Mobile camps in Africa , lead to new generation of mobile developers

The bar camp so popular in Europe has taken a novel twist and appeared in Africa. Mobile camps may be building the next generation of mobile programmers by helping to develop a new field of study in African higher education. Recent camps have produced tools for social development and provided educators with new skills. interesting becuase the next billion users of the internet are likely to access it through mobiles devices .

http://mobileactive.org/mobile-camps-africa-bringing-next-generation-mobile-programmers

worth a look at the article.

Article by Ken Banks looking at Reaching out with Mobile technology with the humble SMS

Interesting article by Ken Banks at a range of uses of mobile technology in a range of countries and situations. read pdf of article at
http://www.kiwanja.net/miscellaneous/Didactics_kiwanja.pdf



What I find interesting is the range of uses his discussion on high end and low end devices .Great to see Flora and Fauna international getting a plug I have had the pleasure of working with both Martin Hollands and Mike Appleton in the past who were bothwent onto work for FFI . The link to this Wildlive project detail is here
http://www.kiwanja.net/wildlive!.htm

Ken Banks website also looks well worth a look.

http://www.kiwanja.net/

OLPC orders kick of and Buy one Gift one Free (BOGOF) is reaping benefits

This from engadget. All steam ahead for the OLPC Foundation, which recently received an order from Peru for 260,000 of the little XO laptops. Also news is that Mexican billionaire and Negroponte's chum Carlos Slim has purchased 50,000 for his country. That's against a background of $2 million sales a day on the Give One, Get One program. Clearly, the OLPC Foundation is the most successful program out there for getting laptops into the hands of schoolchildren.

now my own thoughts the BOGOF campaign is a rweally interesting model why dont we add a premium for other health orientated projects say $5.00 or more as well as the kit.

The OLPC may not be in everybody's view the right model but at least they are giving it a go.

One lap top per child I picked up the mesh network from a OLPC bought along by Rose Luckins colleagues to Handheld

This is a screen captutre showing my laptop picking up the mesh networking signal from a One Laptop Per Child machine bought to handheld learning by a colleague of Rose Luckins from London Knowledge lab. Cool eh !!

Designing human centred technologies for the developing world

Interesting area of work technology in the developing or the forgotten world !!! so if your out there got any work to showcase get that submission in because the deadlines been extended. Is developed world thinking technology transferable and is it sustainable any help to the vast bulk of the population ????

link at
http://hct4d.blogspot.com/
Workshop: Designing human centered technologies for the
developing world: HCI but not as we know it. Tue, 4 Sept. 2007 at the
HCI 2007 conference, Lancaster, UK

With
huge investments being made in ICT for development (ICT4D) and
education (e.g. "$100 laptop," UN programmes etc.) and high
expectations being raised, it is critical to ensure that ICT
developments are in fact usable, useful, appropriate and well adapted
to the communities and contexts in which they are intended to be used.
This requires well designed solutions, which in turn requires
appropriate human-centred design methods. However, it is unclear that
methods largely developed for and with users in the developed world
will prove appropriate in the developing world. This workshop aims to
bring together interested parties and strengthen the User-centred
design for development (UCS4D) community, as well as contribute to the
body of knowledge about designing for and with communities in the
developing world.

GOALS OF THE WORKSHOP

• Share experiences of Human Centred Design in the developing world;
• Identify key issues and patterns;
• Explore new, alternative and modified methods for human centred and participatory design of Development Technologies;
• Develop new partnerships - particularly international partnerships;
• Disseminate learning from this workshop through online and and offline publication; and
• Strengthen the HCI in Development Technology community.

Its part of the main HCI 2007 conference link to that is here http://www.bcs-hci.org.uk/hci2007

Intel and $100 laptop join forces

Intel and One Laptop per Child project join up. No comment either way but huge heads up to both organisations for helping drive the agenda on. Both the organisations and hopefully the worlds children will benefit. So good on you both !! see my earlier posts on olpc by searching using my tag cloud,

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6897950.stm

BBC Radio 4 in Business Generation next

In Business hears about Generation Next, the new consumers with ideas of their own. They know what they want and companies are paying attention … all round the world. Peter Day hears about the new tastemakers. Worth a listen visit the webiste here where you can read background listen again download or set up download as regular podcast feed. What pleased me was the non europe centric reporting well done BBC.

One laptop per Child moving into top gear

I was lucky enough to meet Mary Lou Jepsen at Mlearn2006 in Alberta I sat down next to her at breakfast !!!Mary is a leading part of the one laptop per child project team .It has the weirdest homepage but its the initiative that everybody has talked about knocked praised and it really is beginning to happen. http://www.laptop.org/index.shtml

they're is some really long but good video on the project at http://1laptop1student.blogspot.com/2007/04/olpc-tech-talk-w-google.html

some really interesting results of trialling in Nigeria

And from karlfich blog
a great quote for those that said they would'nt do it

Oh, and they're hoping to ship 10 million of them this year, 50-100 million next year.

Move over XBOX 360 as biggest product roll out in history

Plus my own thought mesh technology is the future !!!

Mobiles for Development of Rural Livelihoods in South Asia

Seriously good article about M-services for development. Upasna Kakroo has written a really great article. raise interesting points through out the article especially around bridging the divide why mobile . Notably she targets three areas for discussion.

• m-Services: Emerging Markets
• m-Services: Innovative practices
• m-Services: Impact Assessment

link to original article here

WiFi Buses drive rural web use

Such a cool story clever use of caching I know it cant be perfect but still quite a neat idea

Buses equipped with wi-fi are being used to deliver web content to remote rural villages in the developing world.


In rural India and parts of Rwanda, Cambodia andParaguay, the vehicles offer web content to computers with no internet
read BBC story at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6506193.stm

Times of india story relating the indian sub continent angle at

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1221225.cms