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Teenagers’ Internet socialising not all negative
A new study by the MacArthur Foundation, conducted in the USA over a three-year period, shows that new media are an inextricable part of young people’s lives, and that while parents may be concerned about the amount of time spent by children on MySpace or sending SMSs, this is actually giving them the technological skills and literacy they need to succeed in the contemporary world. They are also learning social skills, such as how to get along with others, and how to manage a public identity. Teenagers also use new media to explore new romantic relationships, through interactions casual enough to ensure no loss of face if the other party is not interested. Lead researcher, Ms. Ito, at the department of informatics at the University of California, Irvine, said that some parental concern about the dangers of Internet socialising might result from a misperception. ‘Those concerns about predators and stranger danger have been overblown. There’s been some confusion about what kids are actually doing online. Mostly, they’re socialising with their friends, people they’ve met at school or camp or sports.’ The study also found that, while online socialising is ubiquitous, many young people move on to a period of tinkering and exploration, as they look for information online, customise games or experiment with digital media production. The most intense Internet use is what the study calls ‘geeking out’, in which young people delve deeply into a particular area of interest, often through a connection to an online interest group.
Media companies to help promote the One Laptop per Child project
The nonprofit group One Laptop per Child has got off to a rocky start. Now it thinks an advertising campaign will give a lift to the organisation’s effort to place low-cost laptops in the hands of children in developing nations. About 500 000 of the group’s light and rugged machines are being used in 31 countries, including Afghanistan, Cambodia, Ethiopia, Iraq, Lebanon, Peru, Rwanda and Uruguay. But the cost of the laptops, at just less than $200 each, has been too high for many countries, and the number of laptops distributed has fallen short of early projections. According to Nicholas Negroponte, chairman of the education and computing project, an additional 500 000 of these XO laptops are in transit or being built, and should be in use by early next year. The marketing campaign intends to sharply increase those numbers. Television time, billboard space and magazine pages are being donated by media companies, including the News Corporation, CBS and Time Warner. The goal, says Mr. Negroponte, is to greatly increase the donation programme, ‘Give a Laptop. Get a Laptop. Change the World.’ For $399, a person can donate an XO laptop and also receive one. Alternatively, donors can simply donate $199, to give a child a laptop, at www.amazon.com/xo. Mr. Negroponte is talking to Yoko Ono about using lifelike digital images of John Lennon in advertisements discussing the opportunity to end the digital divide between rich and poor nations. It is hoped that marketing will help move One Laptop per Child move toward its original goal of a $100 laptop, which is possible only with the economies of high-volume manufacturing, ie, by selling a lot of computers.
Skills shortage at South African universities
A snap survey, conducted by the Sunday Times, found that South African universities are haemorrhaging lecturers and are being forced to pay professors in some departments huge salaries to retain their services. The survey found that there were almost 600 vacant posts for professors and lecturers in five universities (University of Johannesburg, which needs 142 lecturers and 28 associate and full professors in nine faculties; University of Pretoria, which has advertised 127 posts since January; University of Cape Town, which still has 75 academic vacancies after 40 resignations this year; University of Zululand, which needs 31 lecturers and 14 professors; and University of Limpopo, which needs 182 academic staff). Staff from the country's 23 higher education institutions are being poached by the private sector and they are battling to attract replacements, leaving wide gaps in accounting, statistics, engineering and health sciences departments.
New online university
A group of five academics worldwide has announced their intention to open a new kind of online university. The Peer2Peer University (P2PU) had no intentions of registering as a university. It saw itself as a ‘vibrant community in which groups of self-learners and tutors work together to emulate some of the functions of an academic institution in a peer-to-peer fashion’. The lecturers would be volunteers and the courses low-cost, with the P2PU ‘safe-guarding’ a student's sign-up fee until they had finished a course, at which time they would choose how it would be spent, from a donation to a charity to the cost of an external test or exam. The university has already signed up eight advisers, most of whom are resident academics at traditional universities, including the director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's education and technology office, Vijay Kumar, and Mozilla Foundation executive director Mark Surman. A University of the Western Cape (UWC) academic, Jan Philipp Schmidt, is one of the group of five founders. He said that response to the project had been ‘overwhelming’, with academics from all over the world wanting to run courses. Commenting on the initiative, The Chronicle of Higher Education, a US education weekly journal, said ‘The idealistic project might be a long shot - especially considering that several similar efforts have failed to take off in recent years. And some experts say the project could face resistance from traditional colleges that won't like employees trading on their names and reputations.’ The academics do have legal permission from their institutions to take part in the project.
