Unforgettable trip to Zambia with Atos Origin

From April 4th to April 13th, Fabiana de Boer and Berno van Soest were flown to Ndola and then on to the capital, Lusaka, to deliver a handful of workshops and seminars dealing with multimedia in education, and some hands-on sessions on how to approach content creation using low-level (open source) software. The success of the visit can already be felt, with a very active online discussion group, some invigorated teachers, newly excited students, and a spontaneous training session given in a hotel room in Ghana.

From still life to animation

Mpelembe Secondary School played host to the workshop in Kitwe, which targeted, in particular, teachers associated with the Enhancing Educational Content Project (ENEDCO). These workshops consisted of presentations on the use of multimedia in education, storyboarding for video and animation and included a hands-on session creating educational videos and animations. Also in Kitwe, but this time hosted by the Copperbelt Health Education Project (CHEP), the consultants gave their expert input during seminars hosted and attended by the eBrain network and its members, on the issues that can arise when using and creating educational content. In many instances, use of educational content, usually by means of copying and pasting from public websites, raises questions about intellectual property rights. In these seminars, open educational resources (OER) and alternatives to the common “All Rights Reserved” copyright were also presented. This particular subject also formed the basis of an identical seminar which was delivered in the capital, Lusaka, later in the week.

Commenting on the visit, Fabiana said it was “unforgettable”. “What I will take away with me is the incomparable enthusiasm of all the Zambian teachers. The beauty of the country is mirrored in the hearts of the people, who have a lot to teach to the people of The Netherlands.”

From manuscript to celluloid

The visit ended with a session at the Chawama Youth Project (CYPRO) in the Chawama township area of Lusaka. This workshop was a practical session to introduce the music production project to video production. As part of a wider Chawama Youth Skills Project, which helps local youth to improve basic life skills like carpentry, tailoring and electrics and auto mechanics, has so far supported a number of young, local artists in their goal to record their music. This next necessary stage - to produce their own promo clips - is vital for artists, and record companies, to take their music out of the studio and market their music to a wider audience.

From one to many

To support the follow-up stage of this intervention, an online discussion forum (the Dgroup ‘Using ICTs to develop and share eContent’) was established. This is allowing the participants to continue to access the expert advice of the ATOS consultants – who are also active in this group - after the workshops and seminars, and facilitate a continued exchange of knowledge on the topics and issues raised. One participant is already running away with it. Francis Siame from the Chawama Youth Project, who travelled from Lusaka to Kitwe to attend the sessions, is now using the new audio / visual skills to record trainings for students unable to attend his trainings or needing a recap, as well as having landed an editing contract with a local women’s association.

The crème de la crème, though, really happened spontaneously 4000km away in Accra. At the end of May, IICD organised a Cross-Country Learning Event (CCLE) which brought together education specialists and practitioners to share experiences and best practices in education. One of the attendees was Gonzalo Portal from the Enedco project in Zambia. Coming with the fresh experiences of the workshops, and examples of newly developed content, he organized an impromptu training session in Scratch, a free animation programme that was identified during the Atos workshops. Participants in the CCLE came from as far as Bolivia to be part of this 4-day session, and will now be taking this knowledge back to their schools. And this includes Mpelembe Secondary School back in Kitwe. Mr. Portal commented that: “We had 25 students from [the class] G10 getting acquainted with [the new programme] for a good 4 hours, distributed in the evenings of the last weekend…and they were all thrilled with the programme and its possibilities.”

Into the future, there seems to be little sign of the newly formed Dgroup relenting and there are already a number of follow-up sessions planned for June and July 2008. Watch this space for updates over the coming months.