TAD Consortium February 2000 Information Update 4
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CONTENTS
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NEWS/TRENDS
--- Information revolution sweeping through rural Madhya
Pradesh
--- A Musical Shakeout
--- Almost a Quarter of Koreans now Online
--- Free Access Boosts Belgian Net Population
--- Web Passes Billion Page Mark
--- Report on Selected Technologies, Issue 1, 2000
--- Internet Boom Could Widen Gap For Poor, Davos Concludes
ANNOUNCEMENTS/REQUESTS
--- Ytech And Youth Networking In Southern Africa
ONLINE RESOURCES
--- Providing Content and Facilitating Social Change:
Electronic Media in Rural Development Based on Case Material from Peru
--- The Internet and University Participation: The Sierra
Leone Experience
--- Reform of vocational education and training in Tanzania
and Zimbabwe
--- Signposts to sustainable development: getting
indicators right
--- Africa's wayward climate. Can information, risk
management and disaster readiness outwit it?
--- Science: The Yuckiest Site on the Internet
--- Proceedings of the seminar
"Pakistan@GlobalKnowledge"
--- Kairos: A Journal for Teachers of Writing in Webbed
Environments
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NEWS/TRENDS
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Information revolution sweeping through rural Madhya Pradesh from India Abroad News Service
New Delhi, Jan 25 - An information revolution is sweeping through the backwaters of Madhya Pradesh, in central India, spearheaded by what the villagers simply refer to as the "magic box".
This "magic box" tells them what the price of potatoes is in the "big town" nearby and even provides them with copies of their land records, revenue maps and other documents they may require to get bank loans for the new harvest season.
Dehrisaria is just one of 600 villages in Dhar district that is now wired to a computer network. The network, which went on a trial run on new year's day, has 21 computer centres manned by local youngsters trained to work as operators. The centres, funded by local village councils, are expected to eventually subsist on user charges.
Villagers have to pay a small fee of Rs 5 for daily market rates of locally produced foodgrains and vegetable crops available at the nearby wholesale markets as well as markets in big cities like Delhi, Chennai, Mumbai and Hyderabad.
The computer centres also provide villagers with important documents for Rs 15. Banks in the region have agreed to accept the documents issued though these centres which are now even authorised to notarise them if required.
Local officials say the computer network, inspired by an experiment carried out successfully in the neighbouring state of Maharashtra a year ago, will ensure that the hapless villagers will not have to run around local government offices needlessly, like they have in the past.
"They can now send applications for income, caste and domicile certificates as well as requests for land demarcation and landholders's loan passbooks on-line. These will be prepared within 10 days and the applicants informed online," the top official in Dhar district, Rajesh Rajoria, told The Indian Express.
Villager Shankar Lal, who has used the new system successfully, declares happily that it works. Lal had applied for a certificate stating his backward status and received a reply on-line within three days, asking him to collect it.
"I spent only Rs 10 and three days to get what would have cost me weeks of running around," says Lal who still finds it hard to believe that the whole process was so easy.
The network has also connected a hospital in the city of Indore, 60 kms away, with the Dhar district hospital and three primary health centres to make specialist medical advice and referral services available to villagers. A dozen patients in remote areas were referred to Indore in the first fortnight of the network's trial run itself.
The computer centres also act as communication links between the government and the villagers, allowing complaints about non-delivery of services under government schemes, absent teachers, non-functioning pump sets, among other things.
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Taken from Nua Internet Surveys, February 7th 2000
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A Musical Shakeout" by Sorcha Ni hEilidhe
http://www.nua.ie/surveys/analysis/weekly_editorial.html
There were over one billion music downloads in 1999, "mp3" replaced "sex" as the most searched for query on the Internet and what was the Big Five record labels became the Big Four.
The major labels have reacted badly to the birth of digital music in general and rather than embracing new channels and new models afforded by the Internet, they have behaved like petulant children and sued any companies suspected of being innovative in the market.
In response to the Internet, the only ostensible strategy the majors seem to have employed is; bond together, create mega-companies and hope it will all go away. Polygram ran to Universal, Sony are running to BMG Entertainment EMI ran to Warner Bros. but free music on the Net didn't go away and neither did the inexorable demand for it.
