Member News: Teaching Computer Science in Rural Nigeria

Computing for the people: The San Francisco Chapter has an article by a software developer using open source software and open standards hardware to teach computer science skills to students in rural Nigeria. Chioma Ezedi Chukwu, founder of the STEMTeers mentorship program, writes that open source is more than free tools, software, or hardware. “It was a great opportunity to learn, learn by building and create with innovation.”

Coding for kids: Meanwhile, the Pacific Islands Chapter highlights a hackathon for kids event at a childcare center in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea. The goal of the event, focused on design thinking, was to equip the students with lifelong skills in the digital age.

Supporting e-learning: In other education-related news, the Uganda Chapter is focused on helping teachers and students improve their digital skills as the country embraces e-learning following the COVID-19 pandemic. “Educators need to adjust their teaching methods to cope with the new changes,” an article says. “Educators should be able to cause change or affect the learner beyond the chalk and blackboard while learners need to be taken through an adaptability process as they transition to digital education.”

Tracking the virus: The Chapter in the Dominican Republican has offered its support for the government there to roll out a COVID-19 tracking app. The Chapter also offered to “analyze and validate the compliance of this application with the best international practices regarding privacy and protection of personal data, our laws, and the principles of the Internet of the Dominican Republic.”

Community in the U.K.: The U.K. Chapter recently published a short history of community-based broadband in the country, characterizing it as a David-vs.-Goliath struggle. But there are still possibilities for community-based networks. There is “potentially a much brighter outlook for community broadband in the future if it can combine core strengths of good, locally-based customer service with the ‘heavy lifting’ of communication service provision … being performed increasingly by cloud-based platforms…”

Fighting fake news: The Netherlands and several other Chapters have partnered with Make Media Great Again, an organization focused on correcting disinformation at news sites. A new working group works with the media and scientists to identify disinformation in news articles.

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