Held 11-13 August 1999
Papers Presented at
the 1st National NADEOSA Conference
Held 11-13 August 1999
Author:
Paul West, University of
Pretoria, South Africa
Title: The TELISA initiative
Abstract:
The Telisa Initiative was
established by the Centre for Lifelong Learning of Technikon SA in co-operation with the
World Bank and other key stakeholders. The initiative rests on three pillars, namely the
establishment of access centres for lifelong learners, collation and development of
learning resources and the collation and development of infrastructure to support learning
and development in Africa.
The paper will present:
Initial projects underway include:
Suggestions will be made on how institutions and individuals can link existing projects to Telisa or begin new projects to contribute to a renaissance in Africa through education as a cornerstone.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Access
Lesotho ICT Centre
South African ICT Centre: Kgautswane (Mpumalanga Province)
South African ICT Centres: Mpumalanga, Eastern Cape
and Free State, South Africa
Content
Satellite Reception Centre
CD ROM Programmes
Content Development Project
AfricaEducation Portal
African Digital Library
Infrastrusture
Internet Websites
Virtual Classrooms
E-mail Addresses
Hosting of Internet Home Pages
Warehousing of Content
Introduction
This paper is an update on the progress of various projects initiated through the
Telisa Initiative network. The overall concept remains unchanged and may be found at
<http://pgw.org/telisa>. Details on the discussion list for occasional information
updates may be found on the web-site.
The Telisa Initiative remains focused on three general areas, namely, access, content and Internet warehouse support. Individual projects will be grouped under these headings.
Access
Access refers to places where students, business people and the community can gain
access to high technology communications equipment that they otherwise would not be able
to acquire. The concept is that the centres are set-up using sponsorships or
entrepreneurial capital and run at a minimum of break-even, or a profit, basis. Services
offered include, but are not restricted to, telephones, fax (send and receive), typing
services (opportunities for additional micro-businesses), printing, copying, scanning,
lamination, binding, computers and Internet.
Lesotho ICT Centre
This centre, named the "Lesotho Distance Learning Support Centre" was
officially opened on 5 March 1999. The function was attended by top representatives of the
sponsors, DaimlerChrysler AG of Germany, Technikon SA and the National University of
Lesotho.
The Centre is located on the premises of the Institute for Extra-Mural Studies (IEMS) of the National University of Lesotho (NUL) and is run as a separate business entity under a board of directors. The board comprises members of the Distance Education Association of Southern Africa (DEASA) in Lesotho, other Lesotho institutions, business and community structures.
South African ICT Centre: Kgautswane (Mpumalanga Province)
This centre is in the rural area between the towns of Lydenberg, Ohrighstad and
Burgersfort. The area reaches into both the Northern Province and Mpumalanga Province of
South Africa. The Community Information Centre has already been established through
previous community projects. This project will ensure the installation of an ICT Centre
with 3 work stations, server, two telephones and a similar range of equipment to the
larger ICT Centres, to support learner and business needs.
Additional challenges in the project include the acquisition of electricity, where existing power lines are some 25km from the Centre. Once in place, the Centre will help form a new business centre for the rural community, which has no piped water, electricity and few roads or industry. The nearest post office and copy machine (Xerox) are approximately 28km from the centre. There is a population of approximately 60 000 people, as well as a number of schools, in the immediate area.
The cost of the computer system, training and support has been sponsored by the World Bank. The first telephone lines were installed on 3 August 1999 and lines have been provided for data communications. The computer system will be installed during the week of 30 August to 3 September 1999. The official opening is planned for October 1999.
South African ICT Centres: Mpumalanga, Eastern Cape and Free State,
South Africa
A grant was made by Technikon SA to establish three ICT Centres in these three South
African provinces to support learners of any institution or business, and members of the
community. Detailed business plans have been drafted and implementation is to begin
shortly.
Each centre is likely to comprise 10 work-stations (PCs), server, telephones and a range of work-station equipment to support business and learner needs. The Technikon SA regional directors, in co-operation with local business and community structures, will be run these centres on a self-sustainable basis. The exact nature of the business models will vary depending on local business conditions and learners needs.
Content
This aspect includes the development of learning support materials that may be used by
institutions in Africa for non-profit purposes.
Satellite Reception
Centre
Technikon SA has established a satellite reception centre to receive programmes
broadcast from "C-Band" satellites. These are high-level, geo-static satellites
(i.e. they "hover" above the save piece of earth as the earth rotates) that are
used by organisations such as the African Virtual University, CNN and many others. The
available programmes will be evaluated by academic staff with a view to using elements of
content in distance education materials. Copyright and royalty agreements are negotiated
by the TSA Goldfields Library for all materials used.
Equipment being installed is state-of-the-art digital and may be upgraded to, to provide for 2-way video conferencing via satellite at a later date. Live programmes may be viewed at TSA regional offices equipped with ISDN video conference equipment. A conference bridge to link 12 video conference sites has been installed.
CD ROM Programmes
Negotiations that were underway with a producer of educational CD ROM programmes were
cancelled due to royalty difficulties. The authors’ expectations of royalties were
beyond the scope of the project. The sponsorship for this project has been transferred to
a content development project.
Content Development Project
Technikon SA has agreed to part-sponsor the development of a range of courses in
subject areas that are appropriate to the current greatest needs in Africa. Partner
institutions for these programmes are being invited to join this project. Materials
developed will carry the names of participating individuals and institutions and will be
created in small, granule-sized components. The end result of this project is expected to
be a body of "learning granules" from which anything from a mini,
custom-designed course to an almost full, first-year programme may be extracted, via
search engines.