The proliferation of mobile devices and interactive TV means that free music is no longer just available to nerds and geeks but to over 250 million people worldwide and rising. Clearly this is threatening. The industry has traditionally been centred around products and clearly defined distribution channels, now it has to find new models to stay afloat. Where once music was a product, now it is content and new rules apply wherein brand and consistency become paramount.
The Big Four are scared as hell for a good reason. The Internet fundamentally challenges their century-long hegemony of music. The artist can now liaise with the consumer independent of the record company. The consumer can now liaise with the artist independent of the record company. And then there's all those cheeky Net companies churning out new music formats, stealing their music and giving it away for free. Technology companies are getting in on it and everyone is ignoring the majors. Ericsson have even developed a prototype phone with an mp3 player attached to it. What's the world coming to?
For the full story, go to:
http://www.nua.ie/surveys/analysis/weekly_editorial.html
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Taken from Nua Internet Surveys, February 7th 2000
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The Korean Herald: Almost a Quarter of Koreans now Online
The number of Korean Internet users is now over 10 million, according to two different recently released surveys.
I-Click, an Internet tracking firm, say that 10.5 million users over 13 years have used the Internet while a government commissioned survey conducted by Research & Research puts the figure at 10 million users over the age of 7 at the end of 1999. Koreans are also warming to ecommerce, according to I-Click, which says that 3.3 percent of Koreans, or 920,000 people have bought online. Total online purchasing in the second half of 1999 amounted to KRW202.9 million (USD178 million) and each shopper purchased 2.8 times on average. Two-thirds of Korean Internet users are male, according to the Research & Research report. More than 60 percent of users visit computer and Internet related sites, 51.2 visit entertainment sites and 38.1 regularly go to news sites. Almost 70 percent of Koreans say they use the Internet primarily for information, 14.5 percent use it for game and entertainment sites, 8.9 percent log on to chat online and 7.3 percent said email was their main reason for going online. Just over 40 percent access the Internet at home, while 21.8 percent surf from their PC in work. Of those who have not accessed the Internet, 34.6 percent said they never felt the need to go online, 34 percent did not know how to get online, 23.1 percent had no access to a computer and 6.8 percent said it was too expensive.
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Taken from Nua Internet Surveys, February 7th 2000
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InSites:Free Access Boosts Belgian Net Population
There are now more than 2 million Belgians with access to the Internet, according to the latest survey from Belgian Internet Mapping and InSites. The availability of free Internet subscriptions has considerably boosted the number of Internet users in the last six months and transformed it into a more democratic medium.
Free access has enabled more women, teenagers, senior citizens and French-speaking Belgians to go online. Users from middle and lower-income brackets are also more likely than before to be connected to the Net.
Ecommerce is also popular in Belgium with 27 percent more Internet users shopping online in the second half of 1999 than did before. Just fewer than 460,000 Belgians have bought online and books, CDs and software are the most popular purchases. The average annual online spend per user is BFR4765 (USD115).
Customer satisfaction with online retailers has also increased, up 19 percent to 42 percent since the first half of 1999. Three quarters of those surveyed were still unwilling to give their credit card details to an online store. Entertainment, news, music and traditional media sites are the most popular with Belgians. One third of users regularly visits travel and financial services sites and 21 percent of home users visit erotic sites. Work users favour sites covering the Internet, IT, news and sports and 15 percent use their work connection to look for another job. Half of all users download software regularly while a quarter often go to chat sites. Almost 30 percent of respondents had clicked on a banner advertisement in the previous two weeks and 70 percent professed to "hating" spam advertising.
http://www.insites.be/reports/
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Taken from Nua Internet Surveys, February 7th 2000
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Inktomi: Web Passes Billion Page Mark
There are now more than one billion unique documents on the Internet, according to Inktomi and the NEC Research Institute. The total number of servers indexed by Inktomi was 6,409,521. Mirror servers accounted for 1,457,946 of these so the total number of unique servers was 4,951,247. Of these, 733,923 were unreachable over a ten-day period.
