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Access2OER/Stories and solutions
From OER_Wiki
- PDF download
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Introduction to the report
- Part 1 - Issues
- What is access?
- Issues and classification
- SuperOER
- Part 2 - Solutions
- Solutions
- Solutions criteria
- Stories and solutions
- Case studies
- Part 3 - Proposals
- Proposals
- Conclusion
- Conclusion and next steps
- Appendix
- Links
- Blogs
- Introduction
- Welcome
- Invitation
- Solutions
- Stories 1
- Stories 2
- Stories 3
- Case studies v1
- Access initiatives v1
- Proposals
- OER Training proposal
- Open Educational Resource Centres
- OER exchange infrastructure
- OER exchange infrastructure diagrams
- Additional materials
- Access2OER/Additional Considerations
- HowTos
- Index
- Wiki only
- Contents
- Welcome
- Invitation
- Some technical notes
- Contents
- Contents
- Discussion Week 1
- Issues
- Classification
- Comments on SuperOER
- Overview of week 1 activities
- Discussion Week 2
- Discussion related to solutions put forward
- Snippets from the general discussion
- Overview of week 2 activities
- Discussion Week 3
- general discussion
- OER training discussion
- resource centre discussion
- oer exchange discussion
- stories discussion
- All discussion on one page.
- Additional pages
- OER
- Glossary
Template:
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[Edit]
At some point in the not-so-distant future I find myself in a go-slow in some big city like Lagos, Nigeria. A small boy walks up to my car window with a wooden shelf neatly packed with biscuits, cigarettes, gum, and toiletries. I see he has some OER chips. I roll down the Window and ask, "Do you have a Nigerian secondary school chip?" He smiles a pulls a card from the rubberbanded collection. Five dollars later, I'm plugging the chip into my handheld and watching the introductory video by the minister of education. (And the boy is left smiling, because only foreigners actually pay full price.) (Story contributed by Cliff Missen.)
[edit] Why share stories?
Kim Tucker suggested that space be made on the wiki for people to share inspirational success stories of access to knowledge and learning. The purpose was to showcase the diverse and innovative solutions invented by communities with limited access. These stories add to our understanding of access to OER and, more generally, of access to knowledge and learning. Participants were reminded that "access" is taken to mean both physical access (via a computer, print material, audio, etc.) and the ability to use a resource effectively (i.e. a resource is not truly accessible if it is in a foreign language, or pitched at a level beyond the learner's prior learning, etc.).
[edit] Increasing access to resources: solutions for effective resource use
For this first set of stories, the suggestion was to recount inspirational stories of access to knowledge and learning, from which we can draw lessons for facilitating access to OER.
Using teamwork to overcome language barriers
This story focussed on a group of relatively inexperienced programmers of varying levels of multi-lingualism and programming ability. They interacted and learned from each other while working on a learning task. One member of the group was bilingual and able to understand the material in an online tutorial. She explained the concepts to her co-workers in English first. The conversation switched from English to Xhosa as they became engrossed in developing and working with the code, discussing the details of the task, the content of the tutorial and the concepts required for implementing the coding solution.
In terms of access, the story is relevant to questions around localization: when do we need to translate resources and how do we do this translation? The story illustrates that the language barrier may be mitigated in certain situations via bilingual team members or culture brokers. Although it is desirable to create localized learning resources, in some situations - such as the one described above - there is not the time.
Improving the accessibility of audio and video resources
This story is based on Attreman Junior's experience of learning English in Côte d'Ivoire. Officially Côte d'Ivoire is French speaking. In the first week of their first academic year, students had problems understanding their teacher, because of the different English accents. The way teachers pronounced words in US/UK English was quite different from the way their teachers at secondary school had spoken.
The situation became worse when the "listening course" started. The task was to listen to tape recordings of native English speakers, but the experience was as if listening to an entirely foreign language. Attreman explained: "We caught nothing. But when we followed it reading a text exhibit, we noticed that there was nothing strange. The conversation was really in English, and in this way we understood very well." Reading text is easy. In terms of better access to OER, it is a good idea to subtitle audio and video resources, or make transcripts available.
North-South collaboration
This story is about a North-South collaboration where materials have flowed in both directions. A faculty member in a US public health programme partnered with three east African schools to co-author content. The university had developed a comprehensive e-learning system (based on open source software), and this was also shared with the the southern collaborators.
