, cost-effectiveness and implementation of learning network systems as an integrated approach to the overall plans and initiatives of the invited countries.

The broad objectives were:

• Share information with invited countries on lessons learned from GeSCI' work in Namibia
• Share information, trends and developments in the field of e-Learning and e-Learning centres (Elc) and outline the process of integrating e-Learning into National learning systems
• Facilitate peer-to-peer exchange on e-Learning programmes amongst countries
• Explore the establishment of Sub-saharan African e-Learning working group
• Introduce GeSCI' Africa Regional Office in Nairobi to the invited countries

Workshop Proceedings

DAY I

Opening Remarks: Astrid Dufborg, Executive Director, GeSCI
Astrid Dufbrorg gave the opening remarks with a brief introduction of GeSCI and its work areas across countries as a demand-driven organisation, GeSCI' presence in three continents that brings varied perspectives to the work. She introduced the strong alliances that have been formed with African countries in building institutional and knowledge capacity of the government and administrators in implementing ICT in education in their respective countries. The work in Ghana, Namibia, Rajasthan was highlighted with launching of the ICT in implementation plan in Namibia as a success story and development of tools integrating education for effective ICT in education policy. India (Rajasthan)' initiative was introduced to the invited countries while also sharing the ICT in Education policy building process with Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) in India.

Some suggestions are made for an end to end concept of using ICT and e-Learning, identify appropriate technology, peer-to-peer learning, scalability of e-Learning, structures for knowledge building and sharing, develop multi-stakeholder partnerships, address thematic areas, and for pedagogy-focus.

Introduction to AKE Workshop: Khalid Bomba, Regional Director Africa, GeSCI
Khalid Bomba highlighted the aims and objectives of the workshop, introducing AKE as a platform for invited countries to participate and contribute their issues and concerns. He highlighted GeSCI-Africa Knowledge Exchange initiative as a sustainable forum for moving towards a continued dialogue and partnership for knowledge sharing and knowledge building amongst the African countries.

Keynote : Kennedy Khara, Directorate of e-Government, Govt of Kenya
Kenya has made strides in integrating ICT in the governance systems. The country was also host to the Africa e-Learning initiative last year. The increasing progress of IT infrastructure is creating spin-effects in education sector. Representing the Directorate of e-Government, Khara highlighted the success and achievements of his department in integrating technology applications in governance services. He oriented the invited countries on the structure of institutional capacity developed by Kenya; each Government department has an ICT unit, for conducting and co-ordinating activities in ICT. Integrating e-Learning in education and heath has already begun followed by announcement of e-Government strategy in March 2004. He voiced his concern over the delay in the implementation plan roll-outs, citing the dynamics of technology as a core challenge of the government to continuously update and revise plans. Aprt from highlighting capacity building as the major challenge for the country in implementing ICT initiatives, Khara promoted building communities of practice on e-Learning inviting all regional players to address issues of digital divide in the rural areas.

Buzz Groups for Introduction

Next, an interactive session where the participants explored ways to identify expectations and concerns, virtual collaborations and partnerships. Various ways were explored to take ICT and education forward, the need for a common framework and to address capacity building at regional levels, along with the need to arrive at an understanding on e-Learning and GeSCI.

After lunch, a prese

Open Source has been the much talked about during the last few years and we have everyone talking about it in just about any ICT conference or seminar. As they say “Necessity is the mother of Invention”, so was CII-Shisha's tryst with Open Source philosophy.

Around 2 years back (early part of January 2006), CII-Shiksha, in its bid to bring in more relevant and appropriate technology tools chanced upon Open Source. The concept was new to us and so every move was deemed crucial. CII-Shiksha did a few experiments with introducing Moodle LMS to a select group of DAV ( Dayanand Anglo Vedic ) schools from Delhi and NCR. The response was excellent and very encouraging for us as here was something that teachers had been waiting for anxiously. A category of tools that could help them move beyond just using ready made CDs or presentation tools and make available to them tools that they could map to their teaching-learning process and help achieve the set objectives with the desired outcome.
 
The initial sucess of introducing open source tools propelled CII-Shiksha to explore more and provide a full range of open source tools and technologies to the teachers, thus enabling them to control their teaching-learning, both content-wise and delivery wise CII-Shiksha with a clear cut focus on empowering teachers with variety of e-Tools has trained close to 2000  subject teachers across India in various open source tools. The open source toolkit of CII-Shiksha includes a combination of  productivity and pedagogy based tools so that an appropriate relevance and usefulness could be brought in.

CII-Shiksha is helping teachers make a transition from a classroom teachers to being an e-Teacher by building the necessary capabilities in the teachers. Teachers, now have shown tremendous results on how they can make their teaching-learning more effective, if given the freedom to let out their creativity. The early description of content as just being a readymade CD is out of date. Now, the content refers to a teaching-learning resource. CII-Shiskha is helping the teachers to utilise their subject knowledge and sound awareness about pedagogy principles and then blend it with their technology capabilities to deliver the teaching-learning as they want it.