AfricaEducation Portal
The need to create a centre for links to support educators, institutions and learners
in Africa has lead to the establishment of this project. The website will provide a
"central exchange" to existing curriculum content, who’s who, listing of
African institutions, and guidance on available, Internet-based infrastructure. The site,
initially sponsored by Technikon SA will work towards becoming self-sustainable.
Negotiations with the Netscape Corporation resulted in the establishment of a directory specifically for educational links for the Africa region. The address for the directory is: <http://directory.netscape.com/Regional/Africa/Education>. This directory will be run in co-operation with the AfricaEducation website.
African Digital Library
The need for library books in Africa is highlighted by institutions from across the
region. The cost of establishing physical infrastructure, purchase and maintenance of
books makes the provision of an acceptable level of support an almost-impossible task.
Available virtual libraries comprise mostly databases, many of which hold journals and
magazines. The costs of joining these virtual libraries is out of reach for many African
institutions. Full-text book libraries have not been freely available although a few
publishing companies offer a restricted number of older-edition books free via the
Internet.
The African Digital Library is being established by Technikon SA and the Association of African Universities in collaboration with a private company. Agreements have been signed with over sixty publishers to provide full-text books in the library. Encryption is used to ensure that only one user is able to access a purchased copy of a book at any time and loan periods will be structured to offer access to the user while working with the book. Since library users will not draw books and place them on a shelf in their study, loan periods do not need to be more than a few hours.
Sponsorships will be based on a per-book basis which will include library infrastructure, cataloguing, storage and loans in perpetuity. The library will be made available to people using the Internet in Africa only. As Internet access expands in Africa, the library will grow its collection and accommodate user needs.
Infrastrusture
Internet Websites
While larger institutions are able to operate sophisticated websites and frequently
own their own servers, many smaller institutions in Africa do not have a website of any
kind. Information is being provided to vice chancellors in Africa on free and low-cost
ways of establishing websites for institutions and individual projects. One example of
free web sites is Homestead.com <http://www.homestead.com/>. This site offers 12 meg
of free webspace and simple tools to make it possible for any institution or individual
with access to the Internet, to create an institutional, project or personal website. More
sophisticated solutions exist starting at limited cost, for example, registering a new
domain name plus the first year’s webspace of 90 meg can cost less than R2 000 per
year. These companies usually offer e-commerce solutions which can help a small
institution register via the Internet.
Virtual Classrooms
Virtual university "platforms" have been developed by companies and
institutions around the world (e.g. WebCT and Lotus LearningSpace). These are offered at
various costs and require certain minimum levels of user computing power. The
implementation of virtual campuses would normally require the installation of high
bandwidth Internet lines, servers, software and skilled IT personnel.
Solutions are beginning to appear that support even an individual lecturer who wants to run a class with Internet support. BlackBoard <http://www.blackboard.com/> states that it offers: "Asynchronous Communication (threaded discussions), Synchronous Communication (real-time chat and whiteboard), Assessment Tools and Gradebook, Collaborative Work Groups, Content Creation (e.g. syllabus and course description pages), Database Reporting and CourseSite Statistics, Messaging System, Online File Exchange (between instructor and student), Online Tutorial and User Tracking.
For monthly fees, the company will set-up a campus-wide solution, either hosting the server on the institution’s premises or the company’s premises, which ever is most appropriate. Once again, the smallest of African institutions with Internet access can use the most up-to-date technologies.
E-mail Addresses
One of the early "freebies" on the Internet were free e-mail addresses. Any
lecturer with access to the Internet can get any number of free so-called
"web-based" e-mail addresses. The e-mail is normally read using an Internet
browser such as MS Internet Explorer or Netscape Communicator and is sponsored by
on-screen advertising. Examples of these are Amexmail <http://www.amexmail.com>,
Hotmail <http://www.hotmail.com/> and ZDNet Mail <http://www.zdnetmail.com/>.
Institutions wanting to install their own mail server may want to first consider the possible cost savings of having an outsource company offering the service to them. This will remove the necessity to run a mail server with its relevant running costs (human and equipment) and frustration of trying to keep that technology up to date. One such company that offers this service is Critical Path <http://www.cp.net/>.
Hosting of Internet Home Pages
A facility exists for academic and professional staff in Africa to host personal and
project home pages free of charge. The service is hosted by the Homestead at
<http://www.homestead.com/>.
A guideline on how to create a personal home page on this site will be posted on the Telisa website at <http://pgw.org/telisa> although the procedure is very straight forward and may be used immediately. Once staff members have created their personal Internet home page, a link must be created on the Netscape Directory by the user under the appropriate category under "Who's Who in Education".
Warehousing of Content
The Telisa facilitators have been approached by three South African companies on
projects to run virtual warehouses of content for institutions. Content may range from
simple webpages to multimedia and video. Content is to be delivered by a range of
technologies from Internet land-lines (usually from 14 400 Kilobits per second) to
satellite feeds (up to 6 Megabit per second). These solutions are under development and
emerging business models are expected to make these options affordable to many
institutions.
Call for participation
The Telisa Initiative has been established as a catalyst to developmental projects in
Africa with an emphasis on the expansion of education through the use of high technology.
Institutions, companies and individuals are encouraged to initiate projects and share experience and resources with others in Africa in the interests of accelerating the development of the region.
Please address queries and suggestions to Paul West at <pgwest@pgw.org>.
How to contact us
If you would like to find out more or participate in any of the projects the Centre
for Lifelong Learning initiates or to which it is linked, please contact us by telephone,
fax, e-mail or in person at the contact details given below:
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