The programme has been running for three years, on a very small budget. It has faltered and re-started several times, and all the barriers discussed during the first week of the present discussion have played a role. However, the collaboration still stands. Some content has been created jointly, and there have been asynchronous discussions on public health topics involving students from the US, together with partners in East Africa and India. These discussions have been tremendously interesting - again not without barriers coming into play - but still a start.
Making the most of local innovation
This is a story from William Kamkwamba about finding out how to make windmills to generate electricity in rural Malawi. It is a testimony to local innovation serving local needs using global knowledge. A video about the project is available on YouTube.
How might the OER community catalyse this kind of local innovation? It was proposed that we need to engage communities, foster social entrepreneurship and package resources, drawing on a range of materials, such as Appropedia and the Social Entrepreneurship curriculum.
[edit] Increasing access to resources: providing training
Infrastructure issues (such as equipment, connectivity and power) are, of course, of paramount importance. However, once that infastructure is in place, if it is to be used to its full extent - for which it must be maintained - training is one of the key issues.
Participatory ICT training in Zambia
In December 2008, Aptivate facilitated a three-week ICT training at a CAMFED-run summer school in Samfya province (Zambia). One hundred and fifty young women attended the summer school. The majority of the students had left school and had no experience with computers. However, most had a mobile phone, and a few had even used their phone to browse the internet.
The short time frame and the lack of prior exposure meant that it was impossible to transmit anywhere near enough knowledge to equip students to deal with most ICT situations. A key element of the training was therefore to employ a participatory approach that did not aim to "teach" students, but rather to foster participation and inquiry-based learning. The training consisted of a graded programme to provide basic skills to all students, more skills to a smaller group of thirty students, and yet more in-depth skills to just four local trainers, who would then be able to run the resource centre and continue to train students.
The facilitators taught classes of thirty students in a 15-seat computer lab. Sharing hardware works well as a pedagogical tool as students are encouraged to help eachother. If one person in the pair took over (because, say, they were able to type a bit faster), this provided an excellent opportunity to discuss the need to give everybody a fair chance and to let them explore for themselves, rather than just telling them what to do. Storytelling and role play - in a mix of English and Bemba (the local language) - were also important elements of the teaching to introduce new concepts, such as privacy issues for email.[1]
[edit] Increasing access to resources: technical solutions
This section contains the second set of stories gathered, which had a focus on technical aspects.
[edit] Appropriate devices
Low-cost devices: Rwanda and One Laptop Per Child
Rwanda has adopted the policy of introducing cheap laptops in primary schools through the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project. This story was contributed by Gerald Rwagasana, who is a member of the OLPC Steering Committee. The government intends to buy laptops for all primary school pupils so that by 2015 every child should be able to use a laptop for learning. The project began in December 2008.
This is a forward-looking decision, but one that will not be easy to implement. There are many issues to be resolved, such as: lack of electricity in most schools, lack of infrastructure in some schools, lack of connectivity, the need for teacher training, the need for maintenance - and, of course, the cost of purchasing millions of laptops. (In the beginning the cost per unit was USD100; now it is USD200). The contributor added that, despite these problems, "We must try to do what we can. We must be always positive and keep in mind that nothing is impossible."
There was much discussion on the mailing list regarding the OLPC initiative.[2] It highlighted the need to make a distinction between providing access to computers, and providing access to learning resources, the internet or, indeed, to education. For instance, one needs to consider the cost of purchasing a computer, compared to the total cost of ownership of that computer within an educational institution (i.e. the cost of electricity, internet connectivity, maintenance, repairs, appropriate staff training, etc.).
Walking in Liberia: the potential of hand-held devices
Cliff Missen visited Liberia recently to install an eGranary lab at the medical school. He contributed this story about his visit:
Having lived in Liberia many years earlier, I spent my evenings wandering around the packed residential areas looking for old friends. It was dark. There was no moon and the electricity had been off for years. It was so dark that people would bump into each other even in the uncrowded streets. Every once in awhile there would be a single lit candle that would help guide us pedestrians, but more often there was the eerie blue, green glow of a cell phone. I'd stop and talk to those with cell phones. (Largely because I could see their faces and they could see mine to better understand my awkward attempts at Liberian English.) It turns out that they were not making phone calls. They didn't have credit on their handheld to make calls. But they were negotiating the menus, reading the user's manual, playing games, and making ringtones. I thought, "If only we had books, health infomation, and lectures in local languages on those things..."