During the past one year, CII-Shiksha has introduced many interventions to encourage and promote e-Teaching as the preferred methodology for teaching-Learning. The teachers are being trained in various web-tools to help them build up various online learning platforms for their students. A free online portal (using open source), www.eshikshaindia.in has been setup for teachers and students to provide a sharing and collaboration platform for teachers and provide free learning resources for students. 

The open source software movement has received much well deserved attention within the Indian development community, but the time May be right for the academic community to adopt the precepts of open source to provide innovative instructional materials to the country's educators.

Scott McNealy, the founder and chairman of Sun Microsystems, recently said, “why are we open-sourcing browsers and spreadsheets and operating systems, when we ought to be open-sourcing third-grade math textbooks?” Towards this, he and Sun Co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim created Curriki (http://curriki.org).

Curriki's goal is to make curricula and learning resources available to everyone. To do this, they have created a system educators can use to share the curriculum and learning resources they use in the classroom with other educators around the world. With their easy to use web based interface teachers around the world can search for educational content relevant to their own classes, and can upload class materials of their own.

While Curriki was started in the USA they recognise that many of its benefits will be enjoyed by educators in nations with smaller education budgets. In India they have entered into an agreement with the Azim Premji Foundation to provide their educational content in multiple languages available through the curriki website. Further, they are working with IndicTrans.in to translate the website into Hindi and other local languages to make its content accessible to a wider range of the Indian rural population.

Former Princeton University professor Randy Wang and Dr. Urvashi Sahni established the Digital Studyhall (DSH – http://dsh.cs.washington.edu/StudyHall/) project to create free high quality video learning materials which can be used to help teachers in the nations poorer schools educate their students. DSH creates video records of very good teachers conducting classes in the local language. Teachers in surrounding rural schools are shown how they can use the videos in the classroom, not as a replacement for the teacher but rather as a prompt, providing a continuous structure for the class which the local teacher can break up by pausing the video lecture and asking the same questions of their classes that the teacher in the video is asking of the original class.

DSH has operations in Lucknow, Pune, Bangalore and Kolkata.  All the videos they produce are freely available.

Nagarjuna Reddy an open source evangelist in India and head of Homi Bhabha Centre's Gnowledge Lab has been working with the European Commission funded SELF (Science, Education and Learning in Freedom) project to develop the SELF Platform (http://www.selfplatform.eu) a graphical web based multi-lingual platform for collaborative authoring of courses and lessons. It also helps to organize the content and distribute it to educational institutes around world. The SELF Platform hopes to serve as a central access point for educational materials and to facilitate community participation in a multilingual environment.

A number of other projects deserve some mention:.

• ShowMeDo.com

How the existing colleges and the university departments can be provided with capabilities of ICT and web-based teaching-learning?

How the ICT infrastructure of the technlogical institutions like UGC, IITs, etc can be availed in a clustering approach to enhance the capabilities of other institutions for quality education delivery?

The role of technology augmented conventional face to face education, open and distance learning, satellite education and online education in enhancing the quality of the teachning-learning process and in expanding the reach of education with social inclusivity is enormous…says Dr VN Rajasekharan Pillai, Vice-Chancellor, IGNOU.

We are planning to create a national ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) infrastructure for networking for open and distance learning (ODL). That is one priority area that we are looking in, in addition to opening a large number of open schools. When we say ODL institutions, its not only the state open Universities, but also the distance education of the conventional University system and even the private player in the ODL like several corporates.

Some of the corporate institutions including government institutions are looking for expertise in ODL and capacity building. We May look for the private public partnership for this. In association with the Distance Education Council, we will provide a leadership for creating this national ICT infrastructure. We have already proposed to the National Education Foundation to develop web based common Open Resources. Our own materials are being used by a number of Universities. But this has to be an accepted philosophy and accepted practice. Although as of now we are doing it from our own side, but materials of all other institution including the conventional universities have to be pooled and shared between all the institutions.

We have recently developed some concrete guidelines that consists of what are the norm, standards, etc. We advise institutions to follow these guidelines. We have sent the new materials to all the institutions along with providing some financial support to work on it.

The other thing we are trying to do is the transition from one system to another, from conventional system to ODL. Not all but a part of the course can be delivered through distance education method, which can even be done by an open University. We are creating a mechanism to effect this transition to a course credit system.

Another major point is about standardisation of the quality parameters of the education, for which we are proposing to the government for a national open testing service for assessing ODL students. The standards and norms of this will be set by the stakeholders in the corporate sector, people from the working area and from academia. This testing service will ensure evaluation and assessment of the students what is the level of his achievements, skills, knowledge, etc. NASSCOM is also suggesting this testing service and the various models that have been implemented in the US.