Slightly more than 60 percent of servers are configured on Apache, while a quarter run on Microsoft IIS and 3.79 percent on Netscape-Enterprise. Fifteen other types of server share the rest of the market.
Nearly 55 percent of URLs end in .com, while 7.82 percent have the TLDnet. .edu is the third most common TLD, with 6.69 percent of Web pages. 4.35 percent of addresses end in .org, 1.15 percent end in .gov and 0.17 percent end in .mil. Unsurprisingly, Inktomi found that 86.55 percent of Web documents are in English. French pages constitute 2.36 percent of the total while only 0.54 percent of all Web pages are in Dutch.
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Report on Selected Technologies, Issue 1, 2000 By Paul West
Centre for Lifelong Learning - Technikon SA
Education
The changes witnessed during the last 5 years of the 2nd millennium have included the phenomenon of educators moving from small, seemingly manageable classrooms, to a virtual environment, sometimes with thousands of lifelong learners. Virtual classrooms that were still difficult to set-up and manage in the middle of the last decade have progressed to being give-away items that include many items educators struggled to establish just a few years ago. If the fast pace of the last five years is anything to go by (really - did you even have an e-mail address in 1995?), the world of 2005 is likely to be very different to almost anything we can imagine right now.
Increasing pressure is being placed on those educators who still believe that their clients should be taught in a conventional classroom only - without the use computer-aided technologies. Results of a survey of learners in the California State University system clearly indicated that they would be prepared to pay more for better Internet access and other technology on campus. One Internet guru believes that knowledge will be doubling every three months within 25 years. Many are already feeling this pressure and the effect that it could have on the 12 to 36-month development cycles with which distance education has become so complacent. If learner-centredness is to take on real meaning, the education sector will have to adapt far more quickly to the increasing pace of change in the world.
The number of corporate universities is said to stand at around 1600 now compared to 400 just 10 years ago. Global corporates are frequently approached for grants to help sustain public universities. We seem to have arrived at a stage where these same large companies are employing more of the specialist staff from the public institutions and forming their own, purpose-driven higher education institutions.
One skill that is becoming increasingly popular, is that of writing so that other people understand what you are saying. Legalese and its academic counterpart used to provide a divide between those who considered themselves educated and those who did not have the same credentials. Some company's entire business is now focused on translating previously unreadable documents such as insurance contracts and policy documents, into documents that "normal people" can read. The same is beginning to become noticeable with some dissertations and theses in the academic arena. If "real people" in real jobs cannot read the results of years of research, just think how much potential value is being lost!
More research results are being digitised every year and we hear of many projects for the storage of these potentially valuable papers. Research and publications in Africa seldom seem to see the light of day in the global marketplace. A relatively new venture called AfricaEducation.org is trying to link the papers and learning content that can be made available to the world http://AfricaEducation.org/ . The site has over 400 pages of links to existing content on the Internet, most of which is available free of charge. I have also started a public library, called the African Digital Library, for those people living in Africa. Anyone on the continent who has Internet access can now use this library free of charge (after personal Internet connection fees have been paid). The library already boasts over 3000 full-text eBooks and expects to add about 1000 to 2000 eBooks during this year. The library can be accessed at http://AfricaEducation.org/adl/ . Publishers in Africa wanting to secure a global market through this can contact the library administrator from the website.
Tuition fees in some developed parts of the world, such as the USA, are sometimes considered high, even for local residents. Fees are barriers to entry for outsiders, unless near-100% bursaries are secured. Few institutions in developing countries have begun extending their market reach into these highly priced regions. The University of South Africa http://www.unisa.ac.za/ is one of few institutions in a developing region that registers learners irrespective of location. This still allows many business opportunities for institutions in developing countries.
Some governments, such as the South African Government, are trying to persuade people to preferably register with public sector institutions in their home country. All private institutions that have a physical presence in the country have to be registered with the appropriate government department. This, however, does not affect those institutions that operate in cyberspace with no physical presence in the country. For those learners who are Internet-empowered, the choice still rests with the individual as to where they want to shop for their next qualification.
Shopping malls like the "Electronic Campus" have more than 2000 courses http://www.sreb.org/ with more than 20000 learners. The president of the campus describes it as an education mall. All levels of degrees are offered, and these are grouped into some 65 programmes.
