Appendix:
Electronic Conference
on International Best Practices Related to Building a Learning Society in El Salvador
February 12 - March
5, 1999
Summary
From February 12 to March 5, Conectándonos al Futuro held a worldwide
electronic conference on "best practices" related to a series of issues defined
jointly with the learning circles, on the basis of the critical issues they identified.
Contributions to the conference served as useful inputs for the design of projects,
initiatives, and recommendations, and for enriching the strategy paper as a whole.
The conference co-moderators were Christina Courtright from Conectándonos al Futuro, and Govindan Nair of the
World Bank; the learning circle facilitators
contributed questions and comments. The text of the over 190 contributions to the
conference, in which over 50 panelists and members of the public participated, is posted
on the Website http://www.vita.org/technet/esls/.
Following is a list of the questions posted at the beginning of the conference, on
which panelists and the public were asked to comment:
Transforming education for a learning society:
- Teachers learning from each other, particularly given the challenge of educational
reform processes and the new pedagogies this implies.
- Participatory mechanisms for designing distance and demand-driven education efeforts,
particularly in the context of increasingly learner-centered methods.
- Teaching technical and entrepreneurial skills to using ICT and distance learning
methods.
Harnessing emigrant know-how for local development:
- Knowledge transfer from emigrant populations to the home country, in terms of technical
skills, talents, business skills, political values, etc.
- Worldwide experience of knowledge transfer among trans-national communities sharing
linguistic, cultural and other affinities (e.g. as in Armenia, Colombia, Hungary,
Philippines, India, China, Israel, South Pacific islands, etc)
Networking communities and local governments nationally and globally:
- Building local content to enhance local development objectives, including through the
use of Websites by local governments.
- Ways of matching university research with development requirements at the level of local
government, communities and NGOs. How are they funded/sustained?
- Community information centers in small and medium-sized towns which place emphasis on
pro-active gathering and systematization of local/national information, to complement
access to foreign information. What are appropriate and sustainable business structures?
What types of local information can be usefully created and how can this be updated?
Specific examples from different countries.
- Examples of programs and processes which facilitate and streamline the integration of
community & local development efforts with national information programs.
Revitalizing rural economies through improved knowledge flows:
- Early warning systems to help prevent or mitigate the effects of disasters such as
floods, hurricanes, famine, epidemics, etc.
- Design, management, financing and operation of current information systems on prices of
agricultural inputs, products, commodities at the national or local level. Costs and
charges? How often are prices updated?
- Examples of learning processes which help small-scale artisans, farmers and other
micro-enterprises adapt their production and technology to service domestic markets which
become better integrated through information flow on inputs, prices, etc.
- How can agricultural and industrial extension systems be better adpated to generate,
absorb, use and diffuse information to reach small-scale rural enterprises?
Deploying knowledge for enterprise development:
- Ways of matching university research with requirements of small or large enterprises.
What could be the role of "knowledge brokers" to facilitate better linkages
between university research and real needs of enterprises? How can such brokerage and
other knowledge transfer mechanisms be funded/sustained?
- Pro-active use of knowledge sharing or knowledge transfer mechanisms within
"clusters" of producers & distributors, "co-opetition".
- Mechanisms which lower the transaction costs of small businesses in their search for
credit and market information as well as business services.
- Electronic commerce applications which strengthen small business competitiveness and
market shares in either internal or external markets.
"Intelligent government": promoting knowledge-based public
administration:
- Information systems and networking within and among developing country government
agencies which promote efficiency, transparency and better service to the public;
including legislative information.
- How can local and national governments improve their knowledge management and adopt best
practices to enhance service delivery?
- What kinds of basic information should be in the public domain? Which of this
information should be directly provided by government? Examples of good pratices.
Other relevant areas of best practice:
Health:
- What kinds of telemedicine services can provide high value-added in low-bandwidth
environments?
- How can local health-related knowledge be effectively combined with external knowledge
to improve public health?
Intellectual property rights:
- Intellectual property rights legislation and practices which favor knowledge creation in
developing countries. How can local communities better acquire and use knowledge of IPRs
to protect their interests?
- Best practices in administering GIS information which have addressed and solved issues
of intellectual property, compatibility, public monopoly, etc.
All rights reserved. Permission is granted to reproduce all
or part of this publication as long as the complete source is cited: Conectándonos al
Futuro de El Salvador, "Strategy for Building a Learning Society", San Salvador,
1999, http://www.conectando.org.sv/English/Strategy/