We are also trying to provide a National Qualification Framework, which will facilitate concept transfer from one system to another. Someone May be having a diploma in Polytechnic, another May be having a B.Sc., and the other May be having a 3 years experiences in a research institute. This type of knowledge through this particular Polytechnic Diploma can be equivalent to 60% or 70% of the B.E degree provided by Mechanical Engineering provided by the engineering Colleges or the university system. So if this person comes to the mainstream of education he needs to cover only 30 or 40% of the engineering course. Thus the level of expertise achieved by the person will be quantised.

By facilitating the academic and professional mobility from one sector to another a hallmark of the quality education system is created. 

Similarly a student in a conventional institution study B.Sc. in Physics or Chemistry. He May be learning some percentage of the science or physics requirements of an Engineering graduate. Now if he wants to pursue an Engineering course  after a B.Sc., why not that  30% which he has studied for B.Sc. would be detached and the rest 70% be taught. We have already started it. The National Qualification Framework, will facilitate this which would be more helpful in the Vocational Sector in particular.

We are also trying to provide an assessment and accreditation mechanism. As of now, Distance Education Council (DEC) and All India Council of Technology Education (AICTE) are looking at recognising courses. All that is important, but more important is how the students come out of these institutions after completing education. So we are looking at several criteria like institutional mechanism, teaching learning process, how technology is used, student outcome, industry relevance and industry intake. This application is not just to grade the institutions for A, B or C, it would be rater a SWOT (Strength, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats) analysis of the institutions. The criteria would be physical infrastructure, quality of the faculty, teaching learning methods and also the examination process, student support system, placement, students and stakeholder satisfaction. The physical infrastructure would be decided by the type of courses. For example, for the ODL, effective delivery mechanism, the technology used, multimedia technology, whether satellite can be introduced, etc are the indicators. Other criteria are about the qualified personnels, trained teachers, outcome of the examination, cost effectiveness, placement of the students, and other social factors.

More than 50% of teachers in the school eduction system are untrained; to train them through conventional means is an impossible task. So another area that we need to look is how ICTs can provide in-service teacher training. IGNOU is providing in-service B.Ed. Programme for teachers.

We are focusing on the vocational eduction which is important for teachers' vertical mobility. The national productivity is directly related to the  qualified personnel available in the workforce and we are looking how to provide vocational training to the teachers in collaboration with Media Lab Asia. We are also collaborating with NIOS but as a university we are more focused to the training of teachers.

Distance education is not a correspondence education, rather is a technology assisted conventional system of education. The overall purpose is to increase the quality of education, with an attempt to guide the students for self learning methods. The overall purpose of distance education is to enhance the quality of education by providing this additional capabilities and also the quantity of education delivery will be enhanced which means the increased reach of education.

CBSETutor.com launched to provide free online tutoring to school students
Unified Learning, the India based online tutoring and assessment company has launched CBSETutor.com, an e-Learning site that aims to make it easier for students of the CBSE curriculum to self-learn and test themselves interactively.

CBSETutor.com caters to students and parents from Classes Pre-Nursery to XII. The initiative offers poems, stories, nursery rhymes and learning games on the site. For middle and senior school students, the site offers notes, lessons, tests and assignments organised chapter-wise. The website keeps records of all activities and allows students to view their progress as they proceed. Students can build their profiles and interact with other students who have common interests using Live Chat and Message features. They can also use the blog feature to practice creative writing. The website users can also ask and answer questions on science and mathematics. In ‘the classroom’, the scores of students are compared with other students to show them relative performance. Teachers can post their writing for each chapter and topic and let students access it. They can also exhibit their presentations and project reports for students to view.

Everonn buys Aban e-Learning unit
Everonn Systems India Ltd, a satellite-based education service provider, has acquired the e-Learning division of Aban Informatics (P) Ltd, a part of Chennai-based Aban group.

The e-Learning division of Aban group consists of Classontheweb.com, an educational portal catering to all academic needs. Everonn will have access to over 30,000 students all over India. The acquisition will help the company cater to the needs of digital content to suit the syllabi of all educational boards within India and abroad. It will also provide content material for e-Tutoring and retail market through CD-based instructional materials, according to a press release issued by Everonn.

MBD Alchemie launches courses for CBSE Classes on CD
MBD Alchemie, the online educational academy in India, a venture of INR 200 crore MBD Group,  launched MBD Alchemie CBSE crash courses and CBSE test series for the Class X & XII board examinations 2008 on CD’s. The CDs will be available through more than 10,000 leading booksellers spread across the length and breadth of the country.

