Click here to view the presentation …

Apartheid Museum. Pic by Emiliano Homrich

This innovative project uses digital heritage to teach research, media and digital literacy skills to students from disadvantaged schools. Weekly lessons are arranged thematically, with students having to research articles on, for example, the history of their school, local environment or  family then write an article and submit it to the Ulwazi Community Memory website.  Students are taught how to use digital audio recorders and cameras, how to acces the Internet on a mobile phone, how to conduct research online and how to conduct oral history interviews, while being fully engaged in the learning process through researching content relevant to their lives.

As a model for ICT training it is excellent.  So far the project has been enthusiastically embraced – take a look at some of the articles produced last year by school children from Menzi High School http://wiki.ulwazi.org/index.php5?title=Category:Menzi_High_School

Computer lab at Sibusiswe High School, Umbumbulu

Summer is here!

We’ve had another interesting year where we’ve cemented our work on digital heritage as well as explored the areas of e-citizenship and the possibility that digital media holds for the environmental movement.  In no particular order, here are a few things we have done that we’re proud of …

• Download the Goethe Schools Report

CONFERENCE THEME
Indigenous knowledge systems differ fundamentally from the knowledge systems that underlie technology development. Numerous initiatives aim to enable remote diverse communities to share their wisdom and practical know-how with conventional digital technologies but often overlook the very systems that they use to organize and make sense of the world. Further, many indigenous communities, especially those in rural places, have few opportunities to appropriate new technologies emerging in ubiquitous computing, such as social networks, flickr, virtual and augmented realities. To design digital infrastructures for currently unserved knowledge systems we must account for the transformations that occur as technology interacts with the ways of knowing, doing and being that constitute indigenous knowledge systems.

UKZN Special Collections (Alan Paton Centre and Struggle Archives, Campbell Collections, Gandhi-Luthuli Documentation Centre and Centre for African Literary Studies) invites you to its open day entitled:

More Than A Library: UKZN Special Collections’ Role in Archival & Heritage Preservation and Research.

The UKZN Special Collections Open Day is an invitation to the general public to interact with the archival spaces attached to the University. Presentations will touch briefly on the history and activities of these collections, with Prof John Aitchison, Dr Vukile Khumalo and Aziz Hassim (frequenters, supporters and contributing makers of these collections) offering up pieces of their perspectives as informed by these collections. The day will round off with an opportunity to engage more deeply with each collection; through free interaction with staff members, perusal of displays and a tour of the Campbell Collections.

Date:           Thursday 6 October 2011
Time:           9H00-16H00
Venue:         Campbell Collections, 220 Gladys Mazibuko (former Marriott Road), Berea
RSVP:          Karen Ijumba – 031 260 1712 or Ijumba@ukzn.ac.za

I participated in a panel entitled ‘Memory Works’, chair by Professor Carolyn Hamilton, that dealt with the work that the past is made to do in the present. The conference was well-run but there were a lot of different panels, which precluded lengthy discussion and it was sometimes difficult to see everything you wanted to. A good indication of research output I suppose.

Around 220 delegates from diverse sectors gathered together in Cape Town, South Africa, from 17 to 19 September 2011 in a meeting that gave way to the signature of the African Platform on Access to Information. The Pan African Conference on Access to Information (PACAI) was convened by the Windhoek + 20 Working Group, in commemoration of the 20th anniversary of the Windhoek Declaration. UNESCO supported the event together with other key partners, which included the African Union Commission, the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression, and the Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression and Access to Information of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights.

A number of important developments towards enhanced access to information have taken place in Africa in the past few years. Ten African countries now have access to information laws, as the international expert Toby Mendel explained during the event. There are also relevant on-going initiatives at the regional level, such as the Model Law for African Union Members on Access to Information, which is being developed by the Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression and Access to Information of the African Commission on Human and Peoples´ Rights. In the context of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), work is also underway towards the adoption of a binding Supplementary Act for a Uniform Legal Framework for Freedom of Expression and Right to Information. Moreover, many African countries are now part of multi-stakeholder efforts like the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, the International Aid Transparency Initiative and the Open Government Partnership. In sum, a momentum in the direction of transparency is taking place on the African continent.

Delegates to the Pan African Conference on Access to Information reflected on the advances in press freedom, freedom of expression and access to information that have taken place in Africa since the Windhoek Declaration was agreed upon on 3 May 1991. However, such recognition by PACAI participants was accompanied by their emphasis on the still substantial obstacles that need to be overcome if access to information is to be fully guaranteed.

Most African countries lack access to information legislation, and its implementation, where it does exist, has faced critical difficulties. On the supply side, important challenges have to do with the need to set up proper procedures ensuring timely access to information, effective enforcement mechanisms and adequate record management practices. Insufficient human and financial capacities within public bodies, accompanied by a culture of secrecy, were also identified as key problems.

Viewed from the demand side, the majority of Africans fundamentally lack awareness about their right to know and about how to actually exercise it. The complex issue of exceptions to information disclosure (based, for example, on national security, personal safety or privacy considerations, among other things) was also discussed at length during the Conference. Other important topics addressed included ICT and public domain information, the role of journalists, the promotion of media and information literacy, and the link between access to information and gender equality. Also during the Conference, the African Union Commission launched the Pan-African Media Network.

PACAI took place simultaneously with a number of other events, such as the 2011 edition of Highway Africa and a series of UNESCO sponsored workshops. During the joint closing session of all the gatherings held under the umbrella denomination “Africa Media Summit”, the African Platform on Access to Information was adopted. Recalling the 1991 Windhoek Declaration, Frank La Rue, UN Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of the Right to Freedom of Opinion and Expression, highlighted that, once again, from the African region emerges a new Declaration “that is setting a series of principles that should be followed not only by all nations that are members of the African Union, but by all nations of the world”.

23.09.2011
Source: UNESCO

The second course is News Media in the Internet Society (Internet Studies department) and my section looks at environmental activism and social media, in particular blogging and micro-blogging.  Using real world examples, such as our award-winning green blog Sprig and Charity Water, I chart the effectiveness of new media in promoting awareness and instigating change.  For the duration of my section of the course, the students manage their own website (http://internetstudies.ukzn.ac.za/newsmedia/) where they will be publishing their assignments.