According to a report by a group of public university presidents in the USA http://www.nasulgc.org/Kellogg/learn.pdf , learners should be told early on that learning is a lifelong process. They believe institutions should place far more emphasis on preparing learners to continue the learning process throughout their lives. Better use of distance education, combined with emerging technologies can help learners to keep their knowledge up-to-date. Degrees and diplomas should perhaps be followed by a subscription service from the institution offering the qualification, which would provide regular up-dates on the latest trends in the field.
You may have heard that the entire Encyclopaedia Britannica is now available online. They also offer free e-mail, and e-mail newsletters. Teachers who have Internet access should really be taking a close look at this one! http://www.britannica.com/ . The company, which has been in existence for 231 years has reduced its workforce from 2300 to just 350. They have made the resource free-of-charge via the Internet, and expect to generate enough revenue through advertising, to turn a profit. The printed and CD ROM versions will continue to be available.
Another shock on its way for educators, is the possibility of bidding for the price of an educational qualification. One service called eCollegeBid.org is allowing learners to place bids for the qualification for which they want to enrol. Learners may say how much they want to pay for enrolling for a particular qualification. So as to protect privacy, the identity of the bidder is only handed over to the college once the college accepts the bid. Initially, this may only find favour with left-over places in courses, but, in time, it may join the mainstream of purchasing in much the same way as the purchasing of some IT equipment.
Technology
MaxBot.com has launched a new search engine, focused on the needs of education. The engine has some 20 million links, mostly in the .edu domain. The site, http://www.searchedu.com/ includes links to other search engines, dictionaries and encyclopaedias.
The ongoing success of the Linux operating system is challenging the paradigm of paying for these systems. The concept is that consumers will pay for books and support but not for the operating system itself. Opinions expressed indicate that more and larger chunks of software will become free of charge. The free Linux operating system is said to run on up to 40% of servers in the Internet. Sun Microsystems is now making its source code of its Solaris operating system freely available under its "community-source code licence". Programmers who download the software free of charge will be able to participate in the further development of the operating system. The company should benefit from more people using the operating system while receiving free bug-reports from users!
Break-ins to computer systems are on the rise. Attacks are coming from around the world, with claims of hackers being in countries like Russia and Italy - places where Internet access is far more expensive. Personal PCs are not immune to these attacks. E-mail messages and programs may arrive or be installed by the user, which then lie in wait for a hacker to "visit" while the user is online. Should your PC have the appropriate software loaded, the hacker can start reading the contents of your hard disk or make changes of their choosing to your system. There is software that will protect your PC from this kind of attack, one called BlackIce Defender which can be purchased online at http://networkice.com/ . This is normally used in addition to virus protection software, which is absolutely essential.
If you want to double-check the virus-free status of your PC, you may want to look at the online subscription offer by MacAfee http://macafee.com/centers/clinic/ For a low annual premium, you can regularly check your PC using this online service. They have the latest checkers available. You can also download a memory-resident component, which will protect your PC while you work. Remember that you can only have one anti-virus program memory resident on your PC (safely!). You can then use additional programs to double-check that the first program is catching all known viruses. Sometimes different anti-virus programs miss different viruses.
Do you need extra hard disk space for your files? Need to send large files to other people and don't want to clog-up their e-mail in-box? X-drive may be the answer - this is a fairly new service, which offers you disk space on the Internet. You can access your files from anywhere in the world, including your office at work and your home PC. The service is free of charge for the basic services and provides a secure connection through which to transfer your files. This can create that backup copy for work and personal files that you just cannot afford to loose! Look for it at: http://AfricaEducation.org/xdrive/ .
Business
The expectations regarding the effect of society and business converting rapidly to a paperless society have not realised as swiftly as originally anticipated. The world of print is beginning to feel the pinch, but not as quickly as was initially expected by some. In the news publishing industry, the area that seems to be feeling the pinch most, is in the area of advertising revenues. The advertising revenues are moving from the world of print to the online world, placing pressure on the bottom line of the print-based companies. The cost of publishing newspapers either has to be passed from the advertiser on to the consumer, or the business will have to move to online publishing or shut down. The upside of the online publishing business is that smaller publishers can compete with larger circulation papers.
