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Hai Ti! - Namibian Comics Teach Open Source Software
Topics: Networked World, Interesting Tech, Languages, FOSS, Education, Schools, Africa, Comics, Communication
Hai Ti means "Listen Up!" in the Oshiwambo language spoken by the Owambo people of Namibia. It is also the name of an educational outreach project by SchoolNet Namibia. This project seeks to "entice" teachers and students into using open source software for learning and other activities. The message is delivered via English language comics telling stories of how people use the software and giving tips on using computers. You can read the introduction to the Hai Ti! project and browse through the comics online. The comics are provided under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 Licence.This can be helpful for teachers developing their own educational materials. Below is a "clipping" from the first volume of Hai Ti!. This section tells teachers how the Internet can provide many educational resources. Such resources, in traditional printed form, would be too expensive for many of the schools. (I won't go into the pros & cons of Wikipedia here. It's still a useful starting point for researching a topic. Just don't stop there.
As I was browsing the comics, one of the things that caught my attention were the references to "uninterrupted power supplies" (UPSs) that SchoolNet Namibia can provide to the country's schools. It might sound like just another piece of hardware to people in more affluent countries, where power outages are infrequent. But it is reminder that uninterrupted electrical power is not available in some parts of the world. In one section of the comics, lightning strikes are presented as one cause of power outages.
J.D. Abolins |
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Pointer: When ‘Digital Natives’ Go to the Library
Topics: Networked World, Insights, Culture, Communications, Libraries, Education, Generations The Inside Higher Ed site's 25 June 2007 article "When ‘Digital Natives’ Go to the Library" examines cultural differences between "digital natives" and "digital immigrants' and the implications for libraries. "Digital natives" are people who grew up with modern technologies, especially computers, the Internet, and video games. "Digital immigrants" are people who did not grow up with such technologies but learned them later in life. The article present most library professionals, especially in academic settings, to be "digital immigrants" serving a growing number of "digital natives". (More on "digital natives".) One of the more notable observations in the article is this: --- I see this connected with the way many children learn technology and how it differs from the way adult learn technology. Usually adults face goals and deadlines with their learning of, say, a programming language or a word processor software. Children don't. So, they'll play around, trying different things. They also don't have the fear that they might damage the system as would most adults. (Sometimes, the kids can get into trouble because of that obliviousness. One of the implications for system & interface design for the tools is making the system resilient in the face of trial & error use. The assumption that all the users will read the instructions and follow them is unwise. The "digital natives'" exploration tendencies have information security implications. Do not assume "nobody will go there" as adequate security. If poor security assumptions were bad in earlier times, they are worse nowadays. J.D. Abolins |
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Blogging Word War One with a 90 Year Delay
Topics: Networked World, Interesting Tech, Blogs, History, WW1, Education The blog "WW1: Experiences of an English Soldier" is impressive. Bill Lamin took his grandfather's letters written during "The Great War" and presenting them via a blog. The letters from the grandfather, William Henry Lamin, are posted as entries 90 years from when they originally written or postmarked. Occasionally, Bill Lamin throws in some anachronistic references to give the reader some additional background information. A good example are the pointers to FirstWorldWar.com and Wikipedia articles in the 9 June 2007 entry for the Battle of Messines Ridge. The pointer to the Wikipedia entry for the Battle of Messines Rdiges really helped to understand the the reference to "changing geography" in the grandfather's letter. Do read the letter and then check the two reference links. The blog gives an interesting perspective that I haven't seen in books about the First World War. By the way, you can listen to interviews with Bill Lamin about his grandfather and the blog at PRI. J.D. Abolins |
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Craiglist's Crag Newmark on "That Golden Rule THing"
Topics: Networked World, Insights, Philosophy National Public Radio's <All Things Considered programme of April 16, 2007 had a "This I Believe" audio essay by Craig Newark, the founder of Craigslist. From his experiences, he sees: --- Although I see many examples of people behaving poorly, it is good to be reminded that, in various circumstances, people do act better. (As I have been reading some of the reports about the mass murder in Virginia, I came across a comment by a sociologists at the technical institute that people were not panicking in the crisis. Yes, their emotions are panicky but the responses do retain much rationality. I hope to post more on this later in the week.) J.D. Abolins |
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Pointer: VideoJug - Life Explained On Film
Topics:, Interesting Tech, Insights, Education, Videos A friend sent me a link to the VideoJug.com site, an interesting site that declares it explains life on film. In some ways, it reminds me of the Life Hack blog and, especially, Life Hacker site. Appropriate for the upcoming Valentine's Days are the Relationships video lessons such as the humorous & helpful "How to Be the Perfect Girlfriend" and "How to Be the Perfect Boyfriend". (I love their "Top Tips".) The videos cover a wide range of life situations, including dealing with neighbours, household repairs, automobile maintenance, using technology, and cooking. There was even a video "How to Use a Shower. At first, I thought it would be useless. Doesn't everyone know how to use a shower. But as I watched it, I realised that it does address the needs to many people, especially men who find themselves living on their own. Things such as choosing shower curtains and cleaning the shower might be new territory for some. Vistors are invited to submit their own instructional videos and there's even a video "How to Make a 'How To' Video" to help one get started. Making Much Ado about How-Tos, |
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A Remarkable Prediction from 1911
This Monday's Wall Street Journal's Deja Vu column, "Perils of Prediction: Seeing Rubber Cities And an End to Cars" [subscription required for access] mentioned a remarkably accurate prediction from almost a century ago: "The time will surely come when the methods of electrical intercommunication will have been so developed and multiplied that the people of the world's different countries I looked up who was this Major General Squier. Among other things he was the US Army's Chief Signal Officer during World War I and responsible for developing US military communications systems, including the use of radio. More information on him from the US Army and from the Wikipedia. Speaking of predictions, some say that the trick is to predict things about fifty years into the future. Too far ahead to be readily proven wrong and, if one is wrong, most people have forgottent the prediction. Yogi Bera, the US baseball figure, probably said it the best, "It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future." J.D. Abolins |
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BBC Item on Saudi Blogs
The BBC story "Saudi Arabia's bold young bloggers" reports there are, despite some of the relatively closed aspects of the society, 500 to 600 Saudi blogs. Some are in Arabic, of course, and some are in English. There are women blogging as well as men. Although I don't spend much time cruising blogs, I find blogs from various parts of the world fascinating because of the glimpses they give of faraway places. When I was a child, the only prospect of communications with someone in the Middle East, Africa, or wherever would have been by postal corespondance or, if I had gone into amateur radio, by shortwave. Now it is easy to browse around the world. I took a quick glance at the three Saudi blogs mentioned by the BBC:
On Foud al-Farhan's blog, there were some English language comments asking how the visitors who cannot read Arabic might read the blog. I left a suggestion for using Google Translate and its Arabic - English (beta) translation function to render the pages in English. Just copy and paste the foreign language Web page's URL into the translator and select the Arbic-to-English option. (Google will do translations for other languages than Arabic.) Although machine translations are rough and are no substitute for a knowledgeable human translator, this one looks useful. جوناثان د. أبولينس |
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20six.co.uk