The state of science, engineering and ICT in Africa
African researchers produce only 1.8% of the world's total scholarly publications - half as many as Latin America and substantially less than India - according to an article in the journal Scientometrics on the state of science and technology across the continent. South Africa and Egypt produced half of all Africa's internationally recognised publications between 2000 and 2004, while 88% of inventive activity was concentrated in South Africa. Africa performed even worse in terms of inventions, producing only 633 patents awarded by the US Patents and Trademarks Office during the five years - less than one per 1 000 inventions protected in the USA. The continent is lagging substantially behind the rest of the world in science, technology and innovation which underpin the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and are prerequisites for development. The article recommends that African governments pay more attention to developing national research systems. An Africa-wide scheme for research grants and scientific awards has been given high priority for financial backing by top African and European officials. Officials also agreed to give priority to a project strengthening Africa's ability to use science and technology to deal with food security problems, using the Nile basin as a pilot case for efforts to combine food production with effective water and land management. The projects are among six ‘early deliverables’ highlighted by African Union (AU) and European Union (EU) officials to receive support from a wide range of public and private sources, at regional, national and international levels. The first objective of the research and scientific awards project is to set up a research programme to ‘promote sustainable science and technology research for Africa's technical, economic and social development.’ The six highlighted projects include two related to space. One — Kopernicus-Africa — would focus on remote sensing satellites for environmental and security tasks. The second would build capacity within the AU Commission to use the geospatial sciences for a range of applications, including natural resources, food security, crisis management and renewable energies. The remaining "early deliverable" projects relate to information and communication technologies. The AfricaConnect project will seek to integrate the African research community at both regional and international levels by improving bandwidth. And the African Internet Exchange System (AXIS) will support the growth of a continental African Internet infrastructure. The Polytechnic of Namibia (PON), in association with the Petroleum and Training Fund (Petrofund), has started a campaign that involves girls in the fields of information communication technology and engineering. A workshop for 40 high school learners was held to coincide with the campaign launch. The objective of the programme is to reach out to female high school learners in grades 11 and 12 and expose them to technical disciplines and career opportunities available to women in engineering. Presently women represent less than 10% of all engineers in Namibia. Petrofund has spent over N$4m on projects that improve access, quality and equity, in science, mathematics, engineering and other related technologies in Namibia over the past 14 years. The endeavour should also help to alleviate a critical shortage of engineers in Namibia that experts predict will hinder the country's potential for technological advances in the future, as outlined in the country's blueprint for growth, Vision 2030.
Using MXit as a medium for mathematics education in South Africa
It is claimed that traditional maths clubs and maths extra lessons often do not work in South Africa for a variety of reasons. A paper by Laurie Butgereit of the Meraka Institute examines a maths club or maths help system which is being run via MXit. Learners use MXit to contact the tutor during specified time slots. The tutor uses a traditional computer and keyboard in his/her office to handle queries from many learners. The learners remain anonymous and are not aware of the other learners using the system.
Open educational resources (OER)
Despite the fact that learning resources are often considered as key intellectual property, more and more institutions and individuals are sharing digital learning resources over the Internet openly and without cost, in the form of open educational resources (OER). The reasons for this trend, according to an OECD study include the acceleration by OER of the blurring of formal and informal learning, and of educational and broader cultural activities. It can also expand access to learning for non- traditional groups of students and for lifelong learners. The study also warns that rapid pace of development of the OER movement means that it will soon have an impact on all higher education institutions, thereby calling for management of institutions to consider the risk of doing nothing.
Technology and learning
The University of California is to launch a research centre to investigate the relationship between new technologies and academic achievement. A $10m grant (provided over five years) by the US department of education’s Institute of Education Sciences will enable researchers to conduct initial studies on the effects of two-dimensional games on middle school students’ mathematical skills. The intention is to expand the work to include science.
Vital conservation data available on a laptop
A just-released new United Nations-backed online database bridges vast distances with the click of a mouse. The product, a partnership between the UN Environment Programme’s World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC) and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), a network of more than 1 000 government and non-governmental member organisations (NGOs), allows users to zoom in, fly over and explore more than 100 000 sites via Google Earth. The database can be used, for instance, by scientists studying the globe’s protected land and marine estate, fire-fighters on alert to douse a forest blaze, and even tourists planning a holiday in a national park. According to UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner: ‘The information in this new system is at the heart of every decision we make at the nation, regional and global level for conservation.’ Speaking as one of the Proteus Partners, a coalition of oil, gas, mineral and mining and information technology companies which have contributed more than $2m to the initiative, Liz Rogers from energy company BP, cited the benefits the information can bring to their field: ‘Companies that have the potential to impact nature should invest in information that will ensure they can minimise their impact on nature and thereby lower their risk profile. Linking the information systems of the oil companies with those of conservation organisations so that we can avoid or minimise damage to protected areas and sensitive environments makes sense not only from an ethical perspective, but also from an economic one.’
Simulations that enhance learning
According to a Science article, ‘students learn better when they construct their own understanding of scientific ideas within the framework of their existing knowledge’. It is argued that in order to accomplish this process, students must be motivated to actively engage with the content and must be able to learn from that engagement. ‘Interactive computer simulations can meet both of these needs.’ Research of the Physics Education Technology (PhET) project has found that an important element of educationally effective simulations is that students view these simulations much as scientists view their research experiments. ‘The scientist approaches research as an enjoyable opportunity to explore basic concepts, as well as to challenge, correct, and add to his or her understanding of how the world works.’ Similarly, the student usually finds exploring the simulations fun and, through this exploration, discovers new ideas about the science. The PhET project has developed more than 80 interactive simulations, covering various topics in physics and real-world applications, such as the greenhouse effect and lasers. There are 16 simulations on chemistry topics, as well as several simulations for mathematics, biology, and earth sciences. PhET simulations run through standard Web browsers and can be integrated into a lecture, used with laboratories or as homework assignments, or used as informal resources. They are used worldwide and at all levels, from grade school to university courses.