An interesting form of duty-free shopping has emerged from a company called DutyFreeZone.com in Curacao. This island near Venezuela plans to sell duty free liquor and cigarettes to US citizens. Providing the volumes stay within the allowable limits, they believe they can do this legally. Procter and Gamble, virtually the world's biggest advertiser, is trying out the concept of tying its advertising fees to the sales generated. Advertising courses mention how you never know which half of the advertising revenue is wasted through being badly targeted. Now, this advertising agency is really going to take on full accountability for their services' success.
Businesses wanting to have their e-commerce sites on a fully managed "server farm" will be soon be able to approach Intel, who plan to run these around the world. Running a series of servers with all the inherent problems of data phone lines, power supply and shortages of highly skilled staff is precisely the kind of pressure that a business would be likely to pass on to a specialist company like this.
Share prices of technology companies have become known for running extremely high, even when the company is still running at a loss. Companies' valuations used to be heavily based on asset values, something high tech companies don't have much of. These companies' assets walk off the property and go home every afternoon! Although the ratios of value vs. asset value have changed dramatically, this does not mean the company is not required to turn a profit. It may take a few years, but the growth of share prices is largely based on the promise of future profits from that company. When Amazon.com said a while ago that it did not expect to turn a profit in 2000, after some 4 years in business, the share prices plummeted. The business models may have changed a great deal, but company profits still are a requirement of sustained share price growth.
Computer access is required by staff in businesses, involving both stand-alone operations and Internet access. Some companies have complained that as soon as full Internet access was given to staff (including management), recreational surfing soared. Increasingly, companies are now using software to trace where their employees go on the Internet. Some are installing filtering software while others issue warnings of the consequences of recreational surfing at work expense. The negative impact on employee moral and productivity is a concern to some managers who feel you have to trust staff and treat them professionally. The time spent (if any) on recreational surfing should be something the performance management system filters out only if there are suitably calculated outputs for each staff member. Only when we reach the point of managing staff on outputs can we really begin to take tele-commuting seriously!
Shopping traditions are likely to be changed by the younger generation (16 to 22's), as they grow older. According to a survey in the USA, this age group now does the majority of online shopping. As this group ages, so will shopping patterns.
Feedback
If you have a comment, requests or suggestions regarding this report, please contact Paul West via the website at: http://pgw.org/str .
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INTERNET BOOM COULD WIDEN GAP FOR POOR, DAVOS CONCLUDES.
The world's poor will miss out on the benefits of the telecommunications revolution and the gap between rich and poor will continue to rise, AFP reports business leaders and statesmen warned in Davos on the last day of the World Economic Forum annual meeting. While Internet start-ups and mobile telecoms create overnight fortunes for the entrepreneurs in the industrialized world, some warn that people in countries without telephones or even electricity will remain second class citizens.
According to a study by consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers, half the bosses of big firms believe the Internet will increase the gap between rich and poor. Their warning was backed up by South African President Thabo Mbeki, who called for an international initiative to prevent his continent being left behind. "You will not have...participation by African countries in the involvement in this technological revolution (when) we don't even have the electricity infrastructure which make possible the access to this technology," he said.
Those who argued that technological progress would arrive due to market forces were wrong, Mbeki said. "The market will not correct this," he said. He said the continent was too busy coping with more basic problems such as poverty, malnutrition, and AIDS to put resources into developing Internet access. In Sub-Saharan African there are only 1.7 million Internet users, of whom 1.6 million are in South Africa, Mbeki explained.
For the past two years, the World Bank has been piloting a program, InfoDev, to bring the Internet and e-mail to Sub-Saharan Africa, the story notes. It hopes the electronic transfer of information will lead to technological leaps in the region. And further in the future, telecommunications could see employment and investment heading south from rich countries.
The spread of the Internet has reached unexpected proportions, reports Le Figaro (France, p.XI), noting that at the WEF meeting in Davos, World Bank President James Wolfensohn spoke of his astonishment on a visit to an Ethiopian village, where a farmer told him he sold his goats via the Internet to taxi drivers in New York. Globalization does not only serve the rich, the story suggests.
