Projects

In close cooperation with the Dutch NGO IICD (www.iicd.org), SPIDER is set to start two new projects in Bolivia. They are both dealing with ICT and Gender and our counterparts are Bolivian NGOs Casa de la Mujer and CIDOB (Centro de Investigaciones de Relaciones Internacionales y Desarrollo).

The first SPIDER funded long-term project was finalized in the end of 2008. The project in Sri Lanka, aiming at implementing a national center for research, and development and training on Wireless Adhoc Sensor Networks (WASNs) has stretched over a three-year period.  

In the last call for applications in 2007, SPIDER received a few proposals that were focusing on ICT and gender. None of the proposals were however granted funding at that time. Nevertheless, the assessment group unanimously agreed on the importance of the subject area and suggested that SPIDER would promote gender specific project proposals.

This fall, Makerere University in Uganda together with the Linux Users Group of Uganda carried out a Red Hat Linux certification training program targeted at IT professionals and academics. The training was supported by the “EU-ACP Centre for the Development of Enterprise” (CDE) and SPIDER.

"Mobile ATM" is the joint project between the Department of Computer and System Science (DSV) of the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) and School of Computing, University of Colombo (Sri Lanka), supported by SPIDER in 2008 and 2009.

In August of 2008, Dr. Mannan Mridha, the project coordinator of the rural ICT Centre at Nohata visited the local project partners. During the trip, Dr. Mridha noticed growing interest among the pupils that are taking part in the project. The project was initiated two years ago with SPIDER funding and promotes access to medical information for the rural health care providers.

The SPIDER-supported project "Virtual Interactive Classroom" in Bangladesh, a collaboration between Örebro University in Sweden and Open University in Bangladesh, uses an innovative teaching methodology based of television broadcasted seminars and SMS technology, This methodology enables students to attend classes outside regular school or office hours and regardless of where they live in the country. On May 15, the first lesson will be broadcasted on Bangladeshi national television. The course teaches English and consists of 28 lessons.

For further information about the project contact: Åke Grönlund gron@informatik.umu.se

This is an edited version of the first lesson.