Showing posts with label web2.0. Show all posts
Showing posts with label web2.0. Show all posts

Saturday, January 3, 2015

Latest statistics about the Web 2.0 for Development Community of Practice


The Web2forDev Community of Practice was created by CTA in 2006 in anticipation of the Web2forDev International Conference which CTA organised in September 2007 in partnership with FAO, GIZ , IFAD, APC, IICD and other development organisations.

As anticipated in the article published on PLA 59 in June 2009, “The Web2forDev story: towards a community of practice” the community has been steadily growing also as a follow-up of the Web 2.0 and Social Media Learning Opportunities regularly organised by CTA, so far in 37 countries.

Here are some stats about the latest growth of the Web2forDev community on various social media platforms:

Dgroups (En) (since 2006) :
# of members on 31/12/14:      3,874  in 110 countries
Growth over the year 2014:     +46%

Dgroups (Fr) (since 2006)  :
# of members on 31/12/14:      940 in 48 countries

LinkedIn (since July 2007)  :
# of members on 31/12/14:      1,939
Growth over the year 2014:     +20%

Facebook (since July 2007)  :
Total Likes on 31/12/14:          4,060
Growth over the year 2014:      +49%

Twitter (since August 2008)  :
# of followers on 31/12/14:      2,926
Growth over the year 2014:     +18%

The main portal is found at www.web2fordev.net and is available both in English and French.


Thursday, April 17, 2014

Zack Matere: Growing Knowledge



Zack Matere, a farmer in Soy, Kenya, searched for a way to save his dying crops. What he discovered was a desire to help local farmers and businesses access information.

Thursday, April 3, 2014

Web 2.0 and Social Media challenges : What about people thinking I am wasting time in networking on social media?



Pete Cranston is director of Euforic Services Ltd. He is an ICT, Communication and Digital Media specialist, with long experience as a facilitator and trainer.

A 3-day write-shop took place at CTA in Wageningen (NL) on 24-26 March, 2014. The purpose of the event was to to update the curriculum which is used to run "Web 2.0 and Social Media Learning Opportunities". In the discussions institutional barriers towards adoption were identified.

Giacomo Rambaldi, the organiser of the event, put to him a question on ... staff wasting time in fiddling around with social medial during office hours ...

Let's hear what he had to say ...

To know more about Web 2.0 and Social Media learning Opportunities visit our site www.web2fordev.net

Wednesday, April 2, 2014

Web 2.0 and Social Media challenges : Could you help me convince my boss?



Pete Cranston is director of Euforic Services Ltd. He is an ICT, Communication and Digital Media specialist, with long experience as a facilitator and trainer.

A 3-day write-shop took place at CTA in Wageningen (NL) on 24-26 March, 2014. The purpose of the event was to to update the curriculum which is used to run "Web 2.0 and Social Media Learning Opportunities". In the discussions institutional barriers towards adoption were identified.

Giacomo Rambaldi, the organiser of the event, asked him: "Could you please help us in convincing bosses that it is worth investing in the adoption and institutionalisation of Web 2.0 and Social Media"?

Let's hear what he had to say ....

Web 2.0 and Social Media success stories: By-passing the middlemen



Mr Johnson Opigo is an ICT Consultant and trainer, Web Designer and Developer based in Nigeria. Among others he has been running Web 2.0 and Social Media trainings on behalf of CTA and UNITAR.

Interviewed during the 3-day write-shop (Wageningen, 24-26 March, 2014) on updating CTA's curriculum used during the Web 2.0 and Social Media Learning Opportunities Johnson summarises the power of Web 2.0 and Social Media and recalls a success story of their adoption and deployment in in the framework of the Growth Enhancement Support Scheme (GES) implemented by Nigeria’s Minister for Agriculture, Dr. Akinwumi Adesina, which ended four decades of corruption in the fertilizer sector, eliminating the middlemen and scaling up food production by nine million metric tonnes in the first year.

