My Blog

Thinking ahead for team meeting April 12, 2010

Hi John

This is my 'brain-dump" - I'm thinking ahead ready for our UK-Nigeria meeting on Wednesday. It is also an information sharing experiment. I am writing to you and posting publicly via dadamac posterous. This could be a once off - or it could become a regular way of sharing the (non-confidential) aspects of our ongoing story.

You don't need to read this in advance - I'll cut and paste relevant bits from it during the meeting so everyone will catch up with what matters then. However I do need to gather my thoughts before the meeting - and now is a good time for me to do that because Nikki and I have just been discussing the agenda.

This is ready for:

  • Special Interest Groups 
    • Sickle Cell Disease
    • Social Media
    • Appropriate power
    • Open Source and Zittnet
    • JAWS
    • Teachers Talking/Teaching Education and Learning
  • Collaborations and bids
    • DFID community links
    • Others
  • The UK-catchup side of things
    •  general stuff I've been doing
Special Interest Groups and Dadamac's moodle
  • Now we have got dadamac's moodle up and running it will be easier to pull special interest groups together and have everything to hand that people may need to know.
  • Given the inevitable rapid turnover of volunteers of various kinds at Fantsuam, and given that everyone's attention has to flit from one thing to another, depending on current emergencies and who is available to do what, it could be very useful for us to have a system where newcomers can easily find "the story so far" and where we are not forever losing institutional memories through the fast turn-over of volunteers.
  • We recognise that Moodle is not currently sufficiently user-friendly for regular use at Fantsuam
  • Speed is one of the issues
  • This may be overcome later by installing a version on your server and updating overnight or something. 
  • Meanwhile if Nikki and I sort out "offices" for the various SIGs we will at least have appropriate information stores where we can easily find relevant information for SIG members old and new.

