Reading in Sudan... the Quran, of course

A wonderful photo posted to deviantart.... can't figure out who author is... ademmm?

College students: Get thee to some of the Uganda libraries!

OK OK I know I dislike the whole One Laptop Per Child thing... but now they are paying for interns to go and evangelize the laptops... that's a good thing. So if you are a student, why not apply for our Uganda or Ghana libraries (I don't think they are adapted for French speakers, but maybe they are and you can go to Burkina).

Join the OLPCorps Africa Movement

Active students spark revolutions and inspire movements. Our learning movement is no different. With this in mind, we have started the OLPCorps Africa project. We are equipping teams of students from around the world with 100 XOs, hardware, training, and financial support to expand learning in Africa for children ages 6-12. We’re looking for agents of change capable of leading the first global grassroots movement in learning.
Student-led teams will:

* travel to one of the 53 African countries of their choosing for 9-10 weeks
* participate in a 10-day orientation in Kigali, Rwanda at OLPC’s office
* receive up to $10,000 (USD) per team to cover operating costs
* deploy 100 XO laptops, including hardware and support
* collaborate with up to 100 other teams as part of a life-long global network empowering a generation of children
* send one representative to MIT/OLPC’s all-expense paid summit from Oct 10th-12th 2009

Eligibility

Undergraduate and graduate university students of all nationalities and fields are encouraged to apply. Students enrolled in the fall 2009 semester and upcoming spring 2009 graduates are also eligible. Finalists will be required to provide proof of enrollment before the start of the internship.
Requirements

All interns must be proficient in English, have a valid passport and approved visa, and all immunizations by the start of the program. At minimum, teams must consist of 2 people. The project must take place within one of the 53 African countries and for 9-10 weeks. All members of the team must attend the orientation in Kigali, Rwanda from June 8-17.

The applicant must have support from local or national officials or a letter of support of an NGO that is supporting the project. In other words, successful applicants will have a letter of support testifying to 1) involvement, and 2) sustainability.
Apply

Teams may apply by submitting a project proposal to OLPCorps@laptop.org by March 27th, 2009. Proposals should be titled:

“OLPCorps: Your University Target_African_Country”

Hard copies of proposals will not be accepted. The proposal must be in English and may be no longer than 750 words, but may include hyperlinks.

Your project proposal should focus on educating children ages 6-12. Be sure to detail where you will carry out your project, what exactly you will do, and how you will reach children who may not be in school from June-August. You should emphasize who your local partner will be throughout the project, who will carry on the project when you leave, and how they’ll do so. Preference will be given to teams who can demonstrate some technical competency and a focus on rural environments. The strongest proposals also will illustrate clearly how children will become agents of change, instead of simply objects of learning during the project. Accepted teams will be notified by April 10th, 2009.

See our OLPCorps wiki for guidance on how to develop your proposal and ensure you have covered key points.
Questions

All questions or concerns relating to OLPCorps Africa should be directed to OLPCorps@laptop.org.

I'm less nervous!

From SARE Elisee in Burkina Faso, who is going to have school kids do some murals on the library walls:

Bonjour Michael,
Ok, on ira a une vitesse maximale de 80 km/h.
Je t'envoie en fichier joints quelques dessins pour Boni.
Je vais travailler avec des élèves d'une classe de CP2 demain a mon arrivée a Boni.
Je suis en toujours en train d'inventorier les livres que j'ai acheter.
Elisee

Uganda Community Libraries Association holds its third workshop and its second AGM

February 27, 2009
Kate Parry writes from Kampala:
The Uganda Community Libraries Association, FAVL’s affiliate in East Africa, has just completed its third workshop, held on February 23-24. It was a tremendous success. Eighteen participants were there on the first day and the number increased to more than twenty on the second. Most of UgCLA’s member libraries were represented and so was FAVL’s library in Tanzania, by Aaron Chomolla, the librarian of the Chalula Community Library. The workshop was attended as well by representatives of the US Embassy’s Resource Center and of TASO, an NGO that works with AIDS patients. Both brought resources for display and distribution, which stirred great interest among the participants.
The facilitators of the workshop were mainly members of UgCLA’s Board of Directors—Margaret Baleeta, Head of the English Department at Bugema University, Kate Parry, one of FAVL’s Executive Directors and a Professor in the Department of English at Hunter College in New York, George Openjuru of the Institute for Adult Education at Makerere University, Gertrude Kayaga Mulindwa, Director of the National Library of Uganda, Phenny Birungi, former Director of the Public Libraries Board and now with the National Council for Higher Education, and Grace Musoke, UgCLA’s coordinator. Each took one session, while one was facilitated by an “outside” person, Craig Esbeck, who is an educational consultant with Mango Tree Educational Enterprises (www.mangotree.org).