Saturday, June 16, 2012

Digital Habitats - a book worth reading


Technology has changed what it means for communities to “be together.” Digital tools are now part of most communities’ habitats. This book develops a new literacy and language to describe the practice of stewarding technology for communities. Whether you want to ground your technology stewardship in theory and deepen your practice, whether you are a community leader or sponsor who wants to understand how communities and technology intersect, or whether you just want practical advice, this is the book for you.

Written by Etienne Wenger, Nancy White and John D. Smith, the book brings together conceptual thinking, case studies and offers a guide for understanding how technology can help a community do what it wants to do. It gives a glimpse into the future as community and technology continue to affect and influence each other.

Friday, June 15, 2012

The power of information: Map Kibera uses GIS, SMS, video and the web to gather community data

The Map Kibera project works with young people from one of Africa’s biggest slums. They use GIS, SMS, video and the web to gather data and make it available to the community, where it can be applied to influence policies related to the area.

Located just five kilometres from the capital of Kenya, Nairobi, the residents of Kibera have grown accustomed to the many foreign experts visiting their community to conduct surveys and ask questions for yet another data collection initiative. As one of the largest slum areas in Africa, it draws staff from development organisations, research institutes and NGOs from all over the world.

As all these organisations and researchers generate more and more documents and project reports about Kibera, very little of the information gathered is ever made available to the 250,000 people who live there. Access to the data would give the people of Kibera the chance to present their own view of the living conditions in the community. They would be able to influence public policy to achieve improvements to the facilities that they believe are important.

In 2009, Erica Hagen, a specialist in the use of new media for development, and Mikel Maron, a digital mapping expert, started Map Kibera to help residents use mapping technology to gather information about their community. For the initial phase of the project, they recruited 13 local young people, aged between 19 to 34, including five women and eight men, from each village in Kibera.

The participants received two days training on how to use handheld GPS receivers to gather location data, and an introduction to using the specialised software in a computer lab. The team was supported by five GIS professionals from Nairobi who had volunteered their time. The participants then spent three weeks walking along the roads, pathways and rail tracks with their GPS receivers recoding the location data. They collected more specific information on water and sewage locations, education, religious and business locations, as well as anything else the participants deemed useful.

Collaboration

Rather than create a stand-alone map, the location data gathered by the project was added to the open source project OpenStreetMap, which is a crowdsourced map made by volunteers around the world. Map Kibera contributed to filling their part of OpenStreetMap, which would also make the information available to more people, and help to raise the profile of the project.

The team also wanted to add a multimedia aspect to the maps, by including video footage of points of interest from around Kibera, and uploading them to YouTube. Three members of Carolina for Kibera (CFK), affiliated with the University of North Carolina, assisted with the filming and helped to document the map making process using small camcorders.

The young people involved in the project developed a sense of achievement as they learned the new skills, and gained confidence in using new technologies. They also began to see the value of the information they were collecting and to understand the impact it could have on their community. However, it was not so easy to convince other residents.

There was a lot of cynicism in the local community caused by the NGOs who had previously come to Kibera but never shared their information. People were, therefore, reluctant to be filmed and photographed. Although the GPS data gathering was less intrusive, the technology presented other difficulties.

The lack of reliable power and inadequate internet access in Kibera were major challenges, especially when it came to uploading large video files to the web, which can take a long time. The slow internet connection also made it difficult to update security software on the computers, leaving them vulnerable to damaging viruses.

These were challenges that could be overcome in time, but for the project to be a real success, it would have to show that it could provide useful information to the community. The mapping project was, therefore, expanded to incorporate public participation geographic information systems (PPGIS) to gather information on specific issues affecting the residents of Kibera.

The group focused on collecting detailed data on four sectors: health, security, education, and water and sanitation. In February 2010, Map Kibera developed a partnership with UNICEF and added a fifth topic: mapping girls’ security. The aim here was to get the girls’ views on possible threats to their security, along with location information, for use in compiling data on their vulnerability to HIV/Aids.

