"The report highlights the views of 413 eLearning practitioners on priorities for the post-2015 development agenda. Not only can we now take stock of our collective endeavour to reach the Education for All objectives and the Millennium Development Goals, but it is also our moment in Namibia to consi
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der our experience with digital technologies in helping us to reach these noble goals. Africa in general, and Namibia in particular, now boast more than 15 years' experience with policy development, design, implementation and evaluation of ICT in education and training at national and institutional levels. The insights offered by The eLearning Africa Report 2013 provide us with a platform to learn from these practices, both 'good' and 'bad'." (Foreword)
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"The power of the puppet shows itself in diverse fields: not only in the puppet theatres, not only in rituals and magical spells, but also in the broad range of education and therapy. This has also been recognised by the international puppetry organisation – UNIMA – and the Puppets in Education
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Commission was founded at the Congress in Budapest in 1996 [...] The book covers all three areas: education, development (written by three authors from Great Britain, who use that very appropriate term applied puppetry) and therapy." (Preface, page 7-8)
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"Quality assurance (QA) systems applied in educational contexts are generally concerned with inputs — how much money is spent, what staffing, resources and support are provided, what kinds of teaching and learning are involved, and so on. There is an assumption — not always fulfilled — that th
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e higher the standards of the inputs, the higher the quality of the outputs. In this toolkit, we propose a different approach: the evaluation of the programmes’ outcomes, outputs and impacts. We examine the differences between informal and self-directed learning, nonformal education and training (NFE) and formal education; provide examples of NFE programmes using a variety of face-to-face, distance education and technology-based teaching and learning methods; examine the approaches to QA that are required in NFE; consider the outputs, outcomes and impacts that can be achieved in NFE programmes; propose the adoption of a rigorous but simple-to-use QA framework which is based on outputs, outcomes and impacts." (Back cover)
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"Although many countries are aggressively implementing the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) program, there is a lack of empirical evidence on its effects. This paper presents the impact of the first large-scale randomized evaluation of the OLPC program, using data collected after 15 months of implementat
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ion in 319 primary schools in rural Peru. The results indicate that the program increased the ratio of computers per student from 0.12 to 1.18 in treatment schools. This expansion in access translated into substantial increases in use both at school and at home. No evidence is found of effects on enrollment and test scores in Math and Language. Some positive effects are found, however, in general cognitive skills as measured by Raven’s Progressive Matrices, a verbal fluency test and a Coding test." (Abstract)
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"The message matrix facilitates local stakeholder groups and community members to take an active, empowered role in content development for an educational communication programme. The method enables active participation of target audiences and stakeholder groups in the identification, analysis and r
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esolution of problems affecting the community. Use of the matrix underscores the significance of proactively and vigorously involving all stakeholders and leveraging their wealth of knowledge and experience. The message matrix helps to ensure that key messages of the programme — its core learning objectives — originate from people themselves rather than from outside experts or policy makers. Likewise, it helps to ensure that communication programmes are developed within proper cultural frameworks and in ways that engage stakeholders throughout and across the process of programme design, from setting overall objectives to framing key messages. The use of the matrix — for example, in a programme design workshop — anchors a participatory and consultative process that addresses existing and desired knowledge, attitudes and practices. The matrix helps to identify, analyse and classify audience behaviour, making it easier to provide relevant, well-defined and practicable solutions in the form of positive behaviours and demonstrable benefits that will motivate listeners to take action." (Pages 99-100)
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"An study among 1,564 children from Cambodia, Thailand, and the Philippines tested the increase of knowledge among viewers of the Southeast Asian programme "I Got It". Initiated by why the Goethe Institutes in Southeast Asia, this first regional knowledge programme for children was produced in 9 Asi
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an countries (Brunei, Indonesia, Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam). According to the conclusion, "the study shows that children get something out of the programme. They get more out of some episodes than others, but the tendency is clear: knowledge programmes enrich children’s lives, especially if they provide new facts and insights, give visual form to things which are not usually visible, and thereby foster a more complex understanding of familiar things." (commbox)
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"This article proposes an enhanced model of radio drama for development, which places forum theatre on the community radio platform. The model responds to the key development priorities of democratic, multi-directional communication, participation and social advocacy. It utilizes the mass disseminat