These facilitators covered a wide range of topics in a variety of different ways, so that the participants engaged in general discussions, carried out different group assignments, filled out individual worksheets, played with Mango Tree’s educational toys, and listened to some hilarious stories.
Everyone was fully involved and went away excited and full of new ideas for library projects. The bonds among the librarians are becoming increasingly strong as they meet again in successive workshops, and an encouraging spirit of voluntarism is developing; on this occasion, for instance, the Mpigi librarian, who happens to be an artist, offered to design a new logo for the Association, and the librarian from the Adult Education Centre at Njeru brought a bunch of leaflets for distribution and sold participants little Luganda books that the Centre had produced for the princely sum of 500 shillings (a little more than 25 cents) per book.

One session of the workshop was devoted to UgCLA’s Annual General Meeting, and this, too, was enormously encouraging. Over the past year UgCLA’s membership has increased from 20 to 46, and of those 46, 26 are libraries—ten more than a year ago, and four of them founded as a direct consequence of our last workshop in July 2008. We have distributed small grants to six libraries and have followed up on them to ensure that the money has been spent as proposed. We have held three workshops. We have hosted one volunteer, with great success, and expect at least two more in 2009. And our financial position is fairly sound, with enough funds in our Ugandan account to sustain us for ten months at any rate.

We do not have any small grants to distribute in 2009, but we are maintaining the tradition of competitive access to benefits by organizing a competition to present in a colloquium on community libraries in Uganda at the 6th Pan African Conference on Reading for All, which is to be held in Dar es Salaam from August 6th-10th (information about the conference is available at www.reading.org). We plan to take four library representatives, who will present together with Gertrude Kayaga Mulindwa, Kate Parry, and Grace Musoke. The competition rules require each library to produce an essay describing its most successful project; the essays will be read anonymously and will be chosen on the basis of their quality and of the variety of projects that they represent between them.

As part of the Dar es Salaam trip, we are hoping to arrange a visit to the community library at Kwekitui in Lushoto District in north east Tanzania on the way (the Kwekitui library is supported by FAVL’s partner in East Africa, Under the Reading Tree). There we hope to hold a mini-conference, in which perhaps other Tanzanian libraries will be able to participate. The trip will have to be paid for, of course, but we are going to seek sponsorship for each representative, and for Grace, from individuals and companies here in Uganda. We expect the whole jaunt to cost about $500 per person, a cheap deal since we will travel by bus and take the least expensive accommodation available. We think we can attract sponsors because we can offer good publicity in return, but of course any contributions from outside Uganda will also be most welcome!

I'm nervous

The new library in Boni, Burkina Faso, is going to open on Monday. The U.S. ambassador is going to come. Donkoui and Dounko and Elisee are handling all of the preparations. I am so not involved. The team has done this before (in Dohoun and Karaba) but never under real pressure to get it right, and juggle a hundred details: Where will the guests sit? Who will speak first? What will protocol be? Who will paint signs on the library? Will they buy the children's tables and chairs? Will the girls and boys latrines be finished and clearly marked?

BD (Grahic novels) in Mauritius

The folks at Africultures have a nice article (in French) by Christophe Cassiau-Haurie on the resurgence of BD on the island... now that le Clézio has won the Nobel prize, expect even more of a resurgence!

... l'ouvrage qui s'est fait le plus remarquer est L'Île Maurice racontée à mes petits enfants de Jean Claude de L'estrac et Pov. Actuellement directeur du groupe de presse La sentinelle Ltée, qui édite L'express, l'un des plus importants quotidiens du pays, de L'Estrac est ancien maire de Rose Hill (3ème ville de Maurice avec 90 000 habitants), ancien ministre et fut pressenti en septembre 2008 pour devenir président de la République.

