Clicks and mortar : learning centres : locating learning and skills?

"Colleges are not the only organisations interested in learning centres. Learning centres are at the heart of many current government and other initiatives to bring the information age into education, training and public services. They have a range of goals, organisational models and resources. But are they effective? Clicks and mortar is the first in a series of FEDA publications and web-based information to explore what learning centres do, how and why they do it, and to encourage dialogue between all who are interested in their development" -- back cover

eCPD Programme - Enhanced Learning.

This collection of papers (edited by Kevin Donovan) has been produced by the Association for Learning Technology (ALT) for LSIS. They are based on the summaries used by presenters during workshops at the 2009 launch of the eCPD Programme

QUILT: A case study in the impact of a staff development programme

QUILT ('Quality in Information and Learning Technology') is a multifaceted staff development programme which was designed to make all college staff enthusiastic about new technology and to help them incorporate it in their work. The programme has been designed and led by the Further Education Development Agency (FEDA). FEDA's work is described on its web site (http://www.feda.ac.uk). QUILT has its roots in the Higginson Report in which the Further Education Funding Council set out a vision for information and learning technology with staff development as a priority. The English and Welsh Further Education Funding Councils have contributed around £2m to what became a £5m five‐year programme. The continuing emphasis of QUILT has been on the ‘learning’ in information and learning technology

Understanding the potential role of membership organisations in the sustainable spread of innovation

Innovation must be defined as "change for the better" rather than as mere 'novelty' or "change for change's sake". Membership organisations have a key role to play in the cost effective spread of innovation. The best ways to spread innovation are by individual mentoring between colleagues in the same organisation, peer support, and informal networking between practitioners. But i) innovation can only flourish if the organisational culture is right; ii) changing an organisation's culture to one that supports innovation has to be done from the inside; iii) lack of time to innovate is a key constraint

Infrastructuring Aid: Materializing Social Protection in Northern Kenya

In numerous African countries, humanitarian and development organizations - as well as governments - are expanding expenditures on social protection schemes as a means of poverty alleviation. These initiatives, which typically provide small cash grants to poor households, are often considered particularly agreeable for the simplicity of their administration and the feasibility of their implementation. This paper examines the background work required to deploy social protection in one especially remote area: the margins of postcolonial Kenya. Specifically, it documents the often-overlooked social and technical construction of the infrastructure necessary so that cash transfers may function with the ease and simplicity for which they are commended. Attention to the practice of 'infrastructuring' offers insights into the tensions and politics of what is rapidly becoming a key form of transnational governance in the global south, especially the way in which market-based means and humanitarian ethics overlap

Mobile Money more Freedom? The Impact of M-PESA's Network Power on Development as Freedom

The role of ICTs in development is contested between those who believe they will facilitate human development and those who believe they are, at most, impotent, and at worst, counterproductive. This article uses an examination of M-PESA, a large-scale mobile financial service in Kenya, to argue that the impact of ICTs on development as freedom differs with both the specific conceptualization of freedom used, and the institutional arrangement of the technology in question. The article’s novel conceptual model links the adoption of mobile money to its impact, suggesting that the dominant individualistic and instrumental approaches to ICT4D overlook the ways in which power and domination function alongside freedom when these factors are considered relationally and substantively. I demonstrate that the internal plurality of the concept of freedom leads to both new forms of empowerment, but also to limitations on choice and new forms of dominance. In closing, I suggest institutional and technological arrangements that are most likely to maximize the development potential of mobile money