Online Community Creates Learning Content for Small States
10 August 2006
Educators meet under auspices of new Virtual University for Commonwealth Small States.
Educators
from more than 20 Commonwealth small states are meeting in Mauritius
from 7 to 25 August 2006 under the auspices of the new Virtual
University for Small States of the Commonwealth (VUSSC), which was set
up by Commonwealth education ministers.
The workshop,
organised by the Commonwealth of Learning (COL), will help to make this
collaborative network a reality. Workshop participants will be able to
develop online skills to allow them to continue to work together after
the workshop through the use of information and communication
technology.
They include educators from Antigua and
Barbuda, Barbados, Belize, Botswana, Cyprus, Dominica, The Gambia,
Jamaica, Lesotho, Maldives, Malta, Mauritius, Namibia, Papua New
Guinea, St Kitts and Nevis, St Vincent and the Grenadines, Samoa,
Seychelles, Swaziland, Tonga, Trinidad and Tobago, Tuvalu and Vanuatu,
as well as non-Commonwealth country Comoros.
It
is becoming essential for people in small states to work, learn and
collaborate online," said Paul West, COLs Director for Knowledge
Management and Information Technology. With travel becoming
increasingly expensive and worries of global warming caused by travel,
the group will also set an example for others.
The
educators will be posting, collaborating and developing learning
content on a COL-hosted website called a wiki, which is a simple
medium for online collaboration that requires minimal technical
knowledge. The popular wikipedia.org is the best-known wiki
environment.
Mr West sees online collaboration as the wave
of the future. He stated: Educators will be able to collaborate in
finding and adapting course materials and resources, creating new
content and sharing ideas between classrooms and among countries.
The
VUSSC is helping 25 of the smallest countries in the world to build
development capacity and strengthen economies through improved
education. Participants in this first such event include island nations
located in the Caribbean, Pacific, Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean,
and small countries in Africa.
Content development will
focus on entrepreneurship and tourism skills, both areas of important
economic growth for small developing nations. The courses produced will
be offered for credit by institutions in the participating states and
will be available for adaptation more widely.
COL is an
intergovernmental organisation created by Commonwealth Heads of
Government to help developing nations improve access to quality
education and training. It encourages the development and sharing of
open learning and distance education knowledge, resources and
technologies.
Editors note. Thanks Abdoukarim Sanneh for the forward. It's a master pice.