Home
About
Schedule
Special Event
call for paper
Organizers

Important Links:

Hotel and Tourism:
http://tourismethiopia.org

Airlines:
http://www.flyethiopian.com

Bank:
http://www.nbe.gov.et/

Localize or be Localized: An Assessment of Localization Frameworks

Localization has been heralded as the means to make software assessable in all the word's languages. Promising to make the full power and utility of computers and the Internet available to all and eliminate the prerequisite of first mastering the English language. Is localization truly up to up to the task? And what are the hidden costs? The paper will examine the implications of localization for Ethiopian society.

The specifics of what localization offers and its limitations will be reviewed. Solutions to any imitations will be offered as well as an approach to the localization process to ensure that Ethiopia reaps the full benefits it promises.

Full Paper

Home

Local Content Development in Ethiopia: Status and Trends

Advances in information and communications technologies (ICT) combined with the rapid growth of global networks such as the Internet, have transformed businesses and markets, revolutionized learning and knowledge-sharing, generated global information flows, empowered citizens and communities in new ways that redefine governance. ICTs have helped create significant wealth and economic growth in many countries. This "digital revolution" has been made possible thanks to the potent combination and increase in the power and versatility of new technologies and their significantly lower costs.

Precisely because the digital revolution has the power to transform production processes, commerce, government, education, citizen participation and all other aspects of our individual and collective lives, it can create substantial new forms of economic growth and social development. Therefore, access to and effective use of the tools and networks of the new global economy, and the innovations they make possible, are critical to poverty reduction, increased social inclusion and the creation of a better life for all.

Information and communication technologies (ICTs) are not really about the computer, the Internet, and telephone lines. It’s about information and communication. This makes the issue of content a very important priority as we try to use the new technologies for community development and alleviation of poverty. In fact, Information and Communication technologies are offering third world countries a development opportunity comparable to the benefits attained by the developed world from the Industrial revolution. ICTs today allow developing countries unlock distant expertise, knowledge, and markets. However, this access to usually " foreign " content with foreign perspectives- has inherent limitations. On the other hand, easy and fast access to globally networked knowledge is turning us into consumers of irrelevant information for our development needs. Someone wrote recently that Even if the woman in the village has access to the Internet, she will not necessarily be able to use the information to improve her child's health because "trying to get information from the Internet is like drinking from a fire hose - you don't even know what the source of the water is ".

The above facts have brought a global debate and concern about not only filtering the Internet for locally relevant information but also to foster the development of local content. In this regard, the world is witnessing a profusion of activities and debates to localize contents in both the Internet and traditional medias such as the Radio, press and TV.

The Government of Ethiopia is also engaged in efforts to bring home the best of ICTs to reinforce its development strategies. ICTs are not an end by themselves but a means to support core development targets through the uninterrupted flow of sufficient and locally relevant information. Hence, if the development needs of the country are to be catalysed by the application of ICTs the need for extensive and quality local content goes unquestionable.

Full Paper

Home

The Concept for a Flexible Authoring and Learning Environment

This paper describes the concept for a flexible authoring and learning environment. It starts defining the requirements for the important flexibility of learning systems in respect to the current background of the learner, the dynamic ordering in which content is presented to the learner – also with consideration of the individual progress a learner makes – and the opportunity for the learner to proceed on many different paths in an exploratory way of learning.

To reach these demands a concept for a system architecture is proposed. The basic idea is to split the content into smaller units than usual, the so called ‘content units’. Only doing so, the needed flexibility for individually adapted content, for an efficient handling of larger sets of content units, and the reusability for economic authoring can be assured.

On the other hand however, if the stored units get smaller than usual, a growing effort has to be spent to synthesize new content pages which are suited for the current learning situation and the current individual learner. It is the task to find approbiate content units which build a semantic senseful page unit. That is the reason why all relations between content units have to be explicitely stored by the system. This metadata set for each content unit includes technical information as well as semantical one. It splits in the parts
· technical information
· didactical information
· semantical information.
Following from this, the author has the task to provide these information for each content unit and to connect new content units to the already existing ones by reasonable relations. Afterwards the system has to evaluate the inter-related content units when a content page is asked by an user during his learning session.
The paper demonstrates the proceeding during the authoring and the learning phase by giving some details about the user classes with their roles and rights and by specifying those program modules which support the author in editing content units and in defining the relations between them. The following user classes are explained:
1. learning persons,
2. teachers,
3. authors,
4. system administrators.
To provide software support in managing the content units with their relations two program modules are necessary:

1. content unit designer:
The content unit designer is an editor tailored especially to the demands of editing learning material for the learning system. It is based on a set of given templates and a given set of element types to fill the pages.