[from the World Bank Development News (February 2, 2000)]
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ANNOUNCEMENTS/REQUESTS
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YTECH AND YOUTH NETWORKING IN SOUTHERN AFRICA
At the first 1999 meeting of the new African Development Forum (ADF) the youth group gave full acknowledgement to the huge influence of the information revolution in their lives. ICTs and the Internet, they said, could be used to build the knowledge base of the youth as well as promote collaborative projects through youth networking. Employment opportunities for young people in information services and industries should also be fostered. In the SADC region the first steps have been taken to establish a regional youth network, spearheaded by SADECCON (the Southern African Development, Culture and Communication Network). This will be linked to planning in South Africa, where the National Youth Commission, in collaboration with the research councils, universities and other stakeholders, is organising a planning conference to design a national and regional youth information and training network. It is called the Youth TechKnowledgy Network (YTech). The network will be extended to the SADC region and eventually other African countries.
The proposed network will consist of (a) a Web-based network and (b) a range of Internet-linked telecentres and information centres throughout the country.The YTech network will particularly address the huge problems of young people regarding umemployment and a lack of knowledge. At the telecentres trainees will receive interactive distance training and education, and support by local trainers, employers and other stakeholders.
An open invitation is extended to all interested organisations and companies to attend the conference and nominate two delegates. Since the network will involve many stakeholders, all interested youth organisations, IT providers, training institutions, researchers and other stakeholders are invited to become involved in the planning process and conference.
The conference/workshop will be held on 14 and 15 March 2000 in Sandton, Johannesburg. A comprehensive research and development proposal by a consortium of stakeholders will also be finalised at the conference. More information, including the project position paper is available at the following Web site:
http://www.hsrc.ac.za/corporate/conferences/ytech1.html
We can also send you the documents that are available on the Web by e-mail.
Please note that nomination forms should reach the organisers BEFORE OR ON 28 FEBRUARY.
Direct enquiries to the SADECCON co-ordinator and conference organiser, Charles Malan, at CWMalan@silwane.hsrc.ac.za
Information on SADECCON: http://www.iup.edu/~mukasa/sadeccon.html
Home page of the South African Youth Information Services: http://www.yis.co.za
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ONLINE RESOURCES
Providing Content and Facilitating Social Change: Electronic Media in Rural Development Based on Case Material from Peru
by Robin van Koert
In his famous book Understanding media, Marshall McLuhan discusses the impact he expects (networked) electronic media to have on the world. Since then the emergence of a 'global village' has become a universally accepted idea. McLuhan is perhaps more to the point when he observes that "The organic everywhere supplants the mechanical. Dialogue supersedes the lecture" (McLuhan, 1964; pp. 255-256). This paper takes a cue from McLuhan and discusses the way different types of information flows reveal the underlying power structures related to the provision and exchange of information. In line with McLuhan it is argued that 'dialogue', or information exchange, through networked media will have to play a role of increasing importance in development, whereby dialogues will have 'horizontal' and 'vertical' dimensions. Networked media are in that way to facilitate rural networking and social change. In its essence information provision, or 'lecture' is claimed to strengthen existing power structures, to create dependencies and to lead to a mismatch between information demand and supply. Despite the fact that networked electronic media are favored for rural development, they obviously do not have the same reach and levels of access and accessability as the traditional electronic media do. Another distinction between media is the type of information and content they are able to convey in a message, whereby significant differences between traditional and networked electronic media can be distinguished. Based on the two above mentioned distinctions between electronic media combinations of electronic media are suggested for use in rural development, both to improve the quality of the information provided and to change existing information and communication related power structures.
http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue5_2/vankoert/
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The Internet and University Participation: The Sierra Leone Experience by John Abdul Kargbo
To be information literate, one must be able to recognize when information is needed and have the ability to locate, evaluate, and effectively use the needed information. Based on the concept that all people have a right to information to help them be successful in society, whether in business, citizenship, and levels of education, the Internet is gradually infiltrating in Sierra Leone. This article examines the introduction of the Internet in the University of Sierra Leone community.
http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue5_2/kargbo/
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Reform of vocational education and training in Tanzania and Zimbabwe
contributor(s): Paul Bennell - Full list of DFID Education papers
06 January 2000
Since the late 1980s, there has been are clear indications that the push for reform of vocational education and training (VET) provision has increased in Africa, in particular with respect to the decline in donor support for VET and the advent of comprehensive structural adjustment programmes. There is an acute shortage, however, of detailed empirical research on how VET policies and provision have changed during the last decade. Recent research by UK co-ordinated teams in Tanzania and Zimbabwe identifies the main changes in the provision of formal, off-the-job VET by both public and private training institutions in these countries, and analyses the main factors that have influenced policy reforms.
http://www.id21.org/static/4apb1.htm
To receive this piece by email, send a message to the following email address: getweb@webinfo.ids.ac.uk
Leave the SUBJECT field BLANK, and copy the following text into the BODY of the message: GET http://www.ids.ac.uk/id21/static/4apb1.html
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Signposts to sustainable development: getting indicators right
contributor(s): Alex MacGillivray - New
Economics Foundation (NEF), UK
14 January 2000
Indicators - measurements of change - are essential tools for guiding policy and understanding development processes. Yet standard indicators are often narrow and measure economic change without accounting for negative impacts, such as environmental degradation. Promoting more sustained development will require indicators that successfully balance macro issues against community concerns. Information also needs to be easily accessible. Researchers from the UK New Economics Foundation ask: how can this balance be achieved? Who should choose the indicators? How successful have they been to date? They show that there is potential for better, fully comprehensive indicators to signpost paths to more sustainable development policies.
http://www.id21.org/static/1bld6.htm
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Africa's wayward climate. Can information, risk management and disaster readiness outwit it?
contributor(s): Anne Thomson, Penny Jendon, Edward Clay - SOS Sahel International UK
25 January 2000
Sub-Saharan Africa's (SSA) highly variable climate is a major problem for her societies and economies. The 1997-1998 El Niņo climatic event was the first time that multi-seasonal forecasting techniques became a focus of sustained media attention over many months. How did concerned groups get to know about the event and about the varying levels of risk attached to it? And how did this information affect decisions about disaster risk management at international level and within countries in sub-Saharan Africa? A study by SOS Sahel International UK, casts light on how and by what channels perceptions of risk were picked up by different players and what action they were able and willing to pursue in response.
http://www.id21.org/static/10aec1.htm
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Taken from Education Planet
Science: The Yuckiest Site on the Internet http://www.nj.com/yucky/ As evidenced by its title, this site take an irreverent approach to the study of the human body so as to capitalize on kid's interests and curiosity. There are, however, lots of information about body systems, cool science experiments, yucky body facts, and additional sections about worms and roaches. Every month there are new hands-on activities. Be sure to save these because there is no archive. Additional activities can be found in the teacher's guide.
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The proceedings of the seminar "Pakistan@GlobalKnowledge" held in Karachi on 2 February 2000 have been taken from the "Pakistan@GlobalKnowledge" wesbite [http://pgk.sdnpk.org]. The website also features powerpoint presentations, and profiles of authors.
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Kairos: A Journal for Teachers of Writing in Webbed Environments http://english.ttu.edu/kairos
The goal of _Kairos_ is to offer a progressive and innovative online forum for the exploration of writing, learning, and teaching in hypertexual environments!!
_Kairos_ is a webbed journal exploring all aspects of the pedagogical and scholarly uses of hypertext and other web technologies. It is designed to serve as a resource for teachers, researchers, and tutors of writing, including Technical Writing, Business Writing, Professional Communication, Creative Writing, Composition, Literature and a wide variety of humanities-based scholarship.
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Telematics for African Development Consortium
P.O. Box 31822
Braamfontein
2017
Johannesburg
South Africa
Tel: +27 +11 403-2813
Fax: +27 +11 403-2814
neilshel@icon.co.za
www.saide.org.za
* To view an archive of previous updates
visit:
www.saide.org.za/tad/archive.htm
* For resources on distance education and
technology use in Southern Africa visit:
www.saide.org.za/worldbank/Default.htm
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