There are some small eGranaries for the World Dental Federation and Ponseti International that fit onto a chip the size of a little fingernail. They contain "only" 200,000 web pages, books and videos, and they are remarkably portable. USB flash drive versions can hold a million documents.
Cliff comments:
There's been a lot of discussion about using cell phones for Internet. This may be a solution for some types of communication needs, but I doubt that many people are going to spend hours of their precious airtime reading a book or listening to a podcast - even if the cost of airtime drops considerably. However, we could distribute OERs and local content on $5 chips and turn every compatible cell phone into a tiny digital library.
Cliff also contributed the short vision story used at the start and end of this chapter.
mLearning in Tecnológico de Monterrey
In this story, José Vladimir Burgos Aguilar shared some results of the mobile learning initiative that was started in 2006 at the Virtual University of the Tecnológico de Monterrey (ITESM) in Mexico. Initially, in 2007, one Master's programme was enriched with mobile resources and learning materials, which were made available through podcasts, text (SMS) alerts and educational messages to mobile phones, and access to courses with audiovisual instructional content and learning resources (i.e. audiolectures, audiobooks, videolectures, videoconferences and videoclips). By 2008 the mobile learning strategy had grown to 14 Master's programmes, covering 77 courses, and reaching 14,593 students across five campuses through 3,500 mobile devices (BlackBerrys).
The success was the evolution from chalk and blackboard to blended and online education has been the commitment of teachers to change and adapt with the resources available, and to improve the way that they teach others. We are exploring new initiatives through the design of mobile learning environments to reach new audiences with Open Educational Resources (OER) in different educational levels like k-12 education and social programs, empowering teachers and social leaders through the creation of educational programs and strategies for sharing best practices through social networks, using the potential of multimedia learning, Internet and other information and communication technologies through our Community Learning Centers (http://www.cca.org.mx).
The Internet connection is used to "upgrade" courses, content and learning resources. Resources can be downloaded for offline consultation through a pocket or mobile device like a mobile phone or digital music player, exploring new spaces and access points for learning.
[edit] Appropriate bandwidth and bandwidth management
Aptivate: the human side to bandwidth
This story was contributed by Alan Jackson from Aptivate, an NGO focussing on the global use of ICTs and particularly bandwidth and power issues. It responds in part to earlier comments regarding the challenges of electricity, connectivity, teacher training and maintenance. On the one hand, there is a need to address global disparities in access. But at the same time, we should not ignore how to make better use of what is available right now.
There is a human side to bandwidth. Bandwidth must be viewed as a shared, and often scarce, resource. If you cannot immediately increase your bandwidth you can think about how it is used, how it is shared, who uses it and what it is used for. Through effective bandwidth management and optimisation (BMO) the effective use of existing connections can be vastly improved.
The last ATICS report found that the majority of African universities did not have an effective "Acceptable Use Policy" (AUP). An AUP is an important part of a bandwidth management policy. For instance, is it acceptable within a university for students to be downloading copyrighted music for non-educational purposes while others are unable to download research papers because they are competing for the connection? Users must realise how their actions on-line affect the access of their colleagues.
It is useful to think of effective bandwidth management requiring three main elements which we call the "BMO triangle". These are policy, monitoring and tools. For more on this, see the Creative Commons book How To Accelerate Your Internet. The authors discuss all aspects of the BMO triangle, describing various tools, techniques and approaches.
It is useful to use a Content Delivery Chain model as a framework for thinking about bandwidth issues. We refer to this as a chain because success is dependent on the weakest link. It is a simple idea and looks likes this:
Content -> Connection -> Local Network -> User
It would be a mistake to concentrate solely on the connection and not spend equal effort considering the other links in the chain:
- Content: content providers have their role to play. They must ensure that content is usable over existing connections. Aptivate has written web design guidelines that describe techniques for optimising on-line content.
- Local network: BMO, which we mentioned above, is something that needs to be carried out at the local network level.
- Users: users are also critical. User behaviour is the largest factor determining the effectiveness of any Internet connection.
As an example, using web-based email, like Hotmail or Yahoo!, can add a massive overhead to the size of an email, sometimes multiplying its size by a factor of one hundred or more. A university in the UK might typically have email take less than 5% of its Internet bandwidth. However an institution that relies solely on web-based email - and there are many - can see 25% or more of its bandwidth taken by email.
