Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Educational technology experts at eLearning Africa 2011 hailed the use of Web 2.0 technologies and mobile devices as new ways to mobilise learners and resources with the potential to revolutionise social and economic development.
eLearning Africa is the continent’s largest conference on Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) for Development, Education and Training. This year’s event at the Mlimani City Conference Centre in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania attracted a total of 1,702 participants from Africa and other parts of the world. It featured contributions from 322 speakers from 57 countries.
A range of presentations explored the role of Web 2.0 tools and social media such as blogs, Wikipedia, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Skype and other interactive, Internet-based technologies for educational purposes.
Several experts emphasised that these technologies provided attractive, integrated, cheap and collaborative learning environments, especially for Africa’s young ‘digiterati’. Even though the Internet remains largely unavailable in African classrooms, many believe that this will change in the near future, including access to the mobile web for African learners.
Dr Edda Tandi Lwoga from the Sokoine University of Tanzania pointed out that Web 2.0 is capable of mobilising learning resources, expanding research capacity, building strong academic networks and helping marginalised groups such as street children or disabled young people.
Steven Otieno from the Community Aid Development Fund International Kenya explained how blogs, podcasts and photographs can reach out to “groups most at risk”, such as commercial sex workers in Kenya, the majority of whom are women, and how technology can help combat discrimination and prevent the spread of HIV infections.
Ronald Wertlen from eKhaya ICT, South Africa, highlighted how the open source platform ‘awareNet’ was significantly improving education in some of the poorest schools in South Africa. He said, “Many young Africans grow up in a culture where personal self-respect is squashed by gross disrespect for human life. Sub-standard services in terms of health, policing, education, etc., and subsequent high mortality rates, as well as dismantled cultural traditions, teach young people that intrinsic motivation is worthless since the self itself is worthless. awareNet teaches young people that their voice can be heard and that there is someone listening. “
Terri Lynn Thompson from the Digital Opportunity Trust of Athabasca University, Canada, explained how her organisation used Internet-based technologies to enable young Africans, mainly in Rwanda, Kenya and Ethiopia, to develop the entrepreneurial skills necessary to take on a leadership role in community economic development.
Even though Web 2.0 is still in its infancy in Africa, growth is staggering.
While the overall penetration rate of Facebook in Africa is only 2.6 percent (or 27,414,240 users, according to Internetworldstats, March 2011), many countries have doubled the number of users in the last few months. In Tanzania, Facebook has been very popular “because ‘pamoja’ - being together and being social - is the essence of Tanzanian culture,” Dr Paula Uimonen from SPIDER, University of Stockholm, Sweden, explained.
Many experts stressed the need to localise content and integrate local customs and culture when using Web 2.0. Michael Trucano, the World Bank's Senior ICT and Education Policy Specialist, reminded the audience that in general, successful learning cannot be achieved by ‘air-dropping pre-packaged material’ into Africa.
However, it also became clear that the long-term impact of using Web 2.0 and social media within formal and informal education systems remains uncertain.
In addition, electricity supply, Internet access and computer ownership still pose big challenges for many Africans, especially in rural areas. eLearning Africa highlighted models for low cost and ultra-low cost bandwidth, and with the arrival of several undersea cables in East Africa, the situation has gradually been improving.
As opposed to Web 2.0, mobile learning has already been a hot topic at eLearning Africa for several years. In 2011, interest in ‘mLearning’ has become even greater. One reason is that mobile phone penetration now far exceeds infrastructure development – access to electricity, the Internet and even toilets –, making it possible for mobile learning to be made available to everyone.
At eLearning Africa, several organisations demonstrated how mobile learning has the potential to radically improve almost every aspect of life, especially in delivering healthcare to the ill and needy.
The K4Health project (USA) outlined its knowledge management activities in Malawi, Senegal, South Africa, Swaziland and Lesotho, which included equipping health workers with mobile phones and solar chargers. Project members have seen how a simple text message has saved the life of a dying mother.
