Holistic ICT for EcoLiving

Growing from two previous IT Schools (2008 and 2009), collecting feedback and involving key stakeholders in current design of the IT School 2010. These were the watchwords that guided the design and implementation of this year’s IT School of the Eco Tour 2010 program.

Signing In

OVF formed a Planning Committee which included  four ICT teachers from two Junior High Schools (JHS) and two Senior High Schools (SHS), a Headmaster and a representative of the Municipal Education office. The committee identified the participating schools and criteria for selection of participants and planning of the closing event.

Joy Tang meets with teachers

The volunteers (NTHU students) introduced Open source education Operating System software, EZGO, produced by Taiwan Ministry of Education. Other courses included OpenOffice.org, Introduction of internet application on teaching, such as online open course websites to provide seed teachers access to finding teaching resource, including creating blogs, websites and so on, Introduction of how to record image, sound and edit a teaching video, and Eco protection.

Further explanation

Further Explanation

The entire program was to empower seed teachers to be able to find open source tools to assist them in teaching.

After the courses , feedback was collected through questionnaires. The teachers agree that those educational websites or software introduced, can truly assist them in teaching different subjects during class. The teachers showed their complete understanding of each course in their final presentation. In the final presentation, teachers were able to use OpenOffice.org in making syllabus and other files; they were also able to record everything they wanted to show by using recording software and movie editing software.

After this year’s IT School Advanced Course, the participating teachers are going to form a group.They, as the human resource in ICT training, are willing to teach other children and teachers in Winneba, making sure this IT School project becomes sustainable.

Teachers' perspective

In all, 15 ICT teachers from 15 JHS (10public, 5private) in the Effutu (Winneba) Municipality, attended the 6-day program .

Our Technology Officer Andrew Lee is helping to organize a Debian conference in Taiwan in Sept.

The “Software Liberty Association of Taiwan”(SLAT) is featuring a mini-DebConf during ICOS 2009 – International Conference on Open Source in Taipei on September 26-26, 2009.

Participants may get accommodation and food sponsorship. Remember to add your name to this wiki page below if you are joining us. Please also send a separate email with your information to apply for sponsorship to Local contact.

Wiki page: http://wiki.debian.org/DebianTaiwan/MiniDebConf2009

New Academic Year IT School (Annual Project of OVF- Ghana)

The New Academic Year IT School, an annual project of OVF was an integral part of this year’s program.

The objective of the School was to provide ICT knowledge to promote Information and Communication Technology for Sustainable Development (ICT4SD), in the Winneba region.

Pro V.C of U.E.W speaking at the Launch of the IT School, WODiV, Ghana

The school run for 2 weeks from August 10 – 21, and saw ICT knowledge being transferred from volunteers, who come from an ICT advanced region, to people who come from a region where ICT knowledge is mostly needed (Winneba).

In all there eight (8) schools from different educational levels participated in the IT school. Three students and a teacher, from each school participated.

Section of IT school participants during the training session, WODiV,Ghana.

Subjects taught ranged from hardware, software(major focus on the concept of GNU/Linux and the spirit of Open Source), to internet applications.

Participants demonstrate what they have learnt, at the IT School closing ceremony, WODiV-Ghana

Teachers who participated in the IT School were invited to a meeting to review the School, challenges and prospects.

Conclusions reached were:

• IT School 2010 will focus on teachers and students of deprived Upper Primary and Junior High Schools in the Central Region of Ghana.
• One month IT School; 2 weeks for teachers(Trainer of Trainers program) and 2 weeks for students.
• Program content for Trainer of Trainers Program for IT School ’10.
• Formation of IT School ’10 Management Committee, to include the teachers, representation from Education  Directorate and Palace
• Regular meeting and communication of committee.

There was an elaborate ceremony, well attended by participants and dignitaries, to climax the IT School. Participants also demonstrated what they had been taught at the school, over the 2 weeks.

Group Photograph of Volunteers, participants of IT School and Guests, after the closing ceremony,WODiV-Ghana

********************** oneVillage Community Day 邀請函 ********************

各位支持oneVillage的朋友，

很榮幸有機會邀請各位來參與 “oneVillage 學習服務-人文環境關切之旅 2009″ 行前簡報:

–
Best regards,

唐瑋 | Joy Tang
oneVillage Development Group
www.onevillagefoundation.org
‘bridge to the new economy’
+886 988 164 558

Below are some of the Open Source groups and networks we have collaborated with over the last several years:

World Summits on free Information Infrastructures (WSFII) is a loose collection of open source wireless activists that we have used as a resource to establish our Open Digital Village Program – http://www.wsfii.org

Airjaldi was a summit at the Tibet Technology Center in Dharamsala India that we were involved in organizing and participating in. The gathering open source wireless advocates was what inspired us to create the Open Digital Village – http://www.airjaldi.com/

Wireless Africa is a network of leading wireless networks in Africa that are seeking to make their networks financially sustainable. We are a member of this network – http://wirelessafrica.meraka.org.za/

Open Hardware is a group of hacker geeks that are working to promote open hardware by creating dialogs between the open source and corporate communities. We helped organized the Open Tech Summit 2008 in Taiwan – http://wiki.openpattern.org/index.php/OpenTechSummitTaiwan2008

ICOS 2009 is an international conference for Open Source 2009 organized by the Taiwan FOSS community that we are organizing – http://www.slat.org/icos2008/

Open Digital Village is a concept for promoting open source technologies and open source collaboration that we have implemented in a pilot project in Winneba, Ghana – http://www.opendigitalvillage.org

Wikieducator is a open source wiki based educational program that was initiated by Commonwealth of Learning and of which we received a small grant to assist on in 2007 as we developed the first Open Digital Village in Winneba – http://www.wikieducator.org