Nine mappers collected data on the five topics using paper forms, gathering, for example, details of the costs and services offered at clinics and chemists in the area. To further encourage community involvement and get feedback on the information gathered, the team produced printed versions of maps for each area and placed transparencies on top so that residents could make changes and additions as necessary. Map Kibera also involved other interested organisations working in the health and security sectors in the area, including African Medical and Research Foundation and a women's group called Kibera Power Women.

Positive picture

As well as making the maps and multimedia available online, Map Kibera looked for other ways for the community to use the information gathered. For instance, the video material filmed as part of the mapping exercises could also be used to present news stories of the area. This idea expanded and the team worked with two youth from Kibera, who already had film-making experience.

They trained 18 young people to use small ‘ultra-portable’ Flip video cameras and the software to help them share their efforts on the web. This led to Kibera News Network (KNN), a citizen journalism initiative to present features and news stories affecting Kibera, showing positive aspects of the area and providing accurate coverage of negative events.

Mainstream media often focused on the misery and negativity in Kibera. The only events certain to attract mainstream media attention were clashes with the police or when the trains that run along the area’s peripheries were disrupted. Map Kibera attempts to change the perception of Kibera by allowing people to create and share their own stories.

The KNN teams edit the videos themselves and post them on YouTube – giving them a direct and immediate link to a global audience. The videos are also available on the Voice of Kibera, a community news website that also hosts the digital map. Residents can even post their own geo-located stories to the map using SMS.

Map Kibera used the open source tool, Ushahidi, to make the contributions via SMS possible. Ushahidi was initially developed after the 2008 Kenyan elections, to track reports of violence. It is a tool for crowdsourcing information using, e-mail, Twitter and the web as well as SMS. When someone in Kibera contributes an article, an SMS gateway filters the incoming texts according to keywords. Messages with the keyword ‘Kibera’ are fed into the Voice of Kibera website, where they are mapped using GPS coordinates, and approved by the editor before finally appearing on the site.

In 2010, the team founded the GroundTruth Initiative to support Map Kibera and other future projects. In the same year, UN Habitat awarded Map Kibera with a youth fund grant to expand its work to other parts of Nairobi, leading to co-operation with the community in another slum, Mukuru. A group in Mathare Valley, the second-largest slum in Nairobi, was also interested in creating a similar project, and, through funding from Plan International, a team is now collaborating on a participatory development programme there.

The Map Kibera Trust, which has a core membership of 30 young people, is working with similar communities in other parts of Kenya, and in Tanzania. A core aim of the Trust is to not only make people aware of openly available technology and information, but also to train local people to use them to benefit the community. The information now available to the residents of Kibera has caused a shift in power, providing them with reliable data to present their own case, and enabling to directly influence the policies that affect their lives.

By Erica Hagen and Mikel Maron
Article re-published with permission from ICT Update

Erica Hagen is a freelance writer, photographer, videographer and specialist on new media for development.
Mikel Maron is co-director of GroundTruth Initiative, and board member of OpenStreetMap Foundation

Related links



Saturday, June 9, 2012

Accelerating Development Using the Web: Empowering Poor and Marginalized Populations


The World Wide Web Foundation has published Accelerating Development Using the Web: Empowering Poor and Marginalized Populations. Supported by the Rockefeller Foundation, the book is a compendium of articles by recognized experts describing the real and potential effects of the World Wide Web in all major aspects of economic and social development.

The book fills a gap in the current store of knowledge by taking a broad view, offering detailed commentary from fourteen experts who are deeply engaged in the field of ICTs for development, many with extensive experience in developing countries, and each able to emphasize the key questions, challenges, and successes unique to their field.

The research unites themes of technological innovation, international development, economic growth, gender equality, linguistic and cultural diversity and community action, with special attention paid to the circumstances surrounding the poor and vulnerable members of the Global Information Society.

Readers will be able to draw parallels across each field and see where similarities in the deployment of ICTs for development exist and where there are divergences.

Saturday, January 28, 2012

Web 2.0 in Africa - Agriculture and New Technologies - Web2forDev



An eight minute Business Africa/CTA video production documenting actual cases on the use of Web 2.0 applications in the development sector, specifically among farmers in Africa.