2. relation manager:
The set of relations is extendable by the authors and thus can be individually adapted to cover special semantic restrictions and rules coming up from the context and/or background a content unit or even a complete course has. The specification and the administration of the relations is done graphically by linking graphically represented objects by labelled lines.

Full Paper

Home

The Prospects and Challenges to Promote E-Learning in Developing Countries: A Case Study of Ethiopian Higher Education

With the rapid and overwhelming spread of the Information and Communication technology (ICT) and their furious influence on education in almost every country, though alike, policy makers and researchers are busy in designing to suite their education system to the new learning/teaching systems, i.e. e-learning. Though the concept e-learning is relatively new, obscure and source of much debate, it has become inevitably shaping the future learning/teaching system, where the chance and challenges with it ought to be cautiously considered.

Despite the fact that the role of education in the socio-economic, cultural, and political life of any country has been strongly emphasized, recent pronouncement on education emanates the ambition to maximizing the knowledge economy (in short k-economy). Thus education, with this new assignment given to it, is also believed to be the last chance for developing countries, mainly African countries, to swing to the prosperity path fostering potential competitive and comparative advantage. It is further assumed that, developing countries possessing higher population (untapped human resource), if investment in ICT-supported education could be given high priority; their up coming through k-economy in the arena of the world market will be reliable. To realize the opportunities of e-learning in developing countries, there are different national and international initiatives and myriads of projects-the World Conference on Higher Education (WCHE), the UNESCO with its Millennium Goal, i.e., “Education for All” by the year 2015, the African Virtual University, SchoolNets, etc, to mention a few.

With all the promising and fascinating prospects of e-learning, the initial prerequisite is indeed confronting the challenges to pave the path which leads to the ultimate goal. The most prevalent aspects in this regard are to reveal the concept and to fit the whole process to the regional if not national situation and available resource. Moreover, the question of suitable infrastructure, the trained manpower to manage both, the technology and the pedagogy, the awareness and readiness of the state and the public, etc, are also factors to be seriously considered.

To this end, the paper discusses different issues relevant to the prospects and challenges to promote e-learning in developing countries with special reference to Ethiopian higher education. As to background information, the theme Ethiopia higher education, educational technology and telecommunication along side with the diffusion of ICT in Ethiopia will be shortly and briefly highlighted. The concept e-learning and its implication in developing countries is reviewed. Though e-leaning is not the panacea to all ills and pains of the Ethiopian higher education the opportunities using this technology is noted. More space is given to the variety of challenges to promoting e-learning in Ethiopian higher education, though not merely unique problems to Ethiopia. Obviously, the conclusion and recommendation section is the closing part of the paper.

Full Paper

Home

Development of a Web-based Multilingual Resource for Equal Access to ICT Education in South Africa

This paper describes the needs analysis and the development of an application designed to provide access to ICT education to speakers of an African language with low English proficiency. The focus group of our research are speakers of an African language who are also foundation students of Computer Science at Rhodes University, in South Africa. The statistical analysis of the academic longevity and performance of speakers of an African language in the field of Computer Science at Rhodes indicates that many students are disadvantaged by their lack of English proficiency. A preliminary investigation carried out with questionnaires and interviews suggests that students support the production of resources using both English and the African language. The purpose of our project is to help speakers of an African language cope with the use of English as a medium of instruction and to improve communication and organisation in the classroom. In line with South African governmental policy, our goal is to give a larger number of speakers of an African language the opportunity to study Computer Science confidently and successfully from the very beginning of their academic career. This will give them a basic computer literacy and a better chance to cope with more advanced courses.

