A COL-brokered distance learning project to enhance the training of junior surgeons is entering its second phase (2001/2002) with the release of a surgical skills training resource package that includes the principles of the safe handling of instruments and an introduction to resection and suturing techniques. The first phase of the project, initiated in early 2000, covers the basics of clinical surgery, and includes a supplementary module on undertaking surgery in tropical conditions (as profiled in COL's February 2000 issue of Connections).
At the launch of the distance education version of Introduction to Surgical Skills, London, 13 September 2001. Left to right: Professor Arjuna Aluwihare, developer of the distance education materials; Mr. Bill Thomas, Royal College of Surgeons of England Surgical Skills Tutor and author/presenter of the original face-to-face material; and Sir Peter Morris, President of the RCSE
The second phase, based on the Basic Surgical Skills three-day workshop offered by The Royal College of Surgeons of England (RCSE), was launched at the RCSE's Board of Governor's meeting at Lincoln's Inn Fields in London on 13 September 2001. The workshop's handbook and video format was modified for flexible distance delivery by Professor Arjuna Aluwihare of the University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka; the adapted "hands-on" training package, Introduction to Surgical Skills, is designed to complement existing programmes but can also be used as a standalone course. In addition to trainee surgeons, the course may also be of interest to a broader spectrum of health workers including nurses and rural practitioners. The project's initial phase was based on the Surgeons in Training Education Programme (STEP), a nine-month distance-training course also provided by The Royal College of Surgeons. The positive results of this first phase encouraged the current initiative, and an initial eight participating medical schools have since increased to ten for the second phase.
Other partners in this initiative are the Hamilton Bailey Memorial Trust and the British Council. Participating Commonwealth medical training institutions include The College of Physicians and Surgeons of Bangladesh, the University of Ghana Medical School, Mozambique's Universidade Eduardo Mondlane, the Vellore Christian Medical College in India, UCH Ibadan in Nigeria, the medical schools of MEDUNSA & the University of Transkei in South Africa, the Postgraduate Medical Institute in Sri Lanka, Makerere University in Uganda and the University of Zimbabwe.
Institutions enquiring about the Introduction to Surgical Skills training package are welcome to contact COL. Applications for use will be considered individually. The materials are not available for sale to individuals. See: Information/Application form (445 Kb Acrobat PDF download)
One of COL's collaborators in India, the M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation, and its former Head of Informatics, Dr. Venkataraman Balaji, were presented with the World Technology Award in Education for 2001, for their work with "information villages" in India, at the World Technology Summit, held in London in July. Dr. Balaji provided the following for Connections:
In many countries in Asia today, information and communications technologies (ICT) are seen as tools to generate national prosperity. Considerable investments are being made to effect a transition in these societies from an industrial or part-industrial economy to an ICT-based "new" economy.
From decades of experience in working with the very poor, Professor M.S. Swaminathan, "leader of the Green revolution" in India in the early 1990s, concluded that in order to generate truly wide benefits any new technology must bring benefits to the poor in the rural areas. But in order for these populations, handicapped by lack of literacy, to derive advantages from the new information found in the networks, the information must be transformed into locally specific knowledge that can be acted upon. Based on this insight, he conceived of the notion of "information villages" where the local families, especially the poor among them, are able to take advantage of emerging ICTs.
During 1998 - 2000, the M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation implemented a research project in Pondicherry in south India to give concrete shape to the concept of "information villages". This area has a sizeable population living at an income level of less than one dollar a day. The project started with a detailed survey of ordinary men and women's perception of where and how they got the most needed information and how they rated the reliability of various sources of information in the immediate locality. It turned out that rural families generally depend on other rural families for most of the information they need. Linkages to the educational institutions were weak. The strongest information linkages were provided by money-lenders and middle-men.
In this context, the project introduced a hybrid of wired and wireless systems to access the Internet and helped in the development of a wireless local area network covering many villages. In each village the access centre, called "village information shop" or "village knowledge centre", was a community-sponsored one, in which local youth helped the rural men and women to obtain the information they were seeking most. Half the local centre managers were women. The youth who volunteered to run the daily operations were school-educated and they were given training by the project staff. The village centre operators, in turn, either trained or helped users to obtain what information they needed.
Over the years, the experiment has been extended to cover 15 villages with a total population of about 33,000 served. Evaluation data shows information on government welfare schemes for the rural areas and opportunities for higher education are sought the most (75%). Also, participation by women is significantly higher in these centres, compared to rural reading rooms or libraries, and children are most interested in browsing the available educational CDs.
The project did not wait for major technological breakthroughs or policy changes to occur and moved on with what was available, blending a number of technologies. The wired-wireless hybrid is one example. The other is solar power and battery back-up to avoid down-time that would otherwise result from the frequent power outages. A blend of satellite-based data broadcasting technology and hard-wired file transfer on the Internet has also been used to enable the rural families to access graphics-rich web sites. www.mssrf.org
Dr. Balaji, who was the director of this project, is now with the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), headquartered in India.