Sickle Cell Disease

The experts

  • We have the doctors to provide expert knowledge.
  • We are trying to turn ourselves into a team that can create useful course materials.
  • We don't yet know what training expertise the doctors have
  • We don't know how much time they can give to the project
  • We don't know how easily they get online (except for Dr Chris' difficulties). 
The proposed course
  • It would help if you could give some direction regarding priorities.
  • What kind of course materials we should start with?
  • What are your priorities for training at your clinic?
  • What do you/these doctors think that the clinic nurses (and the patients/the parents) should know?
  • I wonder if any of the doctors are hoping to have course materials that they will also be able to make use of locally.
  • Maybe we need to define the purpose of the project more clearly in those terms.
Areas of possible confusion
  •  It is good that we have the structures of People's Uni for preparing the course but it could also be a source of confusion.
  • Most of the subject experts have previously been People's Uni students.
  • Their experience of People's Uni materials is all about using online course materials for health professionals of a high standard - as highly qualified as they are.
  • As I understand it, you want them to be developing course materials for nurses, patients and parents.
  • My impression is that you don't want an online course.
  • I think you want course materials that will be developed online but will be presented offline, in normal F2F teaching situations
  • I am thinking of something rather like the course materials Riccardo prepared for Cameras for Communication.
  • We need the put the same picture of what we are trying to do into everyone's mind 
Course development
  • We are going to need to develop a strategy to get the doctors knowledge changed into course materials.
  • Ideally we want someone who is good at course development to champion and lead this project.
  • Meanwhile we need to define some achievable objectives, and find a way to achieve one of them soon-ish so that everyone feels they are getting somewhere.
Additional support
  • I don't know if there is are any grants to help projects like this - if so we might be able to pay someone to lead this (but even chasing such money takes time that we haven't got)
  • I wonder if there is any overlap with the interests of our academics who were interested when we discussed the MCGs, health, and sickle cell.
  • Someone mentioned including School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine - I don't know if that was just a general idea or relating to a specific contact, may be worth investigating.
  • London Knowledge Lab connects with The Institute of Education, and there are all sorts of London Uni inter college collaborations and interests related to distance learning, maybe we should be trying to explore overlapping interests regarding this Sickle Cell Course.
Social Media
Main focus is twitter at present
  • Our "subject experts/mentors" (they would not describe themselves as experts - but they are certainly experts compared to us newbies) are Andy and Kezia.
  • The best time for online twitter tutorials in a Thursday afternoon - Andy is often with me then and so his mind is on Dadamac stuff.
  • We have had two approaches to twitter tutorials
    • One-to-one on demand
      • This is okay at the start, but not necessarily the best way to continue, for various reasons
    • Via the worknets chatroom
      • This is less convenient for people who like "on-demand" help
      • It is beneficial for more people at the time of delivery
      • It is easier to keep track of what has been covered and to feed it into a knowledge store for future reference.
  • We had a twitter tutorial last week (a "Second Thursday" meeting)
    • details available via Vijay's blog and mine
    • small group, covered a lot
    • No-one attended from Nigeria
      • Did they get the information?
      • I imagined they could not attend because of your "This Day" visitor
  • Importance of Twitter for visibility - example from the twitter tutorial
    • Andy Tweeted - Thu 08 Apr 12:58 - Will be teaching people in rural africa about using twitter today with @Pamela_McLean #dadamac
      • I saw that because the @Pamela_McLean directed it to my "mentions" me area on twitter
      • Hmm - that was an ASS-U-ME - it was Vijay from Delhi and Dary from Kaulala Lumpur who had said they would be there
      • Nigeria (John I) had got Andy involved in online twitter tutorials initially
      • Nigeria had been invited but had not confirmed.
    • WSJ Africa (Wall Street Journal - Africa) tweeted - Tell us more! RT @andybroomfield: Will be teaching people in rural africa about using twitter today with @Pamela_McLean #dadamac
      • Unfortunately there is nothing to tell this time regarding Africa - but there will be another time - and the session was useful, as Vijay reported in his blog
    • This is a good example of how twitter works
      • RT @andybroomfield .... meant that Wall Street Journal - Africa was Re tweeting what Andy had tweeted - retweeting is a quick way of passing information on just as it is, or you can add a question or comment, like Wall Street Journal - Africa did
      • I saw the WSJ Africa tweet because it included an @Pamela_McLean in it so it came to my "mentions' area.
      • The #dadamac means it will also be displayed in the #dadamac area
      • When people see # in front of something that interests them they often click on it to see what else is going on there. 
      • I didn't know that WSJ Africa was on twitter until now, but seeing its message in my mentions area I clicked on the link under its logo (if you hover there it says"view WSJ Africa")
      • Once I was viewing WSJ Africa's profile I looked for the follow button and clicked it
      • Now I am following WSJ Africa so any tweets will come to my twitter stream (of course I can't read everything that comes in, but I might happen to see something interesting)
      • If I really want to catch all of WSJ-Africa tweets it is quite easy  - I can look in the list of people I am following and click on WSJ-Africa and then look at all the recent tweets sent from there.
      • Next time you are going to be represented at a First Thursday meeting we can tweet well in advance and do an @WSJ Africa.
      • Also I can start to put @WSJ Africa in my tweets as appropriate
Appropriate power
  • Next scheduled online meeting is Fourth Thursday April 29th - for Bala to continue the stoves discussion with practitioner in SW Nigeria - (contact of Graham Knight - Graham also plans to be there this time, last time it was his contacts)
    • We can tweet about it (before or after - to @WSJ Africa)
  • Objectives of Appropriate Power SIG - we touched on this at last week's meeting. I think we need to clarify its purpose and how Dadamac UK can realistically support it.
  • We got as far as agreeing we should start a Special Interest Group - but it has got pushed down the agenda because of deadlines on the UK side, and malaria and Zittnet challenges and visitors etc at Fantsuam  
Open Source and Zittnet
  • Face to Face support
    •  You said Wire might be visiting for a couple of weeks - helping freely - but you need to raise funds for his fare etc.
      • Who is taking responsibility for that?
      • Any idea how long before he might be able to visit - assuming the money can be found?
      • Dadamac UK can't fundraise (we haven't got any people to do it yet) bu we can make our visibility and fundraising  structures available.
      • There could be online donations via a special page at Bmycharity
      • Does Wire know anyone who might help to sponsor his trip?
      • Is there anyone at FF who could champion online fundraising - through a mixture of Bmycharity link, twitter and additional info at www.dadamac.net  - we can support - gradually we hope to find some volunteers - but until they see the kind of thing they might help with it is hard to attract them
  • Maybe we need to set up a Fundraising Special Interest Group - not just for this but for everything
  • Should we still be thinking of other Open Source support options (possible F2F and online) or should we only think of Wire now?
  • I hope that ICTD2010 will be helpful in finding support/raising interest  - but that is not just with regard to Open Source and technical issues, it is about wider Zittnet  issues of general interest such as the social and economic impact and the cultural challenges as well as technical ones
  • Nikki has found some better info about Zittnet which she wants to make more visible at www.dadamac.net
    • The better the info online the easier it is for people to see how they might connect
  • I met Elaine through British Computer Society
    •  - maybe she could help us find some people with overlapping interests there
  • Some of our academic friends are from a computer science background
    • - maybe we should open up discussions with them
  • We have other contacts from Dadamac Day and Franz's work shop
JAWS
  • Nikki's looking at this.
  • She's posted up the info Cicely sent.
  • Who do you want in the group?
  • This is something else we need to look at twittering about and a fundraising mechanism.
TT and TEL (Training, Education and Learning)
  • Nikki and I have decided we need to pull together all the info we have related to TT and what grew from it (and what if grew from)
  • We're calling it TEL (Training, Education and Learning) to include things like TT for Trainers and the Self Directed Learners Group
  • Like you I have been asked to write something for COL-PROTEIN feedback - but mine is for TT-Kenya
  • It will include Dadamac Days
  • We wonder what the latest news is about FF and ICT and the two schools we talked about recently
Useful for me

I'm going to find this preparation useful for Wednesday - but I can see why I usually just rely on what I can remember at the time.
I am also aware of how the work I'm doing at present with the SIGs at dadamac moodle is shaping up. That should soon mean that I don't need to gather my thoughts around the agenda items, because I'll be keeping notes of what is happening, and what needs to happen as I go along.

Ref

  • Collaborations and bids
    • DFID community links
    • Others
Those are increasingly getting written up as we go along - so I won't need to cover them in advance here - but maybe I should think how some of the information that is being generated at dadamac's moodle should be flowing over into visibility at www.dadamac.net.
  • The UK-catchup side of things
    • general stuff I've been doing
I'll think about that when Nikki and I have a catch-up cuppa before the meeting on Wednesday - we won't have been in contact since last Thursday morning - except for the   phone call today about the agenda, and some tweets.

Pamela