The Library Project Organizes Donation Program for China

Of course, as soon as I say nothing is happening yet with rebuilding schools … I come across this:
The Library Project has created a program, “Earthquake Affected Regions“, to help rebuild the educational system that was affected as a result of the earthquake. It is projected that hundreds of elementary schools have been damaged in [...]

New discussion forums on WebJunction

There’s been some recent interesting activity on WebJunction’s International Libraries discussion forums.  Conversations about distance learning and library 2.0 are the most recent.
Go check them out.
Full disclosure – I work for WJ and help moderate these discussions.

Distance learning in Iraq: Creating intellectual capacity through e-learning

With the flight or death of so many academics in Iraq, education has suffered greatly.   The paper Distance Learning/e-Learning for Iraq: Concept and Road Map by Ala’a Al-Din J. Kadhem Al-Radhi outlines how to implement distance education now in Iraq.  The author recognizes the immense challenges due to security issues, but it is a [...]

UNESCO Literacy Prize

Literacy projects in China, the United States, Nigeria, Senegal and the United Republic of Tanzania are the winners of the five UNESCO Literacy Prizes this year. One of them was awarded to a US organization that partners with health organizations. Good news considering the recent study that found only smoking was [...]

Human Rights Based Approach to Development

This post on Librarians and Human Rights blog caught my eye. It reminds me of conversations I’ve had with folks who are working in economic or health development, and who didn’t agree with the priority I was giving to education and access to information in human development. They looked at Maslow’s heirarchy of [...]

Technology and pearls

The following are some unformed, unresearched thoughts. But I wanted to write them, as perhaps a seed of something else to come.
In the 19th century, in Europe and in North America, an adult education movement flowered. Parallel to the industrial revolution, adults who had not had opportunities for education as children, but who [...]

Public education in Mexico

I just recently watched the movie, Granito de arena, a documentary about the Mexican teacher’s union.  This, from the back cover: “For over 20 years, economic globalization has been dismantling public education in Mexico. But always in the constant shadow of popular resistance. This is the story of that resistance – the story [...]