Users can empower themselves by using bandwidth optimising tools. For instance Aptivate hosts a free web-based service called Loband that reformats any web page into a text-only form that radically reduces its size. Adobe also offer a similar service for PDF files. For OER we may want to think about transcoding services for other types of media (video, audio, composite learning objects, etc), which many providers are offering.
Finally, as food for thought and as an example of effective bandwidth use, one may download the entire works of Shakespeare as compressed text (only 2MB) from http://www.it.usyd.edu.au/~matty/Shakespeare/shakespeare.tar.gz (or http://www.brouhaha.com/~eric/tgz.html). It is possible to download six average web pages only for the same bandwidth (see http://www.websiteoptimization.com/speed/tweak/average-web-page/ for web page size information).
[edit] Increasing access to resources: hybrid solutions
Ending the Internet obsession: identifying hybrid information delivery solutions to serve the poor
This is the second story contributed by Cliff Missen, Director of the WiderNet Project, a non-profit service group based at the University of Iowa. Since 2000, WiderNet has provided IT training to over 4,000 people in sub-Saharan Africa. Volunteers have refurbished over 1,200 computers and have put in over 10,000 hours developing the offline eGranary Digital Library. The library, now installed at 275 locations worldwide, contains over 10 million digital resources that have been copied, with permission, from the web so that the collection can be made freely available over local area networks to users without Internet connectivity.
Cliff's interest is in developing multi-tiered, hybrid solutions to deliver information to the poorest people on the planet. Understanding that the digital divide is really a pernicious economic divide, WiderNet seeks low-cost, high impact solutions that are locally affordable and sustainable.
Over the last ten years, there have been hundreds of demonstration projects that deliver a few computers and a smattering of Internet connectivity to a handful of people. This is nice, but having seen computers sent to Mars and Internet connectivity delivered to remote sites in the Amazon and Antarctica, we knew that this was possible. The challenge is to scale computer access, information access and IT skills to the billions of people - health care practitioners, students, policy makers, entrepreneurs - in the majority of the world.
Cliff writes:
One of the lessons learned over the years is that there is no one "user" and no single solution. In some places, for some people, electricity is adequate. For others, even for different economic classes in the same location, electricity is highly problematic. For some, Internet connectivity is available but expensive and slow. For others, adequate Internet connectivity is simply impossible without spending millions on infrastructure. (And more often than not, if such a sum were actually available, a community would probably choose to spend the money on health-giving or income-generating investments.) For some organizations, that have trained and talented technologists with ongoing salary support, open source software makes sense. For others, off-the-shelf solutions make them productive faster, using common tools with which the broader community is familiar.It can be aggravating to see how some initiatives, like One Laptop Per Child, purposely confuse access to a computer as access to the Internet. In many communities, the cost of adequate Internet connectivity is more expensive, per person, than the computers themselves.
Cliff remains firmly convinced that the best "bang for the buck" for most communities is to build local communication and information networks. External information has its value, but, as the GSM revolution has shown us, most communication needs are local. It is critical to build capacity to share locally generated and locally stored information. For most institutions in developed countries, local network traffic is 7-9 times that of Internet traffic - and, since they own the networks, they do not pay costly "rent" to Internet bandwidth providers to access the bulk of their information. The pursuit of Internet-centric solutions automatically marginalizes those who cannot afford it. The challenge is to develop a hybrid suite of on- and off-line solutions that meet a wide range of information needs and environmental constraints.
The ever-growing eGranary Digital Library includes dozens of OER sites and demonstrates how effectively offline information stores can serve poorly connected communities. In early 2009 WiderNet installed a computer lab and eGranary Digital Library at the Dalai Lama's schools in Dharamsala, India. The teachers had been struggling with a slow, unreliable, shared 1mbit Internet connection for more than a year. They were experiencing a common disconnect: all of the external experts had told them that a connection to the Internet would be a panacea for their information access and teacher training needs, yet they mostly experienced frustration with their tiny but expensive wireless Internet connection. With the installation of a 100mbit switch and an eGranary Digital Library in their 12-computer lab, they had over 1,200mbit of bandwidth to access millions of documents in the blink of an eye. After opening hundreds of pages within minutes the teachers said, "Ahha! Now we get it! This is what the experts were talking about!"
Recently, WiderNet has been developing a "Community Information Platform" (sponsored by Intel), to make it easy for subscribers to set up and edit an unlimited number of local web sites, add local content, create Moodle courses, develop Drupal sites, and implement a host of Web 2.0 applications on their eGranary.