Full Paper

Home

Roles and Responsibilities of Mangers in Expanding and Developing ICT

In knowledge-based economy of 21st century, any institution should clearly figure out that information and communications are the strategic inputs that help last their lifecycle in competitive and opportunist business dynamics. Information should be accessed and disseminated fro and to target areas that reward invaluable returns easily via Information communication technology (ICT). From organizational perspective, ICT infers to development of decision making broadcast, telecommunication, and internet infrastructure with supportive soft wares. The decision making areas target on routine and ad hoc business functions. This paper highlights three core posts; how does the statues quo look like? (Managerial roles and practices) What must be done at different managerial levels? (Responsibility), How valuable is ICT for market leadership? (Contribution)

Full Paper

Home

Key Challenges/Factors in the Implementation and Integration of ICT in Education System of the Developing Countries

My intended presentation associated with key challenges in the implementation and integration of ICT in education system of developing countries.

Although valuable lessons may be learned from best practices around the world, there is no one formula for determining the optimal level of ICT implementation and integration in the educational system. Significant challenges/factors that policymakers and planners, educators, education administrators, and other stakeholders need to consider include educational policy and planning, infrastructure, language and content, capacity building, attitude, financing and sustainability and transferability. In relation to these challenges/factors 4 – E models should be considered in the implementation and integration ICT in education.

Studies reveal that a number of factors which influences the implementation and integration of ICT in education. The intended presentation highlights these key challenges/factors in brief and discussion topic. It is suggested that successful implementation of ICT needs to address five interlocking frameworks for change: The Infrastructure, Attitude, Staff development, Support (technical and Administrative) and also sustainability and transferability.

Full Paper

Home

Gender issues are the most outspoken in recent years. However, gender inequalities are still the most visible phenomena in all spheres of human beings' activities all over the world, but with varying degrees. It goes without saying that the role of women in our universe is curtailed mainly to taking care of the household and raising children more than that of playing key roles in decision making positions. Gender disparity remains unsolved despite numerous national, international, private and governmental initiatives efforts made against gender inequalities. Worsening the situation, the recently prevalent “‘digital divide’” brought by rapid development of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) has become new area of concern with respect to gender issues.

This paper introduces the concept gender issues; reveals problem areas to substantiate why gender studies is vital; highlights initiatives and undertakings; analyzes the prospects and challenges with regard to elevating gender disparities. Furthermore, points related to “‘digital divide’” are overviewed. At last, a case study of Internet portal for Gender and Queer studies in the higher education institutions in Hamburg - Germany, is added. The Internet portal coordinates the activities and information need to the learners and researchers in these institutions. The paper looks into the replication possibility of the internet portal in tertiary education and research institution in developing countries, particularly in Ethiopia.

Full Paper

Home

Telecommunication and Development in Ethiopia: Analysis of the Development of the Internet

Telecommunication is one of the key determinants of a country’s economic, social and cultural development and is central in today’s information society. Global trade has become inconceivable without adequate telecommunications. Telecommunication is often considered as the “infrastructure of all the infrastructures” since the development and efficient use of other parts of the infrastructure (like roads, water and electricity) depend upon it. Internet is by far the key communication facility with important impact on the development of a country’s economy. It can be applied in job creation, health, education and research, culture, trade and commerce and tourism, among others. Despite this, the developing countries are unable to utilize form this communication technology in a wider scale as they have limited capacity to meet the three preconditions for using the Internet (phone connection, a computer and modem and electricity). The absence of a stable power supply system, frequent occurrence of power failures in cities and the total lack of power supply in rural areas characterize many developing countries. A great majority of the population in these countries doesn’t have a telephone line. The average income of the people in developing nations is unable to go beyond sustaining their life let alone afford to buy a PC. The developing nations are far to meet the benefits from the advancement of communication technologies (such as Internet) taking their current performance. Internet or economic development should come first is the dilemma in this regard.

Full Paper

Top Management Role in ICT Assimilation: A Framework for Countries with Developing Economies

Information and Communications Technology (ICT) has become the core of business operation in many sectors. ICT assimilation plays a critical role in economic growth, has shown significant positive impact on Gross Domestic Product (GDP), and it has greatly contributed to economic growth of industrial countries. Understanding the success elements in industrial countries and adapting them for transfer to countries with developing economies is important.

There is a dearth of research in understanding ICT assimilation in countries with developing economies. The paucity of Internet infrastructure in these countries limits technology diffusion. Will ICT provide the needed economic boost to lift countries with developing economies?

This paper is a research in progress that looks at the factors that make ICT assimilation successful. It reviews the Chatterjee et al. (2002) Web assimilation model and extends it to ICT assimilation for countries with developing economies. In particular this paper focuses on the role of top management and factors that should be included for ICT assimilation.

Home