Author: Mark Weingarten

Mark is a consultant for TechChange. He works with the TechChange team to develop curricula, build strategic partnerships, and contributes to the TechChange blog. Mark earned an MA in International Affairs from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs and a BA in English from Colorado College. He has previously worked on research projects in conjunction with UNICEF’s Innovation Team and UN Global Pulse. Mark spent a year in Nepal researching the effect of media and globalization on cultural traditions and has also worked in nonprofit development, promoting youth engagement with the arts, media, and technology. He is especially interested in uses of new technology in conjunction with simpler tools, such as radio, to engage civil society, facilitate education, and promote freedom of expression.

On January 11, 2011 from 11-12am, TechChange co-hosted a tweet chat with Linda Raftree (@meowtree) from Plan International to gauge interest in ICT for Development (ICT4D) distance learning and get a better sense of what would appeal most to potential students. In total, the chat included an impressive 401 tweets, with 59 people participating. Our hashtag, #ict4ddl, was even a top trending topic in Washington DC at around 11:30. Throughout the hour, we covered a lot of ground, ranging from course content to length to delivery. Here’s the archive.

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In his recent article on MobileActive.org, Paul Currion posed the question, “If all You Have is a Hammer, How Useful is Humanitarian Crowdsourcing”. Currion argued that those working in disaster response “…don’t need more information, they need better information.” He argued that Ushahidi’s Haiti deployment was an example of the failure of crowdsourcing to add value to disaster response efforts and ongoing humanitarian work. This pointed critique of Ushahidi and the use of social media in a humanitarian context resulted in an enthusiastic, and sometimes heated, debate in the article’s comments section.

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Despite dramatic increases in global internet penetration, many people still depend on radio as their primary connection to the outside world. However, as inexpensive mobile phones are becoming widely available, a number of organizations are seeking to combine the popularity of radio programming with the interactivity of mobile phones to engage listeners, provide personalized content, and create a more active dialogue between civil society and decision makers.

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