Finally, while few people paying for Internet bandwidth in developed countries would think of sharing it freely with their neighbours, several subscribers have choosen to share their eGranary with anyone within reach of their wired and wireless networks.[3]
The ideas and solutions presented in this discussion demonstrate the potential of OER, offline information storage, bandwidth optimization and asynchronous information updates to create an inexpensive and powerful information delivery platform for a wide variety of institutions in underserved areas all around the world - an "Internet extender". Access can be scaled up by mixing in solar-powered systems, refurbished computers, low-powered laptops, handheld devices, kiosks and community centres. The technical solutions are at hand. Now it is a matter of finding the right mix to serve people appropriately.
Adapting a portable media player as a learning tool
At eLearning 2007 in Nairobi, Kenya, and at a Commonwealth of Learning (COL) workshop also in Nairobi, Moyomola Bolarin demonstrated to the mobile learning group how a child’s toy - a black hawk portable media player - could be used to make a learning resource accessible where there was no access to a computer. It received an impressive amount of feedback from African participants.
Moyomola Bolarin is a Multimedia/Training Material Specialist at the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA), Aleppo, Syria. He conducted an ICT resources pilot survey involving around 120 trainees from 21 countries in Central and West Asia and North Africa. The survey revealed that many respondents who did not have access to a computer or who used a shared computer in the work place owned mobile phones that were capable of recording and audio and video playback, and/or an iPod. Some had bought PlayStation Portable (PSP) or other Portable Media Player (PMP) devices for their children to play games.
That prompted Moyomola to start converting learning resources developed initially for online/CD-ROM delivery into a format that could be played on a PMP/PSP or mobile phone. Moyomola developed a keen interest in portable mobile learning devices - the different kinds that are available, their features and associated content media. Some cost as little as USD25. The disappointing aspect, as a learning specialist and instructional designer, was that there were little or no structured learning content for any of these devices. All that was available were games, movies and music. This prompted him to ask why - why is the education sector not embracing, adopting and adapting learning content for these technologies in the same way as the music, movie and gaming industries?
Looking ahead, one could imagine a scenario where instructional videos could be downloaded from OER repositories to be viewed on a PMP/PSP. Instructors could prepare audio and video content and provide course guidelines and assignments or discussion points in text e-books. Moyomola has used his child’s device to record educational TV programmes. He has also downloaded online learning resources (e.g. instructional videos on YouTube) and converted them into a format that could be played on the device.
Some might comment that this solution still relies on Internet access. Moyomola replies: "... when we come to realize that technology is not an end in itself but a means to an end, we will begin to look into all options and choose the best technology for a given situation."
Effective technology-supported learning is not a matter of using the most advanced technologies. What is important is the ability of the trainer to combine and use the technologies that are available and with which people are comfortable, with minimal operational cost to the learners, to bring about meaningful learning in a given situation. For example, the use of handheld, solar-powered digital devices may be a workable hybrid technology-based learning strategy for remote community schools without ready access to electricity, internet and computer resources.
Many countries have internet connectivity at least in the major cities; most have established Education Management Information Systems. This suggests that Cliff Missen’s "Community Information Platform" could be combined with handheld digital player devices. OER could be downloaded at education/information resource centres in the major cities, reformatted for other digital devices and made available to users through community learning resource centres, a Community Information Platform, or through school networks.
Finally, Moyomola suggests that UNESCO might consider initiating a study into the effectiveness of a "one PMP or PSP per child" scheme.
[edit] Increasing access to resources: lessons from initiatives in southern Africa
Kim Tucker presented an overview of several initiatives in southern Africa that provide access to learning materials (among other resources). Some have also been designed to promote collaboration and communication.
The Digital Doorway was inspired by the Hole in the Wall project. Both employ the concept of "minimally invasive education". By providing access to the hardware, children learnt to use computers and even how to read via peer learning and experimentation. A few children in the community with a little knowledge, natural ability, and a lot of collective curiosity led to new opportunities for many. The Digital Doorway addresses the need for robust computers to enable access in some southern African communities and highlights unexpected learning and possible pedagogical advances. The concept is evolving continually and there are a growing number of deployments in South Africa. There are anecdotes of learners queuing up daily for hours for a short time on a Digital Doorway, and curious parents walking up to 12km to find out what was keeping their children away from home (but off the streets).