Sean Blaschke explained how UNICEF works with RapidSMS technology to collect education, health and birth/death registration data in Uganda.
Riitta Vänskä described Nokia’s mobile maths learning system for students in South Africa. It is designed around a competitive game. She said, “Children in South Africa are addicted to studying mathematics through mobile phones. There are hints for every subject and topic.” She described the system as “cheap, efficient and very exciting“.
Arndt Bubenzer, Common Sense, Austria, and Dennis Joseph Mazali, Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences, Tanzania, presented the lessons learnt from iCall, interactive storytelling delivered via mobile phone. Here, different approaches are applied for the differing fields of formal education, community affairs and work-based learning. One application presented was designed to identify pregnant women at risk.
However, eLearning Africa also discussed technological challenges such as the disparate standards of mobile devices. With the cost of web-based smartphones falling, hope was expressed that web content can be accessed more easily and at more affordable rates in the near future.
eLearning Africa 2011 focused in particular on the use of ICTs to nurture young talent.
Dr Onyeka Iwuchukwu from the National Open University of Nigeria demonstrated the role of eLearning in the creation of jobs for young people in the performing arts sector. Mark Leclair from Farm Radio International, Canada, explained how Moodle can help promote the skills of young journalists for agricultural reporting.
Richard Chole from PMM’s Girls’ School in Uganda explained how the Adobe Youth Voices scheme, using video, multimedia, digital art, web animation and audio tools, had enabled teenagers to conduct voluntary HIV/AIDS counselling campaigns.
This year’s eLearning Africa introduced a ‘research track’ in an attempt to create a learning space both for the African and the broader research community to engage with research topics related to African experiences.
The intention is to create a space for African researchers to test their ideas and work in progress, share their work, collaborate with counterparts both within Africa and globally and, moreover, to engage in dominant discourses on ICTs in education from an African perspective.
eLA 2011 received very positive responses to its research track. A sizeable number of papers were presented, many of which were attempts to create new knowledge and a new understanding of how education transformation is unfolding with the support of ICTs in Africa. These sessions were well attended and presentations sparked thought-provoking discussion about conceptual and methodological matters within the research domain.
The research themes for this year focused on African youth and digital identity, collaborative learning and the use of ICTs in the context of marginalised schooling. Some of these featured doctoral and post-doctoral research.
Many who participated in these sessions indicated that the research track added significantly to the quality of the conversations at the conference and encouraged further development of this track for future eLearning Africa conferences.
In another first for eLearning Africa, the conference was addressed by a senior NATO Lieutenant General, Karlheinz Viereck, who is responsible for Joint Force Training at the world's largest military alliance.
He said that he believes there is a need for “global training” to deal with many of the crises and emergencies affecting different countries. He said that there is currently a great deal of “duplication of effort” in training for emergency response but that online learning has created new opportunities for improving information sharing and cooperation.
A firm believer in greater cooperation with the African Union, General Viereck is convinced that international organisations could coordinate their training packages much more effectively, in order to share their expertise and improve their response to emergencies. He said that often there was no need for different organisations to keep spending more money on developing very similar training programmes.
Now in its sixth year, eLearning Africa has established itself as the key event about ICT for development, education and training on the African Continent. Its mission is to bring people together who are actively engaged in education and the implementation of learning technologies in schools, universities, corporate training programmes, as well as in education in the public sector.
The next eLearning Africa will take place in May 2012.
eLA in a nutshell
eLearning Africa, 6th International Conference on ICT for Development, Education and Training
May 25–27, 2011
Mlimani City Conference Centre, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
Organisers: ICWE GmbH, www.icwe.net, Government of the Republic of Tanzania
Contact: ICWE GmbH, Ms Katharina Goetze,
info@elearning-africa.com, www.eLearning-africa.com
Tel.: +49 (0)30 310 18 18-0
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ICWE GmbH
Beate Timmer & Andrea Marshall
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