Pamela's Blog

These were the topics John updated us on in the last week of January in emails and at our UK-Nigeria Dadamac meeting Emails from John - social protection/witch-craft and other updates Microfinance Sulabh Toilets Kafanchan Bandwidth Consortium Goats and running water 1 - Emails from John We lost that case of Social protection. The accused was mysteriously found dead in his room. (This relates to last week's witch-craft accusation - UK-Nigeria meeting: witchcraft, sick child, plastic recycling, solar projects. ) We may be making some headway with the Kaf Bandwidth Consortium which FF (Fantsuam Foundation) is leading. We are yet...

@andy_doodle asked me some excellent questions on Friday and today tweeted me saying - @Pamela_McLean great to meet you at the Hub. Let me know if those questions helped and we can help you develop it further :) #mixatsix #hub I think it would be hard to reply in 140 characters so I'm cheating and writing a blog instead. The classic questions Andy's questions were the classic ones - "Who?" (Who do you want to share you ideas with?) "What and why?" (What ideas do you want to share and why?) and then (given the answers to the previous questions)...

I agree when David Nemer says the problem about digital divide research is that "quantitative approaches are addressed to answer the wrong questions" Digital Divide Research: one myth, problem and challenge by David Nemer . "Digital Divide" issues are with us every day in the Dadamac community, and they are much more complex than "the easily measurable". Since the turn of the century Dadamac, and its pre-cursors OOCD and Cawdnet, have been crossing the digital divide between UK and various locations in rural Africa. Overcoming "digital divide" challenges has been "part of our being" for over a decade. Infrastruture-related challenges...

Dadamac has always been about the people involved rather than the tech that we use. But without the tech there would be no Dadamac The people and the tech are inextricably entwined. We value the tech because it enables us to communicate and collaborate. I'll explain briefly for any newcomers. Our roots are in a UK-Nigeria collaboration that began around 2000 and has been dependent on the Internet from the start. Thanks to the Internet our network grew to include people in countries beyond UK and Nigeria. Thanks also to the Internet I was able to find people and groups...

Things are coming together within education/learning/ICT. For now I'll focus on GlobalNet21, Dadamac and something that I call "Virtual Academia' (plus a quick mention of "Everything Unplugged"). GlobalNet21Learning Networks I'm excited about GlobalNet21Learning Networks which I mentioned as one of my Gems from last week . We are planning to hold a second meeting in February and then a webinar. The webinar will be a mixture of "catch-up" and "continuation". I hope that after the webinar people who hade't previously been able to attend either of the face-to-face (F2F) meetings will feel at home in the group, and up to...