what is the diffusion of eLearning like in Africa?

Does it follow Roger's diffusion of innovation theory (see Rogers, 2003 - Diffusion of Innovations)?
Or does it subscribe to Gladwell's Tipping Point theory (see Gladwell, 2003- The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference)?
Or is my worry just an innovator's dilemma (see Christensen, 1997 - The Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail)?
Or is it time we looked at the democratization of innovations (see von Hippel, 2005 - Democratizing innovations)?
Or we can explore the myths about innovations (see Berkun, 2007 - the myths of innovations)?
Or maybe we are just crossing the chasm, somehow (see Moore, 2001 - Crossing the chasm)?

Volunteer Computing

I have not posted in this blog for the last month or so. I took a break to do some base work, though that has proved to be counter-productive. I guess am more productive when am doing the mind2finger thing and letting the world know my thoughts as I encounter them, or at least when I come across something new, rather than consolidating so many thoughts and waiting for a grand posting that will never be. This does not mean, soon or later, I will be making a grand post. But it is just another resolution that procrastination should never again creep into my dictionary.
This week I am participating in a workshop on volunteer computing, as a trainee. First a disambiguation of volunteer computing. Maybe for some, like I did when I received the advert for the workshop, would think more of volunteering as the process of offering oneself to do some work (often) for free, at free will. My thinking was the workshop was how to prepare me to volunteer my computing experience through offering my services to others. Well, I was not that far off from what volunteer computing; only that the focus of the free will is different, but the purpose is mainly to server others. Volunteer computing is an arrangement in which people (volunteers) provide computing resources to projects, which use the resources to do distributed computing and/or storage.
Having defined what volunteer computing is, we need to look at projects that require massive computing resources that might benefit from it, and also the technology (software, hardware and people) who would drive such projects. For a start, we got introduced to the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC project). We got introduced to the client and the server technology and the credit system that is used to encourage volunteering. I will be posting more on this shortly.

My home is becoming bigger and better

I have decided to pull most of my postings and resources online to a single places. As you all know, a fundi likes to start working when all the tools and materials are on-site. This saves on time, and it is also convenient because the fundi does not need to get out of the site to look for extra tools and materials. In the new home, it is not only about blogging, there will be additional tools, gooddies and not-so-good-enough things - ALL related to eLearning. For a start, I have a content management system up and running, moodle is up and running, and a wiki is coming up soon.

In the near future, my favourite learning management system KEWL will be coming on this site.

Once again welcome.

Net Geners Part II

Yesterday I put forward an introduction to Net Geners. Today, I highlight what Sword & Leggott (2007) call the Seven Principles of educating the Ne(x)t Generation.

1. Relinguish Authority

When we renounce our own exclusive status as erudite experts, placing our students in the role of teachers and ourselves in the role of students, not only do we model for them the benefits of life-long learning, but we allow them to experience firsthand what every seasoned teacher already knows: If you really want to master a subject, teach it.

2. Recast Students as Teachers, Researchers, and Producers of Knowledge

Teaching to the future demands that we imbue students with a sense of intellectual purpose, instill in them a desire to make a difference, provide them with opportunities to reach a wider audience, and furnish them with the tools to break new ground.

3. Promote Collaborative Relationships

Teaching to the future involves harnessing the collaborative impulses already at large in digital culture and directing them toward educational ends, so that "group work" shifts in our students' perception from an eyeroll-inducing educational gimmick to a cutting-edge skill worthy of cultivation and scrutiny.

4. Cultivate Multiple Intelligences

Education for the future needs to address all of these many abilities [spatial, musical, bodily-kinesthetic, naturalistic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, linguistic, and mathematical-analytical], teaching students to be aware of and make use of their own particular gifts

5. Foster Critical Creativity

Criticism looks back; creativity looks forward; and in the meeting of the two glances, sparks fly.

6. Encourage Resilience in the Face of Change

Critically creative people regard obstacles as opportunities; they welcome challenges because the act of surmounting impediments so often leads to unanticipated insights.

7. Craft Assignments That Look Both Forward and Backwards

This double vision [to preserve, yet also to transform, the past] is the core attribute of teaching to the future.

Read full article: Sword, H., and M. Leggott. 2007. Backwards into the future: Seven principles for educating the Ne(x)t Generation. Innovate 3 (5). http://www.innovateonline.info/index.php?view=article&id=389 (accessed June 3, 2007)

The Net Geners

We have come up with clever names to identify and classify generations. Now comes the Net Generation which has been give quite a number of names (the Dot Com generation, the Millennial Generation, Generation Y, the Internet Generation, iGeneration, ). Net geners are members of the Net Generation, and in demographic terms, though no clear demarcation is available is agreeably the people who have grown up with the digital technology (what Mark Prensky would call digital natives). This generation, to some, is a cohort of people who were born between 1982 and 2001.

The net geners are characterized by their:
High digital literacy: It is a generation of people who have been born and/or brought up when most of the digital devices are available e.g computers, internet, iPods, etc
Connectedness and socialisation: It is in this generation that the connectedness between peers, especially using online social software and sites (myspace, facebook, Hi5, Graduates.com, tagged etc).
Multitasking: They can been seen doing an assignment, chatting with friends on IM, view friends profile online among other things at the same time.
Consumption and production of digital information: Being born in the age where Web 2.0 is the net buzzword, net geners not are not only passive recipients of information, but also they participate in its creation.


For more information on the Net geners and implications in teaching and learning, check out the current and previous issues of the Innovate magazine.