African Library Project

I finally reconnected with Chris Bradshaw, who runs African Library Project, which coordinates book drives in U.S. schools, "aggregates" the books, and gets them to partner organizations in southern Africa to start village libraries. They have shipped books for more than 200 libraries in just a few short years! If you are thinking of a way to help English speaking school kids, consider organizing a book drive- all the information you need is available on their website.

Photography in a village...

Sam Baker and Austin Woody were in Bereba, Burkina Faso, over the summer, and one photo of theirs was wonderful- Mande Madi holding the picture of himself taken by David Pace, that was the cover of The Santa Clara magazine.... I just have a re-zoom image of each new volunteer taking a picture of a picture of a picture...

Translating Kathy Knowles new book - Crocodile Bread

FAVL Ouaga rep SARE Elisée has been busy translating into French and Dioula (with Adama Sougoué) a new children's book by Kathy Knowles, director of Osu Children's Library Fund. It is a very cute book, and will also be available in English. Check out the OCLF website for forthcoming details!

Transferring money...

A primary activity of FAVL is transferring money to countries in Africa with poor financial infrastructure. Though I have to say, the mechanisms for transfer have improved enormously in just ten years. When we started in 2001, Western Union barely existed in Africa; now it blankets both Burkina Faso and Ghana. And bank wire transfers are pretty easy, though the costs are high. For our smallish amounts of $5,000 transfers, a bank transfer costs about $100; Western Union typically charges about 2%, so the two mechanisms are comparable.

What is somewhat surprising to me is the archaic nature of the bank transfer system. I have to fill out a one page form (and press hard to make... carbon copies!) each time I make a transfer at Bank of America. Apparently the branch office doesn't have access to the information on a monitor so I can't come in and say, "Do the same transfer as last time." I can do that at Western Union. Last week I tried to send a Western Union, and was denied... turned out I had made so many transfers I had to be "interviewed"... presumably some kind of precautionary verification of questionable transfer type legislation is out there. So after explaining who KOURA Donkoui was, everything was OK.

What does reading do to the brain? Same thing as watching...

Why An Exciting Book Is Just As Thrilling As A Hair-raising Movie

ScienceDaily (Aug. 18, 2008)

"We placed our participants in an fMRI scanner to measure their brain activity while we first showed our subject short 3s movie clips of an actor sipping from a cup and then looking disgusted," said Christian Keysers. "Later on, we asked them to read and imagine short emotional scenarios; for instance, walking along a street, bumping into a reeking, drunken man, who then starts to retch, and realizing that some of his vomit had ended up in your own mouth. Finally, we measured their brain activity while the participants tasted unpleasant solutions in the scanner."

"Our striking result," said Keysers, "is that in all three cases, the same location of the anterior insula lit up. The anterior insula is the part of the brain that is the heart of our feeling of disgust. Patients who have damage to the insula, because of a brain infection for instance, lose this capacity to feel disgusted. If you give them sour milk, they would drink it happily and say it tastes like soda."

Prof. Keysers continued, "What this means is that whether we see a movie or read a story, the same thing happens: we activate our bodily representations of what it feels like to be disgusted– and that is why reading a book and viewing a movie can both make us feel as if we literally feel what the protagonist is going through."

In a world that is increasingly dominated by visual media, added Keysers, this finding is good news for the written media, in particular: reading a good book or an exciting newspaper article really can feel as emotionally vivid as watching a movie.

Read whole article...

Readers Build Vivid Mental Simulations Of Narrative Situations

ScienceDaily (Feb. 5, 2009) — A new brain-imaging study is shedding light on what it means to "get lost" in a good book — suggesting that readers create vivid mental simulations of the sounds, sights, tastes and movements described in a textual narrative while simultaneously activating brain regions used to process similar experiences in real life.

Read whole article...

Reading with books or on computer screens?

Clearly the technology is converging (e.g. Kindle) and it will only be a decade before there is digital paper. But for right now, the issue is relevant.

