FINAL REPORT
GLOBAL INFORMATION NETWORKS IN EDUCATION (GINIE) PROJECT
UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH
SEPTEMBER 1999 TO SEPTEMBER 2000
EXTENDED TO DECEMBER 2000
BACKGROUND
Problems of chronic
educational and economic stress occur in many parts of the world, threatening
basic education. The good work that has
been accomplished over the last few decades needs to be strengthened to build
stable civil societies, generate innovative and sustainable economies and
prevent civil crises. Educational
professionals within and across countries need rapid access to related
professional development knowledge and expertise.
GINIE
The Global Information
Networks in Education (GINIE) project is a long-term strategy for cooperative
professional development. It uses
Internet-based technology and research to providing rapid access to high
quality knowledge and expertise in ‘digestible’ formats for education
professionals and policymakers working internationally in nations facing crises
and their transitions. It constructs
Internet-based professional partnership networks to help education
policymakers, donor/investors, researchers and practitioners to work
collaboratively, to learn from each other, and to inform the public.
GINIE uses Internet and
supporting technology to provide rapid access to high quality education
knowledge and expertise about 'what works in: a) policy; planning and
evaluation; b) pedagogical practices; c) access, equity and diversity; and d)
workforce education and community economic development.'
Education practitioners,
policymakers and researchers in many places in the world are already working
successfully to protect high quality learning in schools and non-formal
settings. The Interagency Consultation
took an important step by helping practitioners, policymakers and researchers
create a multi-level dialogue about local schools. The consultation will continue to make an important contribution
to reducing chronic educational and economic stress through: a) 'on-the-ground' documentation of the
educational system and its innovations; and b) shared information and dialogue
about education reforms such as active learning, participative planning and
more effective management practices.
GINIE II makes an
important contribution education in nations at risk by sharing the resourceful
work of professional counterparts internationally. This multi-level approach to education for civil societies and
sustainable economic development is a good fit with the goals of the
consultation.
The UNESCO-USAID
partnership had another successful year.
At the Education For All (EFA) meeting in Dakar in April, the
representatives of the UNESCO Member States attending the session on education
in nations with crises requested that the ad hoc group on interagency
coordination for education in emergencies be formalized. The group had been meeting for five years,
and the GINIE project had been providing technological support for it during
that time.
These are the activities
we have completed. The best way to
understand what we have done is to visit the websites. Copies of the web pages discussed in the
text can be found in Appendix A.
According to the contract, the GINIE project was to
provide:
1. An upgraded Interagency Consultative website for
the Dakar meeting in collaboration with the Emergency Educational Assistance
Unit (ED/EFA/AEU)
2. An on-line capacity for document sharing and
Internet-based dialogue for ED/AEU and other areas of UNESCO, other program
areas in Paris, and regional offices and national commissions, as well as
Consultative members, Member States, and Affiliated Centers
3. $6,000 to ED/EFA/AEU to identify, collect and
prepare documents for the ED/AEU website on crisis education in English and
French
4. Web access to ED/EFA/AEU-provided English and
French documents and links provided by the Director of ED/ EFA/AEU.
·
On the site's webpages
This page links to UNESCO’s existing emergency site and
new report and materials - http://ginie1.sched.pitt.edu/eeau/unesco-activities.html.
§
Objective links to the UNESCO's existing
emergency homepage
§
Research/Evaluation links
to the EFA/2000 - Thematic Study on Emergency Education - http://ginie1.sched.pitt.edu/eeau/final-conf.html. It is available in:
·
PDF - http://ginie1.sched.pitt.edu/eeau/finald~1.pdf
·
Word - http://ginie1.sched.pitt.edu/eeau/FINALD~1.doc
§
Case Study links to the UNESCO's existing
Case Study page
§
Project & Action links
to the UNESCO's existing Evaluation of Emergency Education Programme page
§
Education Materials links
to two poster images -http://ginie1.sched.pitt.edu/eeau/education.html. It is available in:
·
English - http://ginie1.sched.pitt.edu/eeau/images/Aff_1_small.jpg
·
French - http://ginie1.sched.pitt.edu/eeau/images/Aff_2b_small.JPG
·
Through GINIE's on-line searchable, multi-media
database
Documents sent from ED/AEU were added to GINIE’s database
·
Through links to other parts of the GINIE website
The ED/AEU's site is featured on the GINIE homepage
5.
