You are currently browsing the monthly archive for May 2008.
At the Foundation, we aim to drive innovation, we pilot projects, we comment and cajole in policy discussions and we slowly move forward to a better, more connected, more educated and prosperous South Africa (and Africa and the world). There is rarely a silver bullet, more often than not elements of any initiative work and elements don’t.
A project that we piloted a few years ago, has just grown some wonderful wings and we are cracking open the virtual champagne and celebrating. The Freedom Toaster project, started by Jason Hudson and now under the management of Brett Simpson at Breadbin has become a successful independent venture. UNISA have made 36 orders for them to deliver content, software and information to their students and there are many more orders in the pipeline. Freedom Toasters are popping up all over Africa (and Canada and South America and too many other places to mention).
So thrilled – congratulations to all who have cared for, talked about, used and nurtured this project. Truly delighted.
Below – Brett and Jason assembling a Freedom Toaster – it really is as easy as all that!
We explored Khayalitsha with Alan Levin looking for possible Village Telco entrepreneurs and developed criteria for an alpha release of the Village Telco. We also began planning a June workshop development sprint for the Village Telco to be held in Cape Town. All stakeholders including upstream providers are very sold on the idea of an Open Source strategy.
Steve Song met with project leader (Mark Neville) on Cape Town’s Broadband Fibre Initiative and obtained details on Cape Town’s strategy and background documentation along with a list of contacts in other municipalities to follow up with. There is very positive feedback from this initiative which is said to be a world class installation.
Steve also commented on operators’ submission to ICASA looking at their telecommunication policy and arranged to jointly author a submission with Alison Gillwald for presentation by Mark Shuttleworth to PIAC.
We also contacted Ant Brooks of ISPA and Anriette Esterhuysen of APC to discuss the formation of a multi-stakeholder dialogue around telecom policy.
In the News:
- Bringing cheap phone calls to poor communities – Business Day
- The democratisation of telecommunication infrastructure – Network Times
New blog postings:
- Dabba and Village Telco – Getting to Alpha – Defining what is required to get to first base with the Open Source Village Telco project.
- Building the Demand in Print-on-Demand – Exploring a demand aggregation model for Print-on-Demand.
- Open Concepts, Open Patents – A thought experiment to see whether there is scope for a Creative Commons-style license for ideas/concepts as an alternative to patenting.
- The Wisdom of Knowledge Management
Steve Vosloo has written a paper on contentious subject of mother-tongue education, if, how and when should children be taught to enhance learning in their own language verses a language that will enable them to compete in a larger marketplace are some of the questions tackled. It will inform the work of the Foundation in this area and is currently being reviewed internally before publishing.
The next paper – currently being written – is on gaming and education. In recent years digital games-based learning has received considerable attention as educators attempt to combine the engagement factor of games (video, computer, mobile, etc.) with formal learning outcomes of educational content. Some believe there is not enough evidence that this sweet spot exists; others say that we need to first change the way we evaluate learning in order to find it. The paper will review existing research and current perspectives on this topic to consider the benefits, barriers and potential opportunities that games present for education.
Steve trained six educators on digital hero booking, as part of the next phase of the Digital Hero project. The educators, covering grades 5-7, are from Eikendal Primary and Montagu Gardens Primary schools.
Finally, Steve presented two seminars at UCT: one to highlight research opportunities to masters students in the Information Systems faculty, and the second about digital storytelling.
The majority of the work done over the last month has focussed on understanding and clarifying the educational alignment objective of Kusasa. Strong focus was placed on understanding the the assessment process and the role of the teacher within this process.
The implementation of the existing output in shortlisted schools has continued. This has been essential to maintain the momentum and credibility established over the course of the project.
Evaluation activities are underway and encompass work establishing an outcomes map and on identifying the data we require for an effective evaluation. We are starting to get useful information out of these activities and are pleased to note, amongst other things, that the Western Cape Education Department finds our engagement inclusive, constructive and refreshing.
April saw the official launch of the African Copyright & Access to Knowledge (ACA2K) website and Research Methodology.
The ACA2K Project is probing the relationship between national copyright environments and access to hard-copy and digital learning materials in 8 African countries. The project is specifically conducted within an access to knowledge (A2K) framework – a framework which regards the protection and promotion of user access as one of the central objectives of copyright law.
The Methodology Guide acts as roadmap for this project’s research and policy engagement, and is also openly licensed under CC-BY-SA to allow others to reuse it as guideline for similar studies in their own countries. We need to understand the actual usage and restrictions placed on these materials if we are ever to enable them to be as freely available as they were originally intended to be.
We join the IDRC in supporting this initiative that is managed by the Wits University LINK Centre in Johannesburg.
We hosted two stakeholder workshops, one each in Johannesburg and the other in Cape Town, as part of the South African Open Copyright Review. Like ACA2K, this project is conducted within an access to knowledge (A2K) framework. The workshops provided an introduction for interested parties on critical points relating to access to knowledge and the South African Copyright Act and was well attended by academics, artists, industry representatives and lawyers alike.
The real engagement with these issues will be taking place online to allow a broad base of input and discussion. We are inviting everyone with an interest in access to knowledge to join the discussion by visiting the wiki and making their voice heard on the community portal.
We also released our annual IP Briefing ahead of World IP Day (World IP Day briefing) on 26 April, highlighting some of the successes and challenges faced in access to knowledge and IP in the past year and mentioning what lies ahead. These included congratulations to the SA government for the release of the Ministerial Interoperability Operating Standards (MIOS) and to SABS, the South African standards body, for joining standards bodies in Brazil, India and China in resisting the global campaign to make the Microsoft created OOXML specification into a second document standard.
We are delighted that the University of Cape Town (UCT) became the first university to sign the Cape Town Declaration as an organisation on the 8th of April. Deputy Vice Chancellor Martin Hall described the role of an university as one of sharing knowledge, not keep it to themselves, and confirmed UCT’s commitment to this role. Many faculty and staff members have also added their individual signatures in personal support of the values and strategies proposed in the Declaration.
