- ABOUT US
- FUNDING
- OUR WORK
-
PRESS CENTRE
- Blogs
- FAQs
- Logos
-
Newsletters
- February 2009
- January 2009
- December 2008
- November 2008
- October 2008
- September 2008
- August 2008
- July 2008
- June 2008
- May 2008
- April 2008
- March 2008
- February 2008
- December 2007
- November 2007
- October 2007
- September 2007
- August 2007
- July 2007
- June 2007
- May 2007
- April 2007
- March 2007
- February 2007
- January 2007
- Photo Gallery
- Press Releases
- Resources
- Contact Us
Web ranking of universities
According to the latest edition of The Web Ranking of World Universities, published by the Spanish National Research Council (or CSIC’s Cybermetrics Lab), 123 North American universities are among the world’s top 200 universities. Europe comes in a very poor second position with 61 universities, while the Asia-Pacific region manages a total of 14 universities. The league table, produced twice yearly since 2004, ranks the top 4 000 higher education institutions around the world according to the size and quality of their presence on the Internet and its wider impact. Isidro Aguillo, co-ordinator of the ranking, believes the size of the North American advantage points to a digital divide between regions that cannot be explained simply as a question of resources. ‘We often talk about an academic digital divide between the rich and the poor – so American universities will always score higher than African universities,’ he says, ‘but our league table reveals a divide between the rich and the rich and this is not a matter of resources, it is a matter of leadership in the Internet.’ American universities do not only make more information available via their websites, but the information is also more relevant and user-friendly. Online university libraries are a case in point. ‘In Spain, these tend to be little more than a database,’ says Aguillo. ‘In the US, they are much, much more and include things like reading lists and other things which facilitate students’ work so they do not have to visit the library to get what they need’. French and Japanese universities make a particularly poor showing in the league table. Many French university websites were found to be badly designed and sometimes downright confusing, while Japanese universities publish very little content in English.
US youth turning to gaming generation
A study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project has concluded that computer games foster social interaction and civic engagement and that there was no evidence that they incited users to violence. The study, based on a telephone survey of 1 102 teenagers aged 12 to 17, found that almost all teens (99% of boys and 94% of girls that were interviewed) play video games and that for most teenagers computer gaming is a social activity and a major component of their overall social experience. Nearly two-thirds play video games to socialise face-to-face with friends and family, while just over a quarter said they play with Internet friends. The study noted that the most popular game played by US teenagers was Guitar Hero, in which users play a plastic guitar device by hitting correct note sequences of songs. The other most popular games were Halo 3, Madden NFL, Solitaire and Dance Dance Revolution.
Semantic map
The Internet recently got smarter with the release of a ‘semantic map’ that teaches computers the meanings behind words, thereby giving computers a vocabulary more than 10 times larger than that of a typical US college graduate. Cognition Technologies licensed the map to software creators interested in producing programmes that ‘understand’ words based on tenses and sentence context – in much the same way as the human brain does. ‘We have taught the computer virtually all the meanings of words and phrases in the English language’, Cognition Technologies chief executive Scott Jarus said. ‘This is clearly a building block for Web 3.0, or what is known as the Semantic Web; it has taken 30 years’. When applied to Internet searches, semantic technology delivers results oriented to what people seem to be seeking instead of simply matching words used to online content. Cognition’s semantic map is already used in a LexisNexis Concordance ‘e-discovery’ software to sift through documents amassed during evidence phases of trials.
Interactive whiteboards as a tool to improve education in Africa
At a recent digital summer school held in Tunisia and organised by the Global Digital Solidarity Fund (DSF) in collaboration with the Association for the Development of Education in Africa (ADEA), delegations from 16 Francophone countries (viz, Algeria, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, Djibouti, Gabon, Guinea, Mali, Mauritius, Morocco, Niger, Senegal, Togo, and Tunisia) explored the interactive whiteboard (IWB) both as a teaching tool and as a means of meeting the challenges faced by education in Africa. The delegations assessed the potential of IWBs as a tool for improving teaching methods, facilitating access to educational resources and fostering content production by teachers. The meeting also covered a number of issues relating to IWBs and the factors that determine whether it is used successfully: physical and technical constraints (electric power and connectivity) to the use of the IWB; financing the costs of deployment and maintenance; compatibility between systems and development of common standards; supply of ‘turnkey’ tools; software interface and ergonomics; adaptation of tools to facilitate content production by teachers; adaptation of content to local contexts and to African languages; setting up a francophone portal for the sharing of resources; validation of the digital resources posted online; development of teacher communities; establishing tools for sharing and improving resources (forums, blogs, wikis); and the importance of supporting measures such as training for teachers.
Business school goes podcasting route
The University of Pretoria’s Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) is now offering a half-hour packaged podcast known as GIBS FN, which features interviews with leading local business people and international thought leaders. The objective is to drive more traffic to the business school’s website, which is its main portal of interaction with students, potential students and visitors to the campus. When viewing www.gibs.co.za, it is possible to download an MP3 file, to listen to individual segments via streaming audio or even download selected video files. According to the business school, reactions have been overwhelmingly positive.
