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9 settembre 2008
BBC News: Agenzia annuncia nuove dorsali web per Kenya e est Africa
Appena letta, condivido qualora utile a qualcuno impegnato in questi Paesi. Ciao
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Google is helping develop a system to bring high-speed internet connections to three billion people developing countries in Africa and elsewhere.
The 03b Networks system aims to use satellites to provide broadband services at the same speeds as those on offer in rich countries.
The service, which is due to begin in 2010, is also backed by cable operator Liberty Global and the bank HSBC.
It aims to tap into booming mobile phone usage in the developing world.
It will target markets in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East.
The founders of 03b Networks recently helped pioneer the first commercial 3G mobile and fibre-to-the-home networks in Rwanda, the company said in a statement.
Production of an initial 16 satellites has begun, and the project allows for additional satellites to increase capacity.
The company said the system will enable the spread of locally generated content and e-learning, encouraging social and economic growth in the developing world.
There are various other projects under way to bring faster and cheaper internet access to the African continent.
Kenya has commissioned a fibre-optic cable from Fujaira in The United Arab Emirates along the sea floor of the Gulf of Oman, down the East African coast to the port town of Mombasa.
Another undersea telecommunications cable, known as East African Submarine Cable System (Eassy), intends to connect 21 countries to each other and the rest of the world with high-quality internet.
Categoria 
Ciao questa volta la BBC pubblica uno speciale da S. Paolo del Brasile dove parla di un importante iniziativa per “sottrarre una divisione” fra chi domina e chi è dominato dall’assenza di conoscenza.
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Bridging Brazil’s digital divide
Digital Planet
Sao Paulo Special
BBC World Service
This week the BBC World Service’s Digital Planet programme is in Brazil. Here the show investigates how the country’s enthusiasm for technology is now reaching schoolchildren from all backgrounds.
There are an estimated 45m PCs in Brazil, making it the world’s fifth biggest market for computers.
The more striking number, however, is the fraction of the population that does not have access to technology.
“Last year’s figures showed that 59% of Brazilians have never accessed the internet or used a computer,” said Rodrigo Assumpcao, head of a committee that advises President Lula’s government on what they call ‘digital inclusion’.
But measures are underway to change all that, Mr Assumpcao told the BBC’s Gareth Mitchell. He feels that being technologically educated is just as important as the basics of numeracy and literacy.
A digital or social divide?
“When you think of Brazil, you think of country that is extremely divided between rich and poor and areas that are developed and under-developed,” said Mr Assumpcao.
He feels that the class divide within Brazilian society is to blame for the technological divide.
“In the 50′s there was a brilliant Brazilian educator who said that public schools were meant to provide for poor children – everything that the rich children had in their homes.”
Most middle-class children are brought up with computers, so it becomes second nature to them, Mr Assumpcao asserts.
“It’s like a Swiss army knife, a tool with multiple uses that serves him, that’s the experience of a middle-class child in Brazil.”
This difference between who commands this technology and who is commanded by technology determines in our society who rules and who is ruled
Rodrigo Assumpcao
In contrast, a poor child may not gain access to a computer until his teenage years, by which time it is a necessity in the working world.
“Only by the time he is twelve or fourteen, if he is lucky to live beside a neighbourhood association that has a computer, he will only then be taught on some kind of word-processing or web browser.
“He will be taught that he needs to learn these skills in order to have some rights within the job market,” added Mr Assumpcao.
“He is taught that he has to comply with technology and this perception, this difference between who commands this technology and who is commanded by technology determines in our society who rules and who is ruled, who has access to money and who hasn’t and who has access to rights and who hasn’t.”
Online for change
Mr Assumpcao said that 56,000 public schools are presently being fitted with broadband internet, with an aim to have all of the urban public schools in the country connected by 2010.
The Brazilian government is also involved with the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project , which provides a basic mobile computer for children in developing countries.
Its makers were able to produce a low-cost machine by using a less powerful processor and stripping out expensive parts like the hard disk drive.
Roseli Lopes from the University of Sao Paulo has co-ordinated a trial of the OLPC project at the Ernani School, northwest of Sao Paulo, that is now in its second year.