Storybooks On Paper Better For Children Than Reading Fiction On Computer Screen, According to Expert
ScienceDaily (Dec. 22, 2008)

"Swedish researchers believe we understand more and better when reading on paper than when we read the same text on a screen. We avoid navigating and the small things we don't think about, but which subconsciously takes attention away from the reading. Also texts on a screen are often not adapted to the screen format. The most important difference is when the text becomes digital. Then it loses its physical dimension, which is special to the book, and the reader loses his feeling of totality."

Mangen has mainly been looking at hypertext stories. These stories exploit the multimedia possibilities of a computer and use both hypertext, video, sound, pictures and text. They are constructed in such a way that clicking one's way around them comes close to a literary computer game.

As a researcher, Mangen is interested in the physical aspect of reading and applies theories from psychology and phenomenology linked to the relationships between motor functions and attention in order to highlight the difference between reading a novel and a hypertext story.

"The digital hypertext technology and its use of multimedia are not open to the experience of a fictional universe where the experience consists of creating your own mental images. The reader gets distracted by the opportunities for doing something else," Mangen says.

Read more...

Story time in Sara library, Burkina Faso... I love it!

Soon to open: Library in Boni, Burkina Faso

The 6th FAVL library in Burkina Faso is set to open on March 2... the building, donated by the community, has been refurbished. next are all the bookshelves and books themselves! Will keep you posted... I wish I could be at the opening ceremony- Boni is famous for its culture of masks, with the village chief, Yacouba Bonde, leading an artistic and cultural powerhouse village. The village is also the site of a large jatropha experimental field. Jatropha was billed as a wonder crop, whse seeds could be converted into biomass for energy needs. Now that the price of oil has tanked, probably looks less attractive. So time to hit the books!

Twenty Challenge Program

Kate Parry writes:

The Kitengesa Community Library has begun another month of its Twenty
Challenge Program: seventeen students have signed up this time round and are
now trying to read twenty books in the course of the month. They began
yesterday, when I was there; one of them had already read two books by the
end of the day, and several of them had read one. Dan (the librarian) is
very conscientious in asking them questions about the books when they return
them in order to be sure that they've actually read them. As for me, I'm
trying to measure the effects of the program on the students' English (they
can, of course, read Luganda books if they like, but for the most part they
read English ones), so yesterday I gave them a test; I'll give them another
one of exactly the same kind next month. We'll see what happens!

Library usage statistics, 2008, Burkina Faso

Ouagadougou master of numbers SARE Elisee has just sent me the statistics for library usage for the year. A big increase from 2007's 35,000 visits, but not a big increase in subscribers- stuck at about 150 per year per library. Subscribing costs about 50 cents for the year, and gives the opportunity to check books out for home reading. Seems like subscribers are checking out about 10 books a year- one a month roughly. Karaba has a big secondary school student population in nearby Houndé, so that is why their subscriber numbers are so high. Béréba, the oldest and most well-established library, is open more hours andsees very high usage.

Private schooling in Uganda

Private Secondary Education in Uganda: Implications for Planning
by W. James Jacob, Donald B. Holsinger & Christopher B Mugimu
Teacher's College Record— 2008

Results: Private schools in Uganda appear to be attractive, low-cost alternatives to government secondary schools. Per-pupil spending is significantly related to learning achievement, regardless of whether a student attends a private or government school. Thus, if higher performance is the desired ultimate student outcome, additional spending will be required. For their per-pupil cost, this article shows that private schools produce good learning gains—better, in fact, on a dollar basis, than government schools.

I can't see how they control for self-selection (better students go to private schools) because I have to pay for the article...

The wonders of technology never cease...

I am way too cynical for my own good... but whenever I see articles like these, I keep thinking of my own son, whom I can't get to listen to an audiobook on the Ipod... he'd rather read it. There's a place for everything. And I'd love to have these tried out in the libraries in Ghana. But the premise really is a little strange... I mean, radios already do this... and they've been working well for like 100 years... and Christian groups are giving away little MP3 players with bibles on them all over the world... and Fry's sells a little MP3 player for like $9.95... well, this one so does have a cool design...

