As a student and practitioner of the capability approach, one of the first things that I read towards my PhD on the topic of gender and mobile learning was an article by Ingrid Robeyns titled Three Models of Education: Rights, Capabilities and Human Capital.
Read MoreOpen Learning Campus: Theory + Pragmatism
Revisiting the world of education ahead of some workshops we are doing in Nigeria and Cambodia where we discuss using open learning as a professional development strategy, (along with some modules on secure communication, online research, and developing an online presence), I wanted to highlight an organization that has done some good work in this area.
Read More5 ways to include women in a mobile-enabled energy solution
One of the best things about working on M&E for mobile and ICT programmes is the way you get to work across many different sectors – while I am, like the rest of the wonderful Panoply Digital team, an mEducation specialist by training, I’ve been lucky enough to work across mHealth, mEducation, mAgri and mobile money, to name a few, getting to learn about these different areas and understand the mobile for development sector from a more holistic viewpoint.
Read MoreThe World Bank's Digital Dividends
Almost 8 years ago I started working at the GSMA’s ‘Development Fund’, better known nowadays as Mobile for Development. We were a modest team at the time with only five of us based in the GSMA’s Kingsway office (affectionately known as Mumbai due to its lack of air-conditioning) although quickly grew to many more.
Read MoremHealth: Global Projects, Software & Critical Perspectives - An ICT4D Meetup
This Meetup is co-hosted by Ronda Zelezny-Green and Lauren Dawes of Panoply Digital, along with Chisenga Muyoya and Chris Foote. Occasionally, we will include additional event information on this site to make the e-invites more concise. We hope you will come out to the ICT4D Meetup to be hosted at the GSMA HQ in London on Tuesday 26 January from 6:30pm.
Read MoreData Collection, Communication, and Campaigning Tools: Logic and Antecedents
This post is inspired an upcoming workshop we are running in Washington, D.C., along with additional installments in Phnom Penh, Lagos, and Caracas in the coming months. All of these workshops revolve around the use of free or inexpensive tools and technologies that can be used to conduct research, communicate that research efficiently, and develop advocacy campaigns as a result of that research.
Read MoreHappy New Year and a few things I'm watching in 2016!
Happy New Year one and all! I thought I would kick off the year with my ‘3 Things I’ll be watching in 2016’. Note – these are my things to watch! I’m not necessarily claiming them as new trends to watch (some more than a lot of coverage over the past years) but more what has piqued my interest recently and where I am seeing momentum gathering.
Read MoreOpen Learning as Professional Development: Iterating on Organizational Culture
This post emerges from conversations we have been having with clients regarding partner networks, how best to serve them, how best to make use of their technological practices, freely available tools, etc. Several of our clients serve large networks of partner organizations surrounding a particular activity: literacy, public private partnerships, education, and so forth.
Read MoreHow to improve M&E for mobile services: 5 questions
Here at Panoply Digital, we work with a number of different clients on the monitoring and evaluation of their mobile services: start-ups / clients from the private sector, clients from the development sector such as NGOs, or with mobile operators.
Read MoreFrom Unicorn to Unicorpse: How Africa Can Avoid Silicon Valley's Startup Pitfalls
If it is one thing that the great tech startup gold rush and eventual bust at the turn of the 21st century should have taught us, it is that if it seems too good to be true, it probably is. Another lesson it should have imparted is that having a cool idea doesn't automatically mean businesses or people will buy into that idea in the long run - or that it will make you money once the novelty fades away.
Read MoreReversing the flow from the developing to the developed world: mobile learning lessons
The ICT4D field is proving mature enough in some instances to reverse the flow of informal technology transfer from developed to developing, so much so that it is forcing, at least in my mind, a reconsideration of the term developed and developing. The suggestion that any nation, at any point, has completed a process of development is absurd and antithetical to how Panoply Digital operates.
Read MoreDo we need radical change? Mobile and girls' education in Africa
Last week, I was honored to represent Panoply Digital as a panelist at a high-profile event hosted by the US Ambassador to UNESCO in Paris, looking at girls’ education in Africa. The event was part of the Idea Lab series, bringing stakeholders together to promote dialogue and creative thinking around UNESCO-related issues
Read MoreLet's talk about the 'other' sustainability
Sustainability is a term most of deal with or spout off on a daily basis and one which means different thing to different peoples. I approach it from two perspectives. Firstly, having worked within the space where the commercial interests of mobile network operators meet those of the donor community and then meet those of underserved populations, conversations around sustainability for me tended to focus more on how a project could continue beyond the finite project funding.
Read MoreBillion Dollar Baby: Bill Gates & Carlos Slim to use mHealth, open data to end neonatal deaths in LATAM
Although announced with somewhat muted fanfare, Bill Gates and Carlos Slim's second phase push for their Salud Mesoamerica initiative is kind of a big deal. First of all, the initiative, which was launched in 2010, has been pegged as a success story in terms of its goal to "to reduce health equity gaps in Mesoamerica faced by those living in extreme poverty."
Read MoreUReport and Citizen Engagement: Simplicity is effective
As the team from Panoply Digital is in the midst of a good project working specifically on citizen engagement, m-government tools and building capacity, it seems appropriate to focus our attention for this blog post specifically on a good project from that same field
Read MoreGiving out free handsets for women – yay or nay?
Two recent ICT4D and gender news items caught my attention this week. The first was a CGI Commitment announcement - Tata Communications and MasterCard Foundation have teamed up, along with a number of other partners, to provide up to 100 million women in developing countries with mobile technology over the next five years
Read MoreAnd this week it's ICT to the Rescue! Saving South Africa's Failing School System....or not.
I was quite excited to see the launch of President Zuma’s Operation Phakisa in Education in South Africa recently. With experts from the national and provincial levels rolling out this ICT based solution which aims to provide schools with connectivity and smart devices
Read MoreFacebook to the rescue? The Refugee Crisis & the Right to Communicat
As global leaders of government, non-profit and private sector came together in New York City to ratify the Sustainable Development Goals this past weekend, the Refugee Crisis, largely comprised of people seeking shelter from the civil war and war against ISIS in Syria, remains on the minds of many in attendance.
Read MoreMobile learning for Syrian refugees: marshaling resources and resilience
Daily reports of refugees huddled on boats, perilously clamoring to something approaching safety. Some not getting there. Many trapped at borders, at checkpoints, in makeshift camps, behind fences. Approximately 3 million Syrians are now refugees out of a population of around 18 million as of 2014.
Read MoreMobile money: the solution to the gender digital divide?
One thing we do like to talk about in the ICT4D community is how everyone is working in silos, particularly when it comes to mobile services for women: “no one talks to anyone else, we’re all doing the same thing in the same country, we need to work together more”.
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