The first CD offering from the company has an integrated web mentoring model, available to students for the first time in the CD category. The CD based market for CBSE test series is estimated to be around INR142 crore and MBD Alchemie is looking at tapping a sizeable part of this market.

The subjects dealt with in CBSE X are Maths and Science & Technology and for CBSE XII are Maths, Biology, Physics and Chemistry.

Educomp Solutions forms joint venture with Learning.com
Educomp Solutions Ltd has announced that the Edumatics Corp. Inc, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the company based in Ventura, California, U.S.A. has signed a joint development agreement with US-based company Learning.com, to provide educators with innovative, Web-delivered curriculum solutions that support student
learning outcomes.

Learning.com partners with schools and districts to improve student-learning outcomes. The portal transforms learning experiences through its understanding of the art and science of Web-based teaching and learning. The Digital curriculum developed under this joint agreement will be delivered through Learning.com’s innovative digital learning environment that allows teachers and administrators to individualise instruction, customise assignments, and quickly access student process reports.

Tata Interactive Systems named on IITT Awards shortlist
A game, developed for ICICI Bank in India by the global learning provider, Tata Interactive Systems (TIS), has been shortlisted for an award in the ‘e-Learning Project of the Year’ category at the forthcoming Institute of IT Training (IITT) Awards.

Using its game-based learning objects (GamBLs) model, TIS created a computer game which cast players – drawn from ICICI Bank’s Process Managers – as airport managers. The game, which involved optimising the airport’s revenue by managing the throughput of travellers, helped  managers to learn the principles behind the bank’s DQM system.

Intel and World Ahead Alliance expand in education in India
Intel Technology India Pvt Ltd in collaboration with other Intel World Ahead Programme Alliance members and the Government of India announced a number of initiatives to help in transforming the education in the old city of Chandini Chowk, Delhi.

Intel India has unveiled three projects aimed to accelerate access to education to residents of Chandini Chowk. These projects are part of a global initiative under the Intel World Ahead Programme that provides people with faster access to Information and Communications Technology. The project will address both healthcare and education needs for 2,000 children in the school, through a web-based solution that provide schoolchildren and faculty with digitised health records and health camps with participatory, action-based health learning.

TCS and Intel are hoping to create a model that can be implemented in schools across the country, that will help ensure government-aided schools are safe and healthy places for children.

Google’s Digital Library project takes off
Google has started a project to create an authoritative store of information about any and every topic. It has already started inviting people to write about the subject on which they are known to be an expert.

Google has promised that it would not act as editor for the project but will provide the tools and infrastructure for the pages. However, Google’s initiative has been seen as an attack on Wikipedia. By indexing the Web, Google strives to make information more easily accessible. By getting respected authors to write about their specialism Google hopes to start putting some of that information in better order.

The system will centre around authored articles created with a tool Google has dubbed “knol” – the word denotes a unit of knowledge – that will make webpages with a distinctive livery to identify them as authoritative. A knol on a particular topic is meant to be the first thing someone who searches for this topic for the first time will want to read.

TCYonline.com launches exam preparation service for students
India based TCY (Top Careers & You) Learning Solutions, a global provider of end to end education services provider has launched a free online testing service through its education portal TCYonline.com.

The new service would help users to better prepare for their exams and improve their reasoning, verbal and other skills. The company has introduced online tests and tutorials for CBSE and NTSE preparation; college test preparation for MBA, MCA, GMAT, GRE, LAW, SAT; and pre-employment screening tests. Currently the service only focus on adoption and user experience.

Everonn announces courses through VSAT in India
Chennai based Everonn Systems India, a knowledge management, education and training company, has announced three new courses.

A postgraduate certificate course in Banking and Finance spanning six months, an advanced diploma course in Java/J2EE programming spanning 10 months, and a certificate programme in ‘Tech BPO’ spanning two months will soon be offered to students. Everonn Systems, a satellite-based education service provider, is associated with over 200 colleges across south India. The courses, aimed at bridging the gap between academia and industry, will be conducted with the aid of VSAT technology. Students of engineering, arts, commerce and science colleges are eligible for the courses. The programmes would also include a module on personality, communication and aptitude development and preparation for an interview.
Currently, Everonn is providing 15 courses through its virtual classrooms.

Aptech selected best ICT training Programme

Aptech Computer Education’s flagship programme ACCP (Aptech
Certified Computer Professional) has been selected as the “Best ICT Training programme” in the “Best ICT Choice of Mongolia-2007” competition.

Aptech’s Mongolia Training Centre was given this award. The competition was organised by the Information, Communication and Technology Authority of Mongolia and Midas Monita NGO, National IT Park, MFMC Co. Ltd. and Biz Online Co. Ltd. The winner was decided on the basis of on-line voting and letters of support from various companies. But the final decision was made by the expert committee.