Blogs und Wikis sind Neuland für afrikanische
Schüler
(Interview) In Sozialen Netzwerken im
Internet tauschen sich Familien, Freunde und Businesspartner
aus. Dabei profitieren sie von der Vielzahl der möglichen
Quellen. Was liegt da näher, als Social Networks auch
für Lern- und Bildungsplattformen zu nutzen? Iginio Gagliardone,
Projektmanager des UNESCO International Institute for Capacity
Building in Africa, sprach mit dem Team von eLearning Africa
über die Chancen der Vernetzung. Text in Englisch.
Social Networks exist on many levels and in a variety of
orientations, from family or dating networks over business
circles up to national or international interdisciplinary
contact networks. People within these networks share ideas,
contacts and opportunities for many different reasons. The
idea behind social networking is to benefit from the variety
of different sources, instead of uniting them for one single
goal as is done, for example, in lobbyist organizations.
The Internet has empowered social networking enormously. So
why not exploit their potential for delivering education and
training resources on the Internet, asks Iginio Gagliardone,
Project Manager at the UNESCO IICBA in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
He will investigate how two different but complementary resources,
such as on-line social networks and creative common licenses,
another important development stemming from the Open Source
and Open Content movement, can be put to work for consolidating
and disseminating educational resources on the Internet. The
eLearing Africa editorial team has had the chance to pose
a few questions to him in advance.
eLearning Africa: What do you consider the most important
social software innovations of the last years?
Iginio Gagliardone: Online social networks and the simple
applications that make them possible represent one of the
most successful examples of social engineering. It can be
argued that social software represents a translation of the
principles inspiring Free and Open Source Software (FOSS)
into another language. As FOSS is clustering intelligences
and energies of millions of developers around concrete projects
and applications, social software like “MeetUp”
is giving to “ordinary” citizens the opportunity
to experiment with the advantages of collaborative work in
extremely diverse domains.
The most important innovations in this field are the ones
created by the social networks themselves. Social software
is not complex and innovative per se but is what allows innovation
to proliferate among circles of people who share common knowledge
and passions.
eLA: Where do you see their potential for improving educational
resources in Africa?
IG: In Africa I see a great risk of wasting important resources
and intelligences. Various organizations are often engaged
in very similar projects without being aware of what the others
are doing.
That’s why we occasionally have to spend a lot of money
to have all the potential key players sitting around the same
table. Conferences sometimes do, in fact, update participants
about who is doing what and in creating partnerships, but
the follow ups are often a problem. How is it possible to
keep these people in touch, how to avoid wastage of resources?
Having a common support, a technology-enhanced platform for
continuing to work together can be a great help - something
like Wikipedia, where people meet, edit, update. But in this
case, not items of an encyclopedia but textbooks for school
children or manuals for university students.
eLA: Do you have any concrete examples for the use
or implementation of social software tools in the African
context?
Unfortunately I haven’t seen anything like this yet,
but this doesn’t mean that there aren’t groups
of people experimenting with these kinds of resources on the
Continent. Nevertheless, it must be said that the idea of
releasing papers, research and books under creative commons
licenses and sharing them among a group of experts who can
modify and improve them is relatively new everywhere in the
world.
Some examples can be found in the most advanced and innovative
academic circles. At Rice University in the US, for example,
these tools have been efficiently used to develop a project
named Connexions. I quote from their website: “Connexions
will offer an online library of networked content that will
allow instructors to pick and choose best-of-breed instructional
materials. Experts around the world will develop and contribute
modules of information specific to their own expertise. These
modules — which may take the form of individual chapters,
or even smaller sections of chapters — will act as a
giant, constantly evolving library of information that can
be tweaked to any given instructor's satisfaction. By selecting
specific modules and then using Connexion's free, XML-based
editing tools to modify the emphasis of a given course, instructors
will be able to create custom textbooks”.
eLA: Which role do collaborative tools like blogs,
wikis, etc. play in the African context - also with regard
to society, media, etc.
IG: Blogs and wikis are still new to the African context and
represent obscure words for many teachers and students.
In the case of media, the situation is different. These tools
are often perceived as a way to express alternative views
on society and everyday politics. The problem is that these
views still circulate among a niche of people and are sometimes
not exempted from inciting hatred.
Nevertheless the use of blogs for reporting demonstrates an
important fact: that motivations come before technology. Before
teaching to students how to use Word, Excel, or a blog, it’s
important to teach to them what they can do with them and
how these means will extend their opportunity to work for
a better future.
eLA: Mr Gagliardone, you are a Project Officer with
the UNESCO International Institute for Capacity Building in
Africa. What are the main tasks of the UNESCO IICBA organization
and what is your units function?
IG: UNESCO-IICBA’s main mission is to help teachers
in Africa provide quality education to their students. The
role of our unit in particular is to analyze what technology
can do to support this process, when possible.
In some cases we adopt much more traditional methods. We currently
have a project in Ethiopia with multigrade schools for providing
education in remote rural areas in the country. We don’t
think that computers connected together are always the answer.
Über Iginio Gagliardione
Iginio Gagliardone ist Projektmanager des UNESCO
International Institute for Capacity Building in Afrika.
Zuvor arbeitete er als Berater für die eGovernment-Projekte
des italienischen Ministeriums für Innovation und Technologie
in Rom. Zudem war er Koordinator der Europäischen Sektion
für Global Governance und Kommunikationsrechte. Das Projekt
zielte darauf, die Rechte der freien Rede und Veröffentlichung
zu fördern und so die Medienpolitik zu reformieren. Er
hat vielfältige Erfahrungen im internationalen Projektmanagement.
Sein Diplom machte er an der Universität Bologna und
erhielt außerdem ein Diplom von der italienischen Gesellschaft
für internationale Organisationen.
Das Interview ist zuerst erschienen auf eLearning-Africa.com.
Die Veröffentlichung erfolgt mit freundlicher Genehmigung.
Die eLearning Afrika Konferenz 2007 findet vom 28.
bis 30. Mai in Nairobi, Kenia statt.
- Zurück zur Rubrik "Medien & Kompetenz"
- Zum Forum "Medien & Kompetenz"
|
