Selected Resource Notes


 * 1) Features
 * 2) Webcasts, podcasts and blogspots
 * 3) Links of interest
 * 4) Upcoming conferences
 * 5) Tagged items at Crowdtrust.net
 * 6) Customised Google Searches

Features

Courses Vs. Content: Online Offerings from Major Institutions are not Created Equal. This article was written by Stephen Downes, Researcher, National Research Council, Canada and published by the Elearnmag. From the introduction: "What is an online course? What is an online education? These questions are at the heart of recent offerings of free online content from institutions like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Britain's Open University. When it was launched in 2002, MIT's OpenCourseWare (OCW) was emphatically declared to be a limited online offering. "OCW is not about online degree programs. It isn't even about online courses for which students can audit or enroll," wrote Phillip D. Long. It was intended to be nothing more than “the content that supports an MIT education”. http://elearnmag.org/subpage.cfm?section=opinion&article=82-1

ICTs – Transforming agricultural extension? Report on the 6th consultative expert meeting of CTA’ observatory on ICTs. Participants drew attention to the fact that extension is being compelled to change from a process of technology transfer (research to farmer) to a process of facilitating and brokering a wide range of communication, information and advocacy services. Participants also noted the trend for extension to shift from agriculture-specific services to broader services to improve rural livelihoods. http://www.anancy.net/uploads/file_en/WD8034.pdf

Getting girls out of work and into school. The UNESCO regional office in Bangkok highlights the causes and consequences of girls’ child labor on their educational opportunities and describes some of the instruments and strategies in place to reduce the trend. The document also provides insights into current good practice, which can assist policy-makers and practitioners to better understand and address the issues for getting girls out of work and into school. http://www.unescobkk.org/fileadmin/user_upload/appeal/gender/pdf/girls.pdf

Country health profiles 2006 revision This two part series comprises the country profiles and health databanks for the countries and areas of the WHO Western Pacific Region. The data are either supplied by the health ministries/departments or compiled from national databases and reference libraries. http://www.wpro.who.int/NR/rdonlyres/6DB56617-928C-4156-AF34-5B3EC6CD3E75/0/CHIPS_2006_Part1.pdf http://www.wpro.who.int/NR/rdonlyres/F23DF978-7420-4256-B1AB-2F0FFAFA5AF3/0/CHIPS_2006_Part2.pdf

Webcasts, podcasts and blogspots

[Webcast] The University of California, Berkeley uses this website to stream courses over the Internet. Users can subscribe to Podcasts using the RSS technology. http://webcast.berkeley.edu/index.php

[Podcast] A UK directory where you can freely access educational content from different podcasts channels, together, contain over 3,500 podcasts. http://recap.ltd.uk/podcasting/index.php

[Blogpost] This webpage links to a large number of weblogs dealing with learning and technology. http://www.elearnspace.org/edutechblogs.htm

Links of interest

Directory of open access journals http://www.doaj.org/

Safer Internet searching http://stopbadware.org/home/clearinghouse

Upcoming conferences

http://wirelessready.nucba.ac.jp/
 * March 24: Wireless ready: Podcasting Education and Mobile Assisted Language Learning – Nagoya, Japan

http://www.techedevents.org/2007/
 * March 26-28: Teched 2007 – Ontario, California

http://www.law.uwo.ca/redesign/Events/Conferences.html
 * April 9: Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) as Democratic Principle - Ontario, Canada

http://www.imcl-conference.org/
 * April 18-20: Second International Conference on Interactive Mobile and Computer Aided Learning – Amman, Jordan

http://ietc2007.neu.edu.tr/
 * May 3-5: 7th International Educational Technology Conference – North Cyprus

http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/events/broadband_gap_2007/index_en.htm
 * May 14-15: The Broadband Gap – Brussels, Belgium

http://www.ubd.edu.bn/news/conferences/12ice07/index.htm
 * May 21-24: 12th International Conference on Education - Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei Darussalam

http://www.elearning-africa.com/
 * May 28-20: 2nd International Conference on ICT for Development, Education and Training – Nairobi, Kenya

http://icool.uom.ac.mu/2007/user/index.php
 * June 11-14: 3rd International Conference on Open and Online Learning – Penang, Malaysia

http://www.westga.edu/~distance/dla/
 * June 24-27: Distance Learning Administration Conference 2007 – St. Simons Island, Georgia, USA

http://www.academic-conferences.org/icel/icel2007/icel07-home.htm
 * June 28-29: ICEL 2007: The International Conference on e-Learning – New York, USA

July 4: Designing for learning – Greenwich, United Kingdom http://web-dev-csc.gre.ac.uk/conference/conf32/index.php

http://www.elearning-conf.org/
 * July 6-8: IADIS International Conference: e-learning 2007 – Lisbon, Portugal

http://www.icicte.com/isite/home/
 * July 12-14: International Conference on Information Communication Technologies in Education – Heraklion, Greece

http://www.lttcom.com/mlearning/index.php?mod=public&opt=home
 * August 7-9: 1st Asia Pacific Regional Mobile Learning & Edutainment Conference 2007 – Kuala Lumpur

http://www.uwex.edu/disted/conference/
 * August 8-10: 23rd Annual Conference on Distance Teaching & Learning – Wisconsin, USA

http://www.academic-conferences.org/ecel/ecel2007/ecel07-home.htm
 * October 4-5: The 6th European Conference on e-Learning – Copenhagen, Denmark

http://www.globalknowledge.org/GK3/
 * December 11-13: 3rd Global Knowledge Conference – Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Tagged items at Crowdtrust.net

Items tagged include articles and website links that could be rleated to Open and Distance Learning, eLearning and mLearning. Tags so far: Broadband - Developing countries, Commonwealth of Learning, Community radio, Debating, ejournal, eLearning, elearning modules, elearning modules - Children, Environment - Developing countries, Gender, Gender - MDGs, Governance, Health - Developing countries, Health - MDGs, human rights, ICT - Developing countries, ICT - Education, ICT - Education - Developing countries, ICT - Health, ICT - NGOs, knowledge management, NGO management, open access content, Open educational resources, Open Source Software, Open training material, Opencourseware, plagiarism, Podcasting, portal, Poverty - MDGs, social justice, Water - Developing countries, wiki http://www.crowdtrust.net/user/Amy/memos

Customised Google Searches

These searches use Google Coop. This allows searches to be directed to certain websites only. Filters can also be included so that parts of websites that have been included for searching can be ignored. For example, a search under the customised search engine for Schoolnet Africa will look at various websites including www.schoolnetafrica.net but will ignore the part of the website that contains information on the governing body. So, if a search is done using the keywords ICT Education and these words are contained in the pages on the governing body, those particular pages will not be retrieved. By using this method more relevant information is presented when the search is completed and the results displayed. It is hoped that a link to the search engines will be available via this page - this is still being worked on.