The Open University of Malaysia - Universiti Terbuka Malaysia, or UNITEM - accepted its first batch of 1,200 students in July 2001. UNITEM, a private institution owned by 11 public universities and endorsed by the Ministry of Education, will deliver all its programmes through distance learning methods using a combination of traditional and electronic/multimedia technology. It plans on a student intake of 22,000 within five years, especially targeting adults who are school leavers or who were unable to obtain places at other universities. Tuition fees will be competitively priced. www.oum.edu.my
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PNG Association for Distance Education seminar organisers, during Papua New Guinea's National Education week.
Left to right: Mr. Mac Arreola, Mr. Paraka Pena (Chair of PNGADE and Acting Director, Institute of Distance and Continuing Education, University of Papua New Guinea), Mr. John Bartram (COL's Education Specialist, Technical and Vocational Education, who was a presenter at the seminar) and Mrs. Agnes Hota
"Continuing Education through Distance and Open Learning" was the theme of this year's National Education Week in Papua New Guinea. It was opened on 1 October 2001 by the then Minister for Education, Research, Science and Technology, the Honourable Professor John Waiko (now Minister of Foreign Affairs), in Port Moresby and concluded on 5 October with another ceremony in Bougainville.
Activities held during the week included a talk-back radio programme, an exhibit at the College of Distance Education (CODE) and a one-day seminar focussing on the theme that was organised and hosted by the PNG Association for Distance Education (PNGADE). The seminar was attended by practitioners from schools, colleges and universities, together with Ministry of Education staff, who heard speakers and engaged in discussions about the ways in which open and distance learning could increase participation in education in PNG.
A number of Commonwealth education bodies have formed the Commonwealth Consortium for Education. It aims to promote education about the Commonwealth and its fundamental values of democracy, tolerance and respect for diversity.
At its inaugural meeting in London, the consortium's founding members agreed to press for education as a priority concern for Commonwealth collaboration, a position they intend to pursue at the forthcoming Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting.
The Consortium comprises 13 non-governmental bodies that aim to mobilise support for education co-operation programmes, working closely with official Commonwealth agencies, national governments and agencies and other non-governmental organisations. Professor Colin Power, Vice-President of the Commonwealth Association of Science, Technology and Mathematics Educators, chairs the steering group.
The Consortium includes the Association of Commonwealth Examinations and Accreditation Bodies; the Association of Commonwealth Studies; the Commonwealth Association for Science, Technology and Mathematics Educators; the Commonwealth Council for Educational Administration and Management; the Commonwealth Countries' League; the Commonwealth Institute; the Commonwealth Linking Trust; the Council for Education in the Commonwealth; the English-Speaking Union of the Commonwealth; the Federation of Commonwealth Open and Distance Learning Associations (FOCODLA); the Institute of Commonwealth Studies and its Commonwealth Policy Studies Unit; and the League for the Exchange of Commonwealth Teachers (LECT). Further information is available from: Anna Tomlinson, Director, LECT, 7 Lion Yard, London SW4 7NQ, UK; tel: +44 207 819 3932; fax: +44 207 720 5403; e-mail: anna.tomlinson@lect.org.uk
Official Commonwealth bodies such as the Commonwealth Secretariat and COL are not members of the consortium but will work with and support the members in achieving their goals. COL also supports FOCODLA.
"Bridging the digital divide" has become the vogue particularly since the G8 proclaimed the Okinawa Charter in July 2000. Since then, several organisations have produced action plans and frameworks to fulfil this important objective. Meanwhile, a grassroots action movement on bridging the digital divide has been developing in Africa over the past three years. Organisations promoting education in African schools through the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs), otherwise known as "schoolnets", have mushroomed in over 20 African countries to date. This evolution has led to the establishment of SchoolNetAfrica to facilitate the growth and development of national schoolnets across the continent.
Headquartered in South Africa and governed by a 12-member steering committee representing 10 countries from five sub-regions and the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, SchoolNetAfrica is the first African-based, African-led, pan-African school networking institution in place on the continent. In partnership with national schoolnets, SchoolNetAfrica is launching a number of flagship projects.
Already, national schoolnets have established partnerships with
government ministries of education and telecommunications, the private sector and non-governmental organisations within their countries. Now, SchoolNetAfrica's "A-team Steering Committee" has forged partnerships with major donor and development agencies such as COL, the Open Society Institute for Southern Africa, the International Development Research Centre (Canada), the UN Economic Commission for Africa and UNESCO.
COL, through its Commonwealth Electronic Network for Schools and Education (www.col.org/cense), and SchoolNetAfrica have signed a Memorandum of Understanding that provides a framework for collaborating in a Schoolnet Champions Capacity Building Project as well as three other areas: research, the development of SchoolNetAfrica's knowledge warehouse and a pilot programme on curriculum integration.
SchoolNetAfrica focuses on developing African learners as critical thinkers by accessing world-class resources through information and communications technologies (ICTs). Its underlying philosophy is that ICTs have significant potential to enhance education in Africa and hold the key to pole-vault Africa into the 21st century. SchoolNetAfrica asserts that every African child has the right to have access to information and knowledge and to be a global citizen and contends that the private sector and donor community have a vested interest in these methods of improving the lives of African children and youth. www.schoolnetafrica.net
Further information is available from: Ms. Shafika Isaacs, Executive Director, SchoolNet Africa,
PO Box 31866, Braamfontein 2017, South Africa;
tel: +27 11 339 2300; fax: +27 11 339 5912;
e-mail: shafika@schoolnetafrica.org.za
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