From International Reading Association blog...

Literacy Bridge begins testing Talking Books in Ghana

February 12, 2009

Think Kindle is exciting? Take a look at this book that talks, was developed entirely by volunteers and costs less than $10. Seattle-based non-profit Literacy Bridge launched its pilot program Wednesday, February 11, 2009, to test dozens of its Talking Books in Ghana. The digital audio player and recorder is designed as a tool to teach literacy when used with textbooks, and help rural people who can't read get access to information.

The man behind the project is Cliff Schmidt, a former Microsoft program manager who studied artificial intelligence and thought a lot about how literacy can play a role in moving people out of poverty. He left Microsoft to form Literacy Bridge.

In a place like Ghana, Schmidt thinks having spoken information at hand will help people avoid lengthy trips to visit clinics or other offices. Next he hopes to use the Talking Books to reach women in Afghanistan (90% of whom are illiterate), but ideally the device could be used anywhere in the world. Read more in The Seattle Times online.

A national book list that government buys...

EverythingLiterature interviews Babafemi Adeyemi Osofisan...

Poor reading culture is one of the major problems in Nigeria today. To what extent have you used your co-operation with the government to solve the problem?

First, let me point out that the problem of reading is no longer peculiar to us. The developed countries too are already having problems because of the computer and the modern audio-visual media such as the television. People can hardly spell anymore, because they don’t have to write. But our own case is more serious because we hadn’t attained any degree of literacy at all when we just jumped on the audio-visual media. I’m worried because what we gain in literature, the deep sense of contemplation, of reflection, etc., is absent from the audio-visual media. The television does not give you the time to reflect. It is a global problem and the developed countries are already carrying out programmes to see how they can encourage reading. Here we could also solve the problem through a conscious government policy. And I have been trying my best to see that the government does something. I have proposed a number of things to the government, as I had always done even before my appointment. I have proposed a national book list whereby the federal government would make provision in the budget to automatically buy specific number of books every year, and then make sure they are distributed to at least ten schools in each state. That is talking about thousands of books. If one publisher can sell that much, that publisher is in business, then the author is empowered and the books are in the libraries for reading. The cost of doing this will not be more than 10 million Naira. And when the federal government starts, the state governments can then go ahead. If this is done, we will surely revolutionalise reading in this country. But making proposal is one thing while accepting to implement it is another. It is a pity that government does not take such things as a priority. They think that physical infrastructures such as road construction are the only important aspect of development. But I think the mental development of the citizens should also go hand in hand with the physical development. Because, if you build the road and the person who is using it doesn’t even know how to use it, doesn’t have the mental capacity to use it properly, it will not last. Reading is really important and we will continue to advise the government on what to do to promote it, hoping that they would eventually heed to the advice.

Read more...

FAVL featured in article in student newspaper

Building libraries in Africa

Nonprofit provides villages with access to books, knowledge

By Dana Nialis

Issue date: 2/12/09 Section: News

Originally published: 2/12/09 at 12:42 AM PST
Last update: 2/12/09 at 12:39 AM PST

The average yearly income of a person in the West African nation of Burkina Faso is the equivalent to $150 U.S., according to professor Michael Kevane.

This meager amount does not leave the country's inhabitants with much of an expendable income, and makes it nearly impossible for them to purchase books. This is where Friends of African Village Libraries, a nonprofit organization started by two Santa Clara professors, steps in.

Kevane, who teaches economics, and his wife, environmental science professor Leslie Gray, spoke at an event last week about their experiences with FAVL, which they started with Kate Parry, a professor in the English department at Hunter College, City University of New York.

This nonprofit aims to provide access to reading and knowledge for adults and children in African villages who normally would not have such things available to them.

Emma Nagengast, the who coordinate the event, thought of the idea for this information session after learning about the organization in an economics course taught by Kevane.

She said she was interested in learning more about FAVL and sharing information about it with her fellow Santa Clara students. She said she also hoped to increase interest in the study abroad opportunity in Burkina Faso that will begin next fall.

Gray said she wanted to inform students of this new opportunity.

Read more....

Sigh, why is it so hard... omigosh, I mean, yay, it's so exciting!

So we have to choose between Facebook and Ning, or do something or other...

Anne-Reed Angino sends me to a short intro to the problem/opportunity.

In this article, we lay out three scenarios for how your social change initiative can combine the critical mass of Facebook with the community-building tools of Ning.

For anyone following the evolution of social media for social change, the emergence of Facebook and Ning as complementary tools for engaging people in making a difference is quite exciting.

Facebook has the lure of a big city. It's packed with people and things to do. On Facebook, it never hurts to try new things. Ning, on the other hand, offers all of the benefits of a private getaway with your closest friends. On Ning, a self-selecting group of your supporters can find the space to focus on the specific opportunities you're creating for them to get involved in your cause.

When it comes to leveraging Facebook and Ning, the trick is to align the best elements of both without overwhelming your supporters with extra usernames and passwords, not to mention redundant services.

Report of visit to the libraries in Burkina Faso

SARE Elisee's report (in French) is now posted on the website... An extract:

Sara

Je me rends dans l’après-midi à Sara, ou je trouve Lucie en plein ménage, elle profite de l’absence des lecteurs pour nettoyer la bibliothèque. Je visite néanmoins les rayons. Quelques instants plus tard un groupe d’élèves ayant entre 8 et 11 ans arrive. Je leur dis bonjour, je les fais assoire et leur lis un petit livre de conte, ils sont très enthousiastes, le conte est intitulé « Djidobé et le Serpent-dieu » qui est l’histoire d’un petit garçon nommé Djigobè puni par un serpent parce que celui-ci avait capturé un oiseau. Pour me rassurer que tout le monde comprend, j’interromps de temps en temps la lecture pour demander aux enfants s’ils connaissent certains mots comme igname, comment l’appelle t-on en Bwamu, ainsi que le mot clairière etc. Et, après la lecture, j’ai une séance de discussions avec les enfants à la fin de l’histoire. Je les aide à dégager la morale l’histoire : Il ne faut pas faire a autrui ce que l’on ne veut pas qu’on nous fasse.

Dimikuy

Revenant de Sara, je m’arrête à Dimikuy. Ou je demande à voir la conseillère municipale nomme Doyé Abi. Je me présente à elle et l’informe sur les motifs de ma visite. Elle me montre le site de la future bibliothèque qui est situé à quelques 30 mètres de la route à coté des bâtiments d’alphabétisation. Elle me dit que normalement demain samedi, il sera déposé sur le site le sable pour la construction. Elle me montre l’endroit ou le propriétaire du terrain voudrait que l’on construise le bâtiment. Malheureusement je n’ai pas rencontré les autres membres du comité qui sont tous absents. Je remercie la conseillère pour sa disponibilité.

Great resource for literacy teachers

From Kim Yi Dionne, down at UCLA...

The Literacy Project speaks French too!

via Official Google Africa Blog by farzanak on 2/10/09

En Français

Google, the ANLCI, UNESCO’s Institute for Lifelong Learning, LitCam together with Tostan - a Senegal based non-governmental organisation dedicated to educating and empowering Africans - are pleased to partner with several French-speaking literacy organizations to announce the launch of the French version of the Literacy site.

“The Literacy Project” is an online resource for teachers, literacy organisations and anyone interested in reading promotion and education. In addition to the existing English, German and Spanish versions, the Literacy site is now available in four languages . And two years down the line, we are happy to see that hundreds of organizations have signed up to our Literacy Map, created Literacy related blogs, search literacy related Books and Journals, and contributed to the recently created Literacy forum.

Any organisation can sign up to join the literacy site, and plot it's location in our Literacy Map.

Why the Literacy Project?
Illiteracy is a problem that touches all countries and populations, so we believe there’s a pressing need to share ideas, successful projects, information, and statistics about literacy—as well as find new ways to collaborate. Users can find and share ideas about literacy and reading promotion, from e-learning tools and book clubs, to classic children’s books and scholarly articles.Take a look at what you can do - and now in French too!

