eLearning Africa 2009 – Learn, Share, Network
 eLearning Africa 2009 will welcome nearly 300 speakers from 50 countries to Dakar, Senegal. The programme, which is now available on the eLA website, will feature state-of-the-art presentations and interactive workshops, together with practical demonstrations and cutting-edge debates on key issues in the field of eLearning for the African continent. A range of new initiatives will also be presented.
This newsletter gives a sneak preview of some of the seminars and events scheduled for the day before the conference’s official opening.
 More than 430 submissions have been received for the fourth pan-African conference on ICT for Development, Education and Training. The full 2009 programme - which includes four plenary sessions, ten parallel conference strands with sixty sessions, twenty best practice demonstrations and nineteen pre-conference events - can be found  here. Among the presenters will be representatives of universities and educational institutions, development organisations, grass-root projects, as well as large corporations and small and medium-sized companies.
Pre-Conference Events
A range of high-profile pre-conference events will take place on Wednesday, May 27. Besides the third UNESCO-UNEVOC TVET Summit on “Access and Inclusion: Improving TVET through ICT-Based Information and Learning Solutions” and the African Virtual University (AVU) eLearning Day, workshops for several levels of experience and various interests will be available throughout the day. These include:
Storytelling
Tim Unwin, Royal Holloway University of London, UK, will offer a workshop on “Storytelling @ eLearning Africa”. The workshop invites academics, development practitioners and storytellers to explore how stories can be included more comprehensively in African ICT4D initiatives. These include not only traditional stories as part of Africa’s cultural heritage, but also stories about lessons that can be learnt from existing ICT4D initiatives. It will be of particular value to those with interests in indigenous African learning systems, means of incorporating storytelling into eLearning, sharing stories or developing a new platform for storytelling and ICT4D.
Lay the Foundation for Universities 2.0
The creation of a University 2.0 is the focus of a half-day workshop held jointly by several African universities and leading distance-learning centres. Experts will tell their personal stories of walking the path of innovation, and you are invited to contribute your opinion about the challenges and opportunities of eLearning as a tool for transformation. A wiki will be set up before the seminar to enable participants to get to know each other and to get acquainted with the topic. The wiki will be updated during the seminar with the results of the working groups, including the visuals, and will constitute a platform for continuing the discussion and maintaining contact between the participants.
Links
All workshops with full descriptions can be found at
http://www.elearning-africa.com/workshops_2009.php
To learn more about the conference’s highlights visit
http://www.elearning-africa.com/index_highlights_2009.php
April 8, 2009
 Newsportal: News
|
eLA Newsletter