Wireless Africa enables communities to set up their own wireless networks. Starting from a position of "community-owned information networks", enabling communities to empower themselves with knowledge, this project is now being extended to enable community innovation including (for example) entrepreneurial services for schools.
Freedom Toaster is a facility to enable access to CDs/DVDs of FLOSS (Free/Libre and Open Source Software) and educational resources for those with limited Internet access but access to PCs (e.g. at the school computer lab or at a community centre, etc.).
... a local hands-on ICT deployment, training and support organization, ... to empower youth through the Internet and provide a sustainable low-cost technology solution for Internet to all Namibian schools.
During the course of this initiative, which has deployed computers in more than 350 schools, a variety of approaches have been used to enable Internet access. The computers are generally arranged around circular tables to encourage interaction. The types of learning resources available are a combination of OER and non-free resources. Few are localized, but many are of great interest to the learners, most notably a local custom snapshot of Wikipedia (probably the SOS Children's edition). A general observation is that learners are exposed to parts of learning resources in English but proceed to talk about the material in more familiar language(s) - an example of constructing collective understanding.
MobilEd was designed as a research project on mobile education using the most basic phones, which are used widely in developing countries. The first prototypes used Wikipedia as the source learning material. The process was to send a one-word query via SMS. The system would then phone the caller back and read from Wikipedia using a text-to-speech engine. The technology was designed to work in both directions (i.e. users could contribute text to Wikipedia) and could accommodate multimedia with a little extra thought and work (and a more sophisticated, more expensive - less common - phone). The concept is being extended in various directions.
A system for caching internet page requests and emails to be sent and received until the evening, when dial-up becomes more affordable. Alternatively, schools without access to the internet can have emails and internet pages delivered on a USB storage device by a human courier.
A service for learners to ask questions about their maths homework via SMS and receive hints from connected educators. The service could be expanded, so instead of "Dr Math" there could be a "Professor Sociology", or another subject, with mentors providing hints using access to OER that are not available to those on the SMS network.[4]
The original Mamelodi Broadband E-Learning Pilot Project aimed to explore educational opportunities between five schools in the Pretoria area using a Motorola Canopy Radio Network. The project is now expanding to include Dinaledi schools along a radio corridor in the Mpumalanga region of Bronkhurstspruit, Witbank and Middleburg.
More and more South Africans have access to telephones, while most do not have reliable access to the Internet or even printed media. A telephone-based, speech-driven information system can build on existing infrastructure and communication methods to connect all South Africans to the benefits of information technology.
Some of the technology being developed may be available later in 2009.
[An] Open Educational Resources (OER) materials adaptation initiative that has developed and piloted a six unit maths teaching and learning module called, Teaching and Learning in Diverse Classrooms. Six higher education institutions are using the materials in a variety of teacher education programmes.... We think that it’s important not only to produce and disseminate materials, but also to do this through sharing expertise and resources.
The project addresses the problem of a lack of local skills and knowledge for adapting and revising OER by setting up a community of educators and asking members of the community to focus on course design, rather than materials adaptation. For the latter, the project contracted a materials development and content expert.
[edit] Lessons learned
In an analysis of the lessons learned, Kim Tucker suggests that most of these projects were designed to overcome particular barriers or respond to the needs of a particular group. Looking at the initiatives overall, however, it can be seen that there is value in having access at multiple levels, for example to:
- raise awareness of technology;
- stimulate curiosity and local discussion about ICT readiness;
- see how others structure courses, even if the actual content has not been adapted for local use.
These projects can also result in unexpected community-led innovation. It needs only a few community members to succeed in using equipment and resources effectively, and then to channel some of their knowledge back into the community.
A common limitation in some of the initiatives is the degree to which participants could really engage with the resources and become user-producers. Kim asserts that participation in peer production of knowledge and learning resources is the next step towards participation in the global knowledge society - towards equality.
Late at night in a remote village without electricity, a small child laying on a mat, knees in the air, elbows splayed, working cleverly to make a tent out of his blanket and dimming his screen as much as possible so that his mom can't tell that he's staying up late and reading a book on his handheld. (Contributed by Cliff Missen.)
[edit] Notes
- ↑ For more information see http://www.sciencemedianetwork.org/wiki/Samfya.
- ↑ For more information, see the conversation snippets on the wiki.
- ↑ For more about the concept of eGranary "Knowledgespheres", see this video on YouTube.
- ↑ There is more on taking this forward on WikiEducator.