• Books: find and search within books about literacy, reading promotion, and education, as well as classic children’s and adult literature.
• Academic Texts: search for literacy-related content in peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, abstracts and articles.
• Literacy Videos: See what literacy organisations, schools, and educators around the world are doing to promote literacy—or share your own project with the world.
• Book Blogs: Share your knowledge and ideas about literacy and reading with the world by creating a "blog" - short articles and stories that you write for others to read.
• Books Clubs and Groups: Discover forums on literacy projects and ideas, start your own debate, or join in The Literacy Project forum.
• Literacy Map: From Kenya to Bangladesh, Canada to Mexico. Find literacy organisations around the world, and search project and contact information.
• Custom Literacy Search: Do targeted searches within literacy and education organisations’ websites.

L’Initiative contre l’illettrisme parle aussi français!

Il y a près de deux ans, à la Foire du Livre de Francfort, Google, l'ANLCI, l’Institut pour l'apprentissage tout au long de la vie de l'UNESCO, LitCam et Tostan - une NGO basée au Sénégal et dedidee a l'éducation en Afrique - ont le plaisir de lancer l’Initiative contre l’illettrisme Google.

L'Initiative contre l'Illetrisme Google est une ressource pour les professeurs, les organismes d’alphabétisation, de lutte contre l’illettrisme et tous ceux qui s’intéressent à la promotion de la lecture et de l’éducation. Nous sommes aujourd’hui heureux d’annoncer le lancement de la version française du site, qui vient compléter les versions anglaise, allemande et espagnole existantes. Deux ans plus tard, nous nous réjouissons de voir que des centaines d’organismes se sont enregistrés sur notre carte de l’alphabétisation, ont créé des blogs, des recherches de livres et des journaux sur le sujet, et ont contribué au forum sur l’alphabétisation récemment lancé.

Tout organisme peut s’enregistrer pour rejoindre le site Initiative contre l’illettrisme, et se situer sur la carte de l’alphabétisation.

Pourquoi cette Initiative contre l’illettrisme ?

L’illettrisme est un problème qui touche tous les pays et toutes les populations, aussi estimons-nous qu’il est urgent de s’échanger idées, projets réussis, informations et statistiques sur l’alphabétisation – et de trouver de nouvelles façons de collaborer. Le site permet à ses utilisateurs de trouver et de partager leurs idées sur l’alphabétisation et la promotion de la lecture - outils d’apprentissage en ligne, clubs de lecture, livres classiques pour enfants, articles savants. Voici ce que vous y trouverez – et maintenant en français aussi!

• Livres: trouvez et compulsez des livres sur l’alphabétisation, la promotion de la lecture et l’éducation, ainsi que des ouvrages classiques pour enfants et adulte.
• Textes universitaires: recherchez des passages sur l’alphabétisation dans des articles évalués par des pairs, des thèses, des ouvrages, des exposés et des articles.
• Vidéos d’alphabétisation: Renseignez-vous sur ce que font les organismes d’alphabétisation, les écoles et les éducateurs à travers le monde pour promouvoir l’alphabétisation – ou faites connaître votre vos projets aux autres.
• Blogs de lecture: Echangez vos connaissances et vos idées sur l’alphabétisation et la lecture avec des internautes à travers le monde en créant un « blog » - de courts articles et chroniques que vous avez écrits pour que d’autres puissent les lire.
• Clubs et groupes de lecture: Découvrez des forums sur des projets et idées d’alphabétisation, ouvrez votre propre débat, ou rejoignez le forum de l’Initiative contre l’illettrisme.
• Carte de l’alphabétisation: De la France à la Belgique, au Maroc ou au Sénégal, découvrez des organismes d’alphabétisation du monde entier, trouvez des informations sur les projets et les contacts.
• Recherches personnalisées sur l’alphabétisation: Effectuez des recherches ciblées sur les sites web d’organismes d’alphabétisation et d’éducation.

A Dakar library profiled in Christian Science Monitor

I just came across this nice article today. One thing... FAVL libraries don't have paintings of Donald Duck... yet... (FAVL reps Sare Elisee and Koura Donkoui visited the library in November, their report (in French) is available here.)

Pikine, Senegal

Fatima Ndoye has just finished “L’enfant noir,” a novel based on the childhood of Guinean author Camara Laye. She could hardly put it down – except that she hardly had the chance to pick it up, either. She has been reading it in borrowed snatches of time when she races across the street from her school to the Pikine Library during her lunch break.

This crude library – a 15-by-65 foot room in a concrete cultural center – is a treasure trove for the 14-year-old, who says she tries to read a novel a week here during hour-long visits. The daughter of a construction worker who earns $10 a day, she can’t afford the $2 library card nor the two passport-sized photos required to get one, so she reads the books in installments, a little every day.

Fatima, her blue school vest covering jeans and T-shirt, knows every corner of the library: She walks to a shelf that’s three-quarters full and tells a visitor, “these are the novels.” The shelf below, she says, are books about business. She wanders a few more steps, and indicates the children’s section, picking up a picture book and rifling through the pages.

“When I was little,” she muses, “I liked these books. But now I’m bigger and I’ve changed. Because you progress. You progress all the time. I’m 14 now, and I read much bigger books.”

Enmeshing African community libraries in a network of support: Some recent advances”

“Enmeshing African community libraries in a network of support: Some recent advances”
In attempt to create an even larger network of African Village libraries, a Google Earth Community has been created and updated to help locate and create a network of existing community libraries in Africa via satellite map. Each library placed on the map is linked with either a contact or a non-profit organization responsible for establishing, managing or simply helping fund the library, including FAVL. Although the map may appear bleak in the grand scheme of things, it is a step towards furthering awareness and providing a more concrete network for community libraries in Africa. In the near future, the Google Earth map will provide links to an online network, which is currently being built on the Ning networking site.

You can access the post on Google Earth. Download the KMZ file located on the post! Currently there are around 100 libraries placed on the map, embedded further with photos and links!

Somewhat stochastically dominating summer camps

Blattman refers readers to a nice summary paper by Angus Deaton on using statistics in development to understand what kinds of aid assistance works. One sentence on randomized controlled trials (RCT) caught my attention:

Essentially, the RCT gives us two marginal distributions, from which we would like to infer a joint distribution; this is impossible, but the marginal distributions limit the joint distribution in a way that can be useful, for example if the distribution among the treated stochastically dominates the distribution
among the controls.

Interestingly, the distribution of the reading test results for students who were in the two week library summer camps do indeed dominate the control groups (that is, the distribution of grades is shifted to the right). The control groups either got two free books or were given small monetary incentives to participate in weekly book discussions. The mean score goes from 66 to 74 (p<.01), about a 10% increase. The cost of the camp was on the order of $20 per child. So not a huge effect for the cost, but seems reasonable enough.

Le Clézio and African literature

Alain Mabanckou sings the praises and is clearly influence by le Clézeio, but I had never read anything by him so was interested, and so I finally picked up Mondo et autres histoires from my local library (Martin Luther King, Jr, in downtown San Jose). Wonderful stories and novellas.

Le Clézio's Wikipedia entry is just fascinating, and his Nobel lecture is dedicated first and foremost to a number of African authors- Mongo Beti, Ahmadou Kourouma, Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, Alain Paton (Oh! So great to read Cry, the Beloved Country on my first trip to Sudan in 1985!), and Thomas Mofolo and a couple of Mauritian authors, and then a long list of authors of what we might call the Third World, some of whom I have read, others whom I am ready to add to my list! It is a wonderful lecture, and should be required reading in any non-western literature class. Here's the concluding paragraph, from the English version (yes, it is very earnest, but what did you expect Friends of African Village Libraries to like?):

For all his pessimism, Stig Dagerman’s phrase about the fundamental paradox of the writer, unsatisfied because he cannot communicate with those who are hungry—whether for nourishment or for knowledge—touches on the greatest truth. Literacy and the struggle against hunger are connected, closely interdependent. One cannot succeed without the other. Both of them require, indeed urge, us to act. So that in this third millennium, which has only just begun, no child on our shared planet, regardless of gender or language or religion, shall be abandoned to hunger or ignorance, or turned away from the feast. This child carries within him the future of our human race. In the words of the Greek philosopher Heraclitus, a very long time ago, the kingdom belongs to a child.