Web pages in English and French (with ED/AEU's
support for French)
French
versions will follow approval of current designs.
6.
A design template for the site that will be
content rich, user friendly and visually appealing
The
design for the ED/AEU site was readied for Dakar. After the successful meeting in which the ministers of education
attending the crisis session requested that the interagency consultation be
formalized, design attention needed to shift to the construction of a website
for the November 2000 conference in Geneva.
http://ginie1.sched.pitt.edu/conf-site/
7.
Templates for both Consultative Group members and
Member States to showcase their efforts through key documents and links on
crisis education that include policies, best practices, lessons learned and
media resources for international agencies and NGOs to showcase their programs
A
general on-line forum was created. http://ginie1.sched.pitt.edu/forum/
A
special on-line forum was created for Consultation members. http://ginie1.sched.pitt.edu/conf-site/members/forum/
8.
A web board that coordinates Consultative Group
members, Member States and Associated
Centers
9.
Linked access to the emer-edu listserv as a
primary instrument for public dissemination
The
emer-edu list was expanded to include consultation members
10.
Collaboration with ED/AEU to search, annotate and
publish a list of related links
A
reference desk related to crisis in was created. It includes the GINIE theme-based crisis websites, crisis country
sites, crisis issues links, crisis
organizations links, and a reading room for related reference sites.
11.
The option for the Consultative Group to have
available to GINIE's cost-free, state-of-the art pre-packaged webpage
translation software in six languages (English, French, Spanish, German,
Italian and Portuguese), subject to UNESCO's policies and practices in this
regard
The
option was offered, but the software was considered too weak for UNESCO’s
demands for language precision.
12.
All activities for the Dakar site will be
undertaken by GINIE with ED/AEU in liaison with the Information and Library
Division (DIT/CLH), and with the Documentation for the Education Sector
(ED/SDI)
Meetings were held in Paris in February and November 2000
13.
The maintenance and expansion of the Rapid Education
for Victims of War, Refugees and Internal Displaced Populations (IDPs) website
The
Consultation was renamed the Network on Education in Emergencies at the
November meeting in Geneva. The
conference site will be expanded to include the following sub-sites:
·
Reference Desk
http://ginie1.sched.pitt.edu/referencedesk/
·
Crisis Links moved to Reference desk
http://ginie1.sched.pitt.edu/crises-links/prof/impact.html
·
Basic Education Policy Instruments and Framework for
Education in Complex Emergencies
http://ginie1.sched.pitt.edu/ginie-crises-links/rapid_edu/index.html
·
Child and Young Soldiers (ex-combatants)
http://ginie1.sched.pitt.edu/ginie-crises-links/childsoldiers/
·
Education and Psychological Distress in Countries in
Crisis
http://ginie1.sched.pitt.edu/ginie-crises-links/trauma/
·
Education for Peace and Reconciliation
http://ginie1.sched.pitt.edu/ginie-crises-links/pr/
·
Land Mine Awareness Education
http://ginie1.sched.pitt.edu/ginie-crises-links/lm/
·
Regional and country sites
http://ginie1.sched.pitt.edu/countries/index.html
·
Crisis country pages added
Turkey http://ginie1.sched.pitt.edu/countries/turkey/
Honduras http://ginie1.sched.pitt.edu/countries/honduras/
Ethiopia http://ginie1.sched.pitt.edu/countries/ethiopia/
Eritrea http://ginie1.sched.pitt.edu/countries/eritrea/
·
Links to crisis education-related websites and conference
archives
http://ginie1.sched.pitt.edu/crises-links/prof/edu_crisis.html
·
Earthquake and Hurricane Education (Prevention)
http://ginie1.sched.pitt.edu/turkey/earthfact.html
·
Reading Room
http://ginie1.sched.pitt.edu/referencedesