GSED – Global Studies in Education Digest

Mark Thirlwell presents a summary of the impact the rise of India and China is having, as part of the Lowy Institutes Global Trends presentation.

Thanks to Daniel Araya for the link:

About the Report

Places do well when they promote transformations along the dimensions of economic geography: higher densities as cities grow; shorter distances as workers and businesses migrate closer to density; and fewer divisions as nations lower their economic borders and enter world markets to take advantage of scale and trade in specialized products. World Development Report 2009 concludes that the transformations along these three dimensions–density, distance, and division–are essential for development and should be encouraged.

The conclusion is controversial. Slum-dwellers now number a billion, but the rush to cities continues. A billion people live in lagging areas of developing nations, remote from globalization’s many benefits. And poverty and high mortality persist among the world’s “bottom billion,” trapped without access to global markets, even as others grow more prosperous and live ever longer lives. Concern for these three intersecting billions often comes with the prescription that growth must be spatially balanced.

Complete Report Table of Contents & front matter Complete report Part 1 | Part 2
Geography in motion: The Report at a Glance – Density, Distance, and Division
Overview

From UNESCO:

Micro CDS/ISIS is an advanced non-numerical information storage and retrieval software developed by UNESCO since 1985 to satisfy the need of organizations to streamline their information processing activities by using modern (and relatively inexpensive) PC technologies.

The new report, entitled World of Work Report 2008: Income inequalities in the age of financial globalization, produced by the ILO’s International Institute for Labour Studies contain a number of assertions in relation to education investment for development. I sometimes wonder if assertions like this are verifiable in all cases

When spending on primary and secondary education is low in comparison to spending on tertiary education, children from low-income households will have
fewer chances to obtain the secondary education that is a prerequisite for attending university. (p. 25)

From Preface to World of Work Report  2008:

Income inequalities are pervasive and growing in virtually all countries. Public debates and policies have focused on this challenge. Opinion surveys illustrate how people link the downsides of globalization to rising income inequalities. It is only appropriate therefore for the International Institute for Labour Studies to apply its analytical expertise to a trend of direct relevance to the world of work. The outcome is a comprehensive overview of key factors underlying unbalanced
income developments. It shows that income inequality has risen more than can be justified by economic analysis and entails major social and economic costs. What emerges is an evidence-based critique of the way financial globalization has occurred so far. The findings assembled here provide analytical support to the ILO’s view that the growth model that led to the financial crisis is not sustainable. It confirms that a rebalancing between economic, social and environmental goals is vital both to recovery and also the shaping of a fair globalization. (p. vii)

• Executive summary of the World of Work Report 2008 – Income Inequalities in the Age of Financial Globalization
• World of Work Report 2008 – Income Inequalities in the Age of Financial Globalization

Thanks to Gabriela Walker for the link

Footage of activists in Pittsburgh organizing against the G20 Summit, including labor, fair trade, living wage, community, and socialist organizers. The 2009 G20 Summit in Pittsburgh will be held September 24th and 25th attended by leaders from the most powerful countries. This footage was filmed on September 23rd, 2009 at the Teach-in at the Steelworkers headquarters in Pittsburgh and at the Mounumental Baptist Church ‘Tent City’ in Pittsburgh’s The Hill district. Filmed and edited by Jeb Sprague, for the Inter Press Service (IPS).

This is a very useful site to find articles, conference papers and the latest research on Educational Technology: The Ed/ITLib Digital Library

For instances a list of Journals included in their Website  are:

Information Technology in Childhood Education Annual

ISSN 1522-8185

Issues for ITCE | About ITCE | TOC Alert for ITCE

International Journal of Educational Telecommunications

ISSN 1077-9124

Issues for IJET | TOC Alert for IJET

International Journal on E-Learning

ISSN 1537-2456

Issues for IJEL | About IJEL | TOC Alert for IJEL

Journal of Computers in Mathematics and Science Teaching

ISSN 0731-9258

Issues for JCMST | About JCMST | TOC Alert for JCMST

Journal of Educational Multimedia and Hypermedia

ISSN 1055-8896

Issues for JEMH | About JEMH | TOC Alert for JEMH

Journal of Interactive Learning Research

ISSN 1093-023X

Issues for JILR | About JILR | TOC Alert for JILR

Journal of Technology and Teacher Education

ISSN 1059-7069

Issues for JTATE | About JTATE | TOC Alert for JTATE

WebNet Journal: Internet Technologies, Applications & Issues

ISSN 1522-192X

Issues for WEBNETJ | TOC Alert for WEBNETJ

The following article from the Feb. 2008 International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning by Caswell, Henson, Jensen & Wiley provides a good overview of the opencourseware history and the importance of OER for any project of universal education. [read full article here]

