Build and Network Knowledge Economies Globally

My idea is not a new one, having an e-portal to network youth and women is far from being something new. But my vision on how to utilize this technology can bring a huge change.

Getting busy, into rising into the second change, I did not realize how vast the impacts can me. I refer to World Links (WL) program, in 35 countries worldwide, having trained more than 40,000 teachers, youth and women, with more than 4 million students reach. Through a well-paced, prudent behavioural-changing training and application program, youth and women are able to motivate and use their upper order skills: critical, creative, analytical thinking, problem solving, using scientific research, working collaboratively in groups, with advanced communications skills. They are able to search and harness available resources, and use tools and ICT effectively and safely, thus becoming self and lifelong learners, within networked knowledge communities and economies. We reduce the gap between an individual, his / her skills sets and market needs. So, what is the second level I reached to?

- Enhanced in-courtiers capacity building and sustainability

- Encouragement of national roll outs

- Ability to train a pilot starting from 1,000 teachers to 100,000 teachers simultaneously with millions of students reach

- The re-structure of World Links internally, with a systemized operation and infrastructure / solid platform. Through its enhanced projects managements and country-sharing schemes, WL can easily operate 20 or above projects, simultaneously with high measurable quantity.

- Establishment of core trainers teams, multi-lingual, on standby at different locations, to share them among countries.

- Ready 24 projects in the pipeline, being studied by donors or proposed for funding

Now, how is an e-portal important?

The e-portal will be the backbone of WL in three ways:

I. The actual training ground for the 160 hours curricula, introduced by regional trainers to core trainers, master trainers and teachers, respectively.

II. The grounds for networking among teachers, educators, students, youth and women. The significance lies in these indirect impacts:

a. When you group academics, educators, to discuss precise subject matters, within set norms of ethics, negotiations, cooperation and exchange of ideas, experiences and content, then we are creating a new generation of youth who are able to converse and network online on academics, culture and issues of utmost importance to our planet, global warming, human rights, democracy, violence against women, peaceful initiatives..etc

b. Most of the developing countries have restricted curricula, avoiding change. Creating an entire generation of students who are able to produce online content with ease and professionalism, is creating an entire ‘changed’ curricula waiting to be adopted. These students can also digitize their on content, rather than ‘jailing’ teachers and turning them into a factory to produce content – as I’ve witnessed.

c. This strength has a double impact as we increase national roll outs and apply our scalable scheme to reach 100 million youth, before the end of the decade

III. Lastly, the third part of the e-portal will be used for MIS, to upload database and reports from countries, conduct online a****sments and create testing based on databanks. A new a****sment scheme I have designed, depending on measuring educational output versus market needs, will serve as a new index when comparing countries together. The portal will also serve as a store for teachers’ portfolios yet, replicas of this design will be introduced into ministries portal to make the WL a treasure owned by its people.

Finally, this example focused on education, but the program succeeded also in vocational training, community and higher education. This leaves 3 areas, I still dream about:

- Using ICT to combat alphabetical literacy and render both alphabetical and ICT literate people in one go

- Using ICT for special needs

- And finally, focus on ICT in early childhood learning.

One last note. The e-portal, is very simple in its design and is focused on powerful impact based on function and ease / simplicity of use.

My most challenge I am facing is the current e-portal I am using, which is not empowering networking due to functionality defects: URLs are at: Collaboration Centre http://www.wlar.net/cgi-bin/discus-ar/discus.cgi?pg=topics Moodle http://www.wlar.net/moodle/

Elgg http://www.wlar.net/elgg/ Wiki http://www.wlar.net/wiki/

Secondly: funding.

The designs are ready, everything has been carefully thought of and diagrammed. What is needed is a consultant to structure the pages and publish. Also needed is maintenance, domain and hosting cost, for coming few years.

If I had $ 1000, I’d send them to the consultant to work out the design further for me, and organize / design the site (unofficially – i.e. internal copy) making us one step closer to realizing our dream. I used to design websites and portals back in the early 90’s so I know the level of work, if designs are ready, the work can be done in one month, at least all basic framework.

The next photo (underneath) shows using available resources as discussion forums. Another 10th Grade Girls Class, (I don't have the photo) were able to create and build their own dicussions e-portal and 'key-in' their input and discuss that.