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ion advantages of the radio medium, the distinctive, dialogic qualities of community radio and the democratic and empowering tendencies of forum theatre to propose a prototype for fully participatory radio drama for development. The model was developed and tested during fieldwork at community radio stations in Laos in 2010 and 2011. Forum Theatre on the Air draws on two of the major theoretical paradigms of development communication: participatory communication and entertainment-education. The model creates an argument for a greater integration of these broadly complementary yet parallel hypotheses." (Abstract)
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"The history of development in Africa is littered with all sorts of experiments and projects centred on new technologies often presented as a panacea to the problems of health, education, or agricultural production. The failure of some of those projects shows the limits of the technocentrist approac
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h which has recently resurfaced in the developmentalist discourse and which is based on the idea that technology (and technology alone) can solve all the social and economic problems Africa is facing. This is the case of the educational television in Niger that was supposed to ensure a rapid access to universal education. It started in 1964 and was abandoned in 1979. It failed to transform the educational system in any significant way, the school enrolment rate in Niger still being under 60 %, 46 years after the experiment started. In this paper, I intend to show that this failure was not due to a lack of community involvement as generally advanced by project evaluations, but the result of a confrontation of divergent views of the world and society. Indeed, the educational television has become an issue of both social and political struggle, which resulted in the victory of one of the parties and the allocation of the educational television to other purposes for which it was not previously designed." (Abstract)
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"This publication provides readers with fresh insights into the practice of participatory educational communication. The first section explores the educational potential of community media, reaching from participatory radio campaigns in Sub-Saharan Africa to school radios in Brazil. The second secti
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on, "stories of learning", shows the power of experience-based stories through interviews with community stakeholders or through drama and other cultural forms. The third section, "Praxis in Latin America", emphasises the centrality of popular and engaging formats, the importance of blended approaches, and the role of mobile and social media in reinforcing and complementing community-based broadcasting. The fourth section, "Praxis in the Commonwealth", examines strategies for enabling participation, experiences of collaboration at the local level, and the importance of assessing programme outcomes. The final section looks at how broadcasters and other community-based groups can make use of the voice and text functions of mobile telephones across different aspects of educational programming, including content provision, programme logistics and learner support." (CAMECO Update 2-2012)
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"This guide is designed to document the process and good practice in developing training material, piloting and testing it. The guide is aimed to help you (the course organiser) to plan and conduct the course. The guide includes information on the main steps and stages in sequence of designing a tra
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ining course all the way to evaluation for feedback into further development. It is worth mentioning here that the design and development process of training material is anything but linear. It’s very iterative but it’s a challenge and a difficulty to capture this in a document such as this guide. Throughout the process it’s important to remember that stage evaluation is paramount and going back for modification maintains the integrity and relevance of the material. Design processes are always divided into steps and phases in order to make sure that checks and tests are carried out at the appropriate time to avoid any lengthy and costly time consuming modifications at the end." (Preface and purpose of this guide, page 7)
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"This essay argues against reducing the recent history of global television to an oversimplified transition between ‘statist’ and ‘consumerist’ dispensations. As apparently irreconcilable ideologies of television, the statist and consumerist models represent two ways of imagining the relatio
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n between the deployment of media and the project of modernity. Despite their surface differences, both share a tendency to imagine television in primarily ‘representative’ rather than ‘constitutive’ terms: they both evaluate television according to its ability to represent or address supposedly pre-existing publics, as opposed to its power to help constitute those very publics. I develop the question of the constitutive potential of television by reconsidering a decade of Indian television history – the mid-1970s through the mid-1980s – that is generally dismissed as a transitional phase between statist and consumerist paradigms. Through a discussion that is empirically grounded in the Indian experience, I propose categories that might inform comparative explorations of media and modernity in an age of globalization." (Abstract)
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"[This] is a practical guide to producing effective written materials. The book presents easy-to-understand, evidence-based guidance on providing information, presenting persuasive messages and promoting behaviour change. Topics include: message framing; use of fear appeals; tailoring messages; usin
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g graphics; behaviour change. Each chapter is illustrated with examples - including both good and bad practice and covering a range of health topics." (Publisher description)
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