ABSTRACT

The role of distance education is shifting. Traditionally distance education was limited in the number of people served because of production, reproduction, and distribution costs. Today, while it still costs the university time and money to produce a course, technology has made it such that reproduction costs are almost non-existent. This shift has significant implications, and allows distance educators to play an important role in the fulfillment of the promise of the right to universal education. At little or no cost, universities can make their content available to millions. This content has the potential to substantially improve the quality of life of learners around the world. New distance education technologies, such as OpenCourseWares, act as enablers to achieving the universal right to education. These technologies, and the associated changes in the cost of providing access to education, change distance education’s role from one of classroom alternative to one of social transformer.

Keywords: OpenCourseWare; distance education; access; new technologies

An upcoming multidisciplinary workshop on Information in Networks will take Place in New York, next week

From the Workshop on Information in Networks Website:

WIN is a Social Networks Summit intended to foster collaboration and to build community. The increasing availability of massive networked data is revolutionizing the scientific study of a variety of phenomena in fields as diverse as Computer Science, Economics, Physics and Sociology. Yet, while many important advances have taken place in these different communities, the dialog between researchers across disciplines is only beginning. The purpose of WIN is to bring together leading researchers studying ‘information in networks’ – its distribution, its diffusion, its value, and its influence on social and economic outcomes – in order to lay the foundation for ongoing relationships and to build a lasting multidisciplinary research community.

An interesting article showing the limits of the introduction of programs such as  one-laptop- per-child, without considering the pedagogical rather than merely technological challenges in the classroom.

From IPS by Cristina Canoura, July 3o, 2009:

[....]Villa García’s was the first school in the Montevideo metropolitan area to receive the computers distributed under the central government’s one-laptop-per-child programme, known as CEIBAL (a Spanish acronym that stands for Basic Computer Connectivity in Education for Online Learning, but also coincides with the name of Uruguay’s national tree, the Ceibo), which seeks to promote digital equality and to democratise knowledge.

Its pupils are among the large proportion of boys and girls who live under the poverty line in Uruguay: almost half of the child population of this small South American country of just 3.4 million inhabitants.

The aim of this innovative initiative championed by socialist President Tabaré Vázquez is to give every schoolchild and teacher in Uruguay their own personal computer, thus bringing disadvantaged communities into the digital age.

But the programme failed to include gender considerations in its contents, and as soon as kids are allowed to play freely with their computers, boys go straight to online games typically associated with their sex and girls look for doll, dress-up and fashion makeover games, Adriana Font and Karen Souza, two young teachers who work at the school, told IPS.

Gender differences are also reinforced by families. When there’s an after-school activity or field trip, girls usually participate in fewer numbers because their parents want them to stay home and care for their younger siblings and do the housework. [ read full here]

[...]Sixty percent of the children in Font’s and Souza’s classes are older than the ages stipulated for the grades they are in. This means that most of them are teenagers aged 13 to 15.

When they speak of their plans for the future, they tend to repeat traditional roles. Most of the boys say they’ll go into a technical line of work – like car mechanic – and girls mainly want to be hairdressers. [read full here]

Posted on Jun 19 2009 on Complexity and Social Networks Blog by By Alexander Schellong,

[...]In November 2009, the EU Ministerial eGovernment Conference will take place in Malmoe, Sweden. It is planned to present a ministerial declaration on eGovernment in the EU for the next seven years. This declaration will be the result of back-room dealings between EU Member States (MS).

However, this year a group of people led by two companies decided to use a
social media facilitated bottom-up approach to create a declaration alongside the official one in Malmoe for eGovernment 2015 It is also their goal to get official endorsement of their version from the European Commission. As the content of the platform is openly accessibly, ideas might even find their way into the official document. The group’s motivation is probably a mix of self-marketing, fascination for social media and spirit to influence policy making.

So far, 75 individuals participated in the activity. It will be interesting to see how many people will sign the declaration. It will also be interesting to see whether and when the media will pick-up the story of alternative agenda and how much pressure this will exert on policy makers. Considering the total population of 500 Mio EU citizens, legitimacy of this initiative is questionable.

Nevertheless, the EU is at a crossroads: If it does not open up more, it will further strip itself of legitimacy. Gov 2.0 type activities provide one avenue to strengthen the EU and its institutions.

Finally, with regards to research, I see two issues. First, old and new research from various disciplines relating to Government 20 is not connected. Second, researchers can hardly keep pace with the current output of Government 2.0 policies and projects being implemented. [ read full here]