“It’s a wonderful experience for the children as they love coming to school and don’t want to stay at home,” said Prof Lopes.
The laptop project works well in classes with large numbers of children, as computers enable individuals to go at their own pace and level.
“It’s active learning, they take part in the search for information and they are not waiting for the teacher,” said Prof Lopes.
“They are having more fun using this technology, not only to read and write but to make videos and take pictures,” she added.
Children in Brazil only spend between four or five hours at school, so being able to take the laptop home extends the time that they have to learn.
“That is the most important thing about this project: when they go home they can continue learning and include their families in the process,” said Prof Lopes.
“Even if the parents can’t read and write, they can use the camera to take pictures and make the learning more rich.”
Other solutions
The Brazilian government is also trialling a number of other laptop projects in five other cities, employing Intel’s Classmate and Encore’s Simputer.
The main concern in using different laptops is that they need to be interoperable, so that is one issue that Prof Lopes and her colleagues are constantly evaluating.
However, the idea of children being able to access the technological hardware is only part of the solution in bridging this digital divide.
“We thought it was a good idea but immediately we decided that could not be conducted as the search for the next gadget,” said Mr Assumpcao.
“Also, the Brazilian government has a profound conviction that free software is the way to go, so we are demanding that there is a whole suite of free and open-source software installed in these computers.
“The whole idea of having closed software on public computers is something which strikes me as wrong,” he added.
With widely available broadband, laptops on the desk of many of Brazil’s youth, and a culture of open-source, free software, Brazil’s digital divide looks to be narrowing.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/technology/7647114.stm
Published: 2008/10/02 14:16:18 GMT
Iniziativa per il web solidale da parte di uno dei “padri” di internet: l’originale è su http://www.webnews.it/news/leggi/9128/tim-bernerslee-pensa-al-web-solidale/
ciao
—Tim Berners-Lee pensa al Web solidale
Continuano a moltiplicarsi le iniziative per rendere il Web e le pontezialità dell’informatica accessibili a tutti, anche a coloro che vivono in condizioni maggiormente disagiate nei paesi in via di sviluppo. Dopo l’ormai famoso progetto (http://www.webnews.it/news/leggi/9059/olpc-tenta-la-carta-amazon/) OLPC, dai destini alterni, e la recente decisione di Google di partecipare all’impegnativo progetto di O3b Networks per portare (http://business.webnews.it/news/leggi/9096/google-porta-la-banda-larga-nel-terzo-mondo/) la banda larga via satellite nel terzo e quarto mondo, sembra essere giunto il turno di Tim Berners-Lee. Considerato uno dei padri del WWW, il famoso informatico ha infatti dichiarato l’imminente apertura di una nuova fondazione tesa a diffondere il Web in maniera più uniforme e omogenea in tutto il globo.
Stando alle prime informazioni fornite (http://www.pcworld.com/article/151066/.html?tk=rss_news) da Berners-Lee, la World Wide Web Foundation sarà ufficialmente lanciata nel corso dei primi mesi del 2009 con un obiettivo preciso: rendere più democratico e libero l’accesso alla Rete per tutti gli abitanti del pianeta. Un progetto molto ambizioso, che passerà attraverso una strategia tesa a moltiplicare le opportunità di connessione a Internet per tutte quelle popolazioni che al momento sono completamente tagliate fuori dal flusso informativo del Web a causa del digital divide. La fondazione guidata da Tim Berners-Lee cercherà, infatti, di rendere accessibile la Rete ad almeno l’80% della popolazione mondiale che al momento non può connettersi e usufruire delle potenzialità offerte da Internet.
