In the current feature of OEAD-News, the journal of the Austrian agency for international mobility and cooperation in education, science and researchl, there are two articles featuring

Our member Margarete is busy writing her thesis and has in the course of this recently published a paper about her experiences in Ghana.

Grimus, M.; Ebner, M. Learning and Teaching with Mobile Devices – An Approach in Secondary Education in Ghana.
In: Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Mobile Learning 2014. IADIS (International Association for Development of the Information Society), Inmaculada Arnedillo Sánchez and Pedro Isaías (Eds.) March 2014.
ISBN: 978-989-8704-02-3 © 2014 IADIS, pp 66-74.

She has also held a presentation at the university of Graz about “Societal aspects of the information technology – mobile learning: chances in education for sub-sahara Africa, e.g. in Ghana”. Below you can watch it – it’s in German.

Gesellschaftliche Aspekte der Informationstechnologie: GADI: “Mobile Learning: Bildungschancen für Sub Sahara Afrika, zB. in Ghana”

Last month, at the international conference “Interactive and Competence-Orientated Education” in Brussels our member Margarete Grimus presented her article about education in Africa with a focus on ICT. The article is in German, the title “Lernen für ein verantwortliches Leben im globalen Horizont: Bildungsprojekte in Afrika” approximately translates to “Learning for a Responsible Life with a Global Horizon: Education Projects in Africa”.

I took the liberty to translate the abstract to English:

The development of the internet has opened perspectives in Africa in the last century which have been hampered by under-developed infrastructure before. The World Wide Web (WWW) can constitute a meaningful contribution to an increase in education standards – if lectureres know the potentials, have the necessary carefulness in dealing with ICTs and implements this in class. Education processes aim at the acquisition of knowledge, skills and approaches, digital literacy is a substantial part of education.

The different weight which is put on sectors such as gender or AIDS in the “first world” and in developing countries is extending experiences in both worlds. Insights in the education scene in Sub Sahara Africa are given with examples of the teacher education in Kano (Nigeria), health education in Cape Town (South Africa) and teacher education in Ghana.

So here you can download the article of Margarete Grimus. Here’s also the presentation slides she used:

Here’s the link for citation:

Grimus, Margarete. Lernen für ein verantwortliches Leben im globalen Horizont: Bildungsprojekte in Afrika. In: Holz, Oliver; Seebauer, Renate (Hrsg.): Interaktiver und kompetenzorientierter Unterricht. Interactive and Competence-Orientated Education. Verlag Dr. Kovac. Hamburg. S. 124-148 (ISBN: 978-3-8300-6422-0)

Thanks a lot to Margarete for providing this, it’s a very interesting read – especially having in mind our own projects.

Recently I wrote a short piece about the emerging mobile banking systems in Kenya, Tanzania and Zanzibar. The article was published in the bi-monthly Swedish eco- and lifestyle mag Camino. This issue’s theme was about “smarter money”, and I mention here the advantages of simple SMS-based services like the Z-Pesa, a credit-transfer service from Zantel, one of the main telecom operators in Tanzania/Zanzibar. You can send ‘hard cash’ if you get a Z-pesa account, but more common is to send SMS with ‘airtime’ (cellphone credits) to anybody with a cellphone (requires no fixed account).

The text is also about how the fast growth of mobile technology are changing the economical infrastructure in these countries, the difference it has made for people and the myriad of small businesses which has been generated around mobile phones. Also worth noting is, the embarassing fact that these simple yet great services still are not available in Sweden or Europe (at least not to my knowledge).

Check out the piece here (yes, in Swedish, but neat pictures to look at), or even better, get your own, shiny copy straight from Camino.