UCT business school launches blog
The University of Cape Town’s Graduate School of Business (UCT GSB), through its Executive Education unit, has become one of the first business schools in South Africa to launch a blogging platform that will enable some of the world’s leading business and leadership experts at the School to interact with business people online. According to Dave Duarte, one of the architects of the blogging platform, the UCT GSB has taken a bold step with the new online initiative. ‘With this initiative Executive Education at the UCT GSB is giving anyone with an Internet connection and an interest in business an opportunity to engage with the experience, knowledge and cutting edge research of top academics – this is a level of public engagement that very few top business schools in the world can match’. The UCT GSB blogs are part of a broader social-media strategy which will see the School also participating in various other online channels such as podcasts and video sharing websites. Duarte said there is a global trend in higher education to share content and engage people on issues and that the blogs will be of value to the business school in more than one way. ‘On one level it is an innovative knowledge management system which places valuable information in a central place as a resource for others, including those interested in finding out more about the issues dealt with on UCT GSB courses and who want to interact with faculty before they decide to embark on a programme. It also allows those who complete UCT GSB courses to sustain dialogue and explore ideas once they emerge from the training’, Duarte said.
Open source virtual classroom
The University of the Western Cape (UWC) and the African Virtual Open Initiatives and Resources (AVOIR) project have recently released version 1.0.1 of the Chisimba/KEWL3 Realtime Virtual Classroom. AVOIR is a collaboration of 13 African universities specialising in creating free software relevant to African users. The virtual classroom application allows presentations to be uploaded in PowerPoint or OpenOffice format and made available online as well as embedded in websites or blogged. The Realtime Tools allow the presentation to be picked up and given live on the site, in a realtime virtual classroom setting. The latest release allows presenters to share desktop applications in realtime with other participants. Importing presentations into the application is a one-click operation. The virtual classroom software also allows users to import graphics as well as transfer multiple documents. Downloadable versions of the software will be available in Debian, RPM, Java and Windows executable formats. The Debian version is currently available. AVOIR project leader, Derek Keats of UWC, says that this is the first application of its kind in the world that is free software. ‘It demonstrates the remarkable, world class talent that we have in Africa and what can be achieved when we collaborate to accomplish something’.
CSIR and the University of KwaZulu-Natal develop driverless cars
South Africa’s Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) is partnering with the University of KwaZulu-Natal to develop an autonomous vehicle to compete in the 2010 DARPA Grand Challenge, a global competition for driverless vehicles that can navigate complex terrain without human intervention, sponsored by the United States’ Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which supports research that ‘bridges the gap between fundamental discoveries and their use for national security’. The South African team plans to automate two Baja Bugs for the 2010 Challenge, by equipping the vehicles with various sensors and positioning systems to enable them to determine all the characteristics of their environment to carry out the task assigned. The team’s participation is intended to generate visibility for both the CSIR and the university to attract top students and researchers/engineers to the institutions. According to CSIR mechatronics and micro- manufacturing research manager Riaan Coetzee, ‘the success of the project does not lie with winning the DARPA challenge. We want to attract and develop human and other resources through offering this exciting project’. The first DARPA Grand Challenge event was held in 2004 and featured a 228km desert course. Fifteen autonomous ground vehicles attempted the course, but none finished it. In the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge event, four autonomous vehicles successfully completed a 212km desert course under the required 10-hour limit, and DARPA awarded a US$2m prize to ‘Stanley’ from the Stanford University.
Global IT index
South Africa ranks 37th out of 66 countries in the world with regard to the 2008 IT industry competitive index, according to a study released by The Economist. The study assessed and compared the information technology (IT) industry environments of 66 countries to determine the extent to which they enabled IT sector competitiveness. The top ranked countries are the United States, Taiwan, the UK, Sweden and Denmark. According to Alastair de Wet, chairperson of the South African chapter of the Business Software Alliance, ‘South Africa has been identified, alongside Bulgaria, the Ukraine and Vietnam as an emerging outsourcing destination and through the realisation of faster, more reliable and more secure Internet access, we can look forward to receiving a significant boost with fast, competition-led infrastructure development’.
SA’s first space school
South Africa’s first space and aeronautical technologies school could be built in the Western Cape. News of the project emerged at the second SA International Aerospace Symposium recently held in Stellenbosch. According to Ron Beyers, CSIR researcher, the project was still at an early stage and had generated much interest from key players in the industry, including international ones. ‘A preliminary investigation has highlighted the Western Cape as a potential site due to the presence of strategic aerospace industries’. However, ‘with the recently launched space park in the Tshwane area, this will be investigated as well’.
Educational spelling game
Researchers at the Meraka Institute of the CSIR recently released an educational spelling game available in all of South Africa’s 11 official languages. OpenSpell is the brainchild of researcher and linguist, Dr Madelaine Plauché and open source software developer Richard Carlson. OpenSpell was developed by Plauché, Carlson and the CSIR’s human language technologies group in consultation with primary school educators from Gauteng. The game consists of a simple interactive computer- based activity with feedback to learners in the form of fun rewards or penalties. OpenSpell is available for downloading free of charge at www.brainhotel.org/openspell.
One teacher, one laptop
The Department of Education’s (DoE) plan to give every teacher in the country a subsidy to buy a laptop has elicited sharp criticism. The decision that about 345 000 teachers may each buy a laptop is part of the career-specific dispensation that was agreed upon this year by the DoE and the trade unions. According to David Quall, former headmaster and DA Gauteng spokesperson on education, the decision had not been properly considered. ‘Can the department spend this much money on computers while the country needs about 56 000 classrooms?’