Durante la conferenza di presentazione della nuova World Wide Web Foundation, Berners-Lee ha riconosciuto di essersi prefissato alcuni obiettivi estremamente ambiziosi, ma ha sottolineato come la creazione di tali progetti e il loro sviluppo siano un dovere morale nei confronti dei paesi più disagiati e delle future generazioni, che dovranno poter disporre di un Web paragonabile a una «tela bianca» da riempire con nuove soluzioni e contenuti. Secondo il famoso informatico, inoltre, gli obiettivi della Fondazione consentiranno di intensificare ulteriormente lo spirito di libertà e democrazia online, con benefici per gli utenti e per i tradizionali canali di informazione. Non a caso, la Knigh Foundation (http://www.knightfoundation.org/), da anni impegnata nella tutela della libertà di stampa e nella creazione di un giornalismo migliore negli Stati Uniti, parteciperà attivamente nel progetto di Tim Berners-Lee con una donazione di circa 5 milioni di dollari.
Secondo il creatore della World Wide Web Foundation, l’estensione delle opportunità di accesso alla Rete potrà consentire un sensibile miglioramento delle condizioni di vita nei paesi in via di sviluppo. Oltre alla libertà di informazione, il Web potrà costituire un’importante risorsa per gestire in maniera più rapida ed efficiente le iniziative per portare acqua, cibo e medicinali nelle aree disagiate del mondo.
Per la stessa notizia per Google ho trovato altri dettagli su ITNews.
“Google acquistera’ satelliti per portare il web in Africa”.
Link: http://www.itnews.it/news/2008/0909195241839/google-acquistera-satelliti-per-portare-il-web-in-africa.html
Ciao.
Questa volta sul tema web 2.0 in Africa condivido da LinuxWorld il seguente articolo di Edris Kisambira
http://www.linuxworld.com/news/2008/091008-sub-saharan-universities-train-in-web.html
ciao a tutti:-) Adlo
———- Messaggio inoltrato ———-
Da: Aldo Ceccarelli xxxxxxxxxxxxx@gmail.com
Date: 11 settembre 2008 8.22
Oggetto: Sub-Saharan universities train in Web 2.0 tools
Representatives from 12 universities in eight sub-Saharan countries are meeting in Uganda to train in the use of Web 2.0 tools and open-source software.
The training in Web 2.0 tools is aimed at enabling the 35 lecturers and professors to carry out collaborative research in the field of agriculture, while the training in open-source software seeks to popularize the medium among higher institutions of learning.
“We are here to learn about Web 2.0 tools to enable us to do collaborative research projects, to teach using these tools and to also do a number of other collaborative projects without having to meet physically,” Nodumo Dhlamini, ICT director at Zimbabwe’s Africa University, said in an interview. “At the end of the day, we want to impact on the rural farmer, to make a difference and make ourselves relevant, as well.”
Those involved in the training hail from universities in Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
The tools that members are familiarizing themselves with include wikis, blogs, Skype and social-networking sites like Facebook.com.
“Right now, we have set up a wiki so that when we go back to our respective countries, any collaborative activity will be posted there so that we can share in what everybody is doing,” Dhlamini said.
“We are creating more of an educational network to tap into resources,” she added, “and this will also open us up to the rest of the world so that people out there know what we are doing.”
The training in open-source software is designed to create awareness among educational institutions of a cheaper and more secure alternative to the pirated software that many universities have installed.
Dhlamini explained that startup costs for proprietary software are high for large universities, yet the schools can end up with fake software, which is susceptible to virus attacks.
“It is not easy to migrate institutions of higher learning at once, but we are telling the members who are here to adopt it at individual levels as a starting point so that they can then sell it on a bigger scale to the university after realizing its benefits,” she said.
Dhlamini said that Africa has been left behind in the adoption of open-source software due to the digital divide. Nevertheless, she said, the high cost of software makes it necessary for African universities to take advantage of the opportunity.
“Free open-source software can help us tailor-make software that will address our needs,” Dhlamini said.
Also as a part of the weeklong training program, participants have been asked to initiate digital content projects to fulfill Africa’s educational needs, as most online content is developed elsewhere.
“We are set to acquire optic fiber, which will guarantee broadband speeds, but what will happen once fiber is in place?” wondered Nicholas Kimolo of Kenya’s Floss4Edu. “What will run on that fiber? Will we continue running content from outside Africa?”
He said that Africa runs the risk of losing local knowledge and culture if the issue of local digital content is not addressed.
The world is becoming a knowledge society, Kimolo said, and Africa must start participating in the knowledge economy.