PEACE BUILDING IN SOLOMON ISLANDS

COL sponsored two workshops for youth and community representatives in Isabel Province, Solomon Islands, where participants identified and developed content for a local learning network. An initial planning workshop held in March brought together local youth to build awareness of the opportunities offered by the island’s eight radio and email stations as well as a distance learning centre. Youth representatives identified four areas upon which to develop learning programmes to address the underlying causes of conflict in their communities: environmental and natural resource management, drugs and substance abuse, reviving cultural traditions, urbanisation and birth control. In a second workshop held in April, participants learned how to develop digital content themselves.

“Isabel Island’s radio and email stations have tremendous potential to facilitate learning for peace, health promotion, livelihoods or other community needs, but they have been massively underutilised,” said Mr. Ian Pringle, COL’s Education Specialist, Media. “We are helping stakeholders to build a network of community partners who will collaborate to create content for broadcast as part of larger learning programmes.”

“Engaging youth in this initiative will demonstrate the potential of using integrated, inter-modal communications in learning programmes,” said Dr. Tanyss Munro, COL’s Education Specialist, Governance. “This work will add valuable insight into applications, training needs and sustainability issues for the Ministry of Education and Human Resource Development as they develop their Distance and Flexible Learning policy over the coming year.”

COL has brought together a wide-ranging group of partners in this initiative: the Commonwealth Youth Programme, the Isabel Provincial government, several Solomon Islands ministries, the Distance Learning Centres Project and two local non-governmental organisations, People First Network and Solomon Islands Development Trust. The partners are continuing to collaborate and develop learning content that responds to community needs.

www.WikiEducator.org/Learning4Peace/Solomon_Islands

SUPPORTING TEACHER EDUCATION IN WEST AFRICA

Seventeen teacher educators from the The Gambia, Ghana, Nigeria and Sierra Leone took part in a COL-sponsored meeting in February 2009 in Abuja, Nigeria. The purpose of the meeting was to reactivate the West African Consortium for Teacher Education Development (WACTED), which had been formed several years earlier but has been inactive.

In addition to agreeing on a Constitution, objectives and upcoming activities, participants developed Country Plans for the dissemination of open educational resources (OERs) developed by the Teacher Education in Sub-Saharan Africa (TESSA) consortium. See page 3, “Supporting Teacher Education in Sub-Saharan Africa” for an update about TESSA.

Participants at the Abuja meeting agreed that the following projects should be undertaken in 2009-2010 with support from COL and other agencies:

• Improve quality assurance by training teacher educators how to adapt and use COL’s Quality Assurance Tool Kit for Teacher Education,
• Build capacity of teacher education institutions in information and communication technology (ICT) and materials development, and
• Conduct a situation analysis with a view to building a West African teacher education data base of training needs, programmes, facilities, personnel, materials and expertise.

Professor Jophus Anamuah Mensah (Chairman of the Open University of Ghana’s Planning Committee) volunteered to serve as Chair of WACTED’s Executive Committee.

MEDIA FOR LEARNING IN MALAWI

COL helps media and development organisations and their partners to design, develop and operationalise non-formal ODL programmes using appropriate technologies. A key element of COL’s approach is collaboration between media and knowledge-based groups.

A good example is unfolding in Malawi where media and health groups are working together to create a community learning programme about maternal and child health. The lead partner is the MaiMwana Project, a community-based health initiative established in rural Mchinji District, Malawi by the University College London’s Centre for International Health and Development. The MaiMwana Project aims to reduce mother and child mortality and morbidity by mobilising communities, through women’s groups, to take control of mother and child health issues. Their work eventually led them to the Mudzi Wathu Community Radio in Mchinji and also to Story Workshop, a media production agency in Lilongwe. It also led to COL, specifically COL’s work using radio and other local media for community learning programmes. COL helped articulate both the programme and capacity development approaches and funded workshop costs. A series of workshops are taking place for representatives of MaiMwana’s 200 women’s groups.

Mr. Mikey Rosato, Technical Advisor for the MaiMwana Project in Mchinji, provides this report about the initial workshop:

On 30 March 2009, representatives from Mudzi Wathu Community Radio Station, communities in Mchinji District, Mchinji District Health Office and the MaiMwana Project came together for a radio programme development workshop in Malawi. The representatives each brought expertise to the partnership – radio broadcasting, community needs, community mobilisation, and knowledge of mother and child health issues. Under the guidance of Story Workshop, the partners spent five days learning radio development and production skills and sharing their expertise and ideas.

The workshop resulted in the development of Phukusi La Moyo (Bag of Life), a series of programmes on mother and child health that is being broadcast across Mchinji District on community radio station beginning in April 2009. The programmes provide communities with a “bag” of knowledge and skills about health, which they can draw on to address problems affecting mothers and children. It is hoped that this will help to improve the health and reduce the high rates of mortality of mothers and children in Malawi.

SCHOOL REPORT NEWS DAY

COL supported the participation of students at three South African schools for the BBC’s School Report News Day on 26 March 2009. Students received training in interviewing and radio production techniques from Open Learning Systems Education Trust (OLSET) and BBC producers. The students then created their own reports, which were broadcast on the global news discussion programme “World Have Your Say” on the BBC World Service. The topics were tied to school curriculum and included social networking, the football World Cup in 2010 and school initiations. The South African students joined thousands of students from more than 500 schools in the United Kingdom who provided reports for School Report News Day.

In addition to introducing technology in the classroom and providing a new way to engage students in learning, the experience provided students with skills and new-found confidence. COL plans to expand its support of the programme to more schools next year.

DETA 2009 Conference
3-5 August 2009
University of Cape Coast
Cape Coast, Ghana
“Issues and challenges in education in Africa – the need for a ‘new’ teacher”
www.deta.up.ac.za

The Cambridge
International Conference on Open and Distance Learning
22-25 September 2009
St. Edmund’s College, Cambridge, UK
“Supporting learning in the digital age: rethinking inclusion, pedagogy and quality”
www2.open.ac.uk/r06/conference

OBHE 2009 Global Forum on Cross-Border Higher Education
21-24 October 2009
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
“Global Connections, Local Impacts: Best Practices, Models and Policies for Cross-Border Higher
Education”
www.obhe.ac.uk

Sixth Pan-Commonwealth Forum on Open Learning (PCF6)
24-28 November 2010
Kochi, India
“Access & Success in Learning: Global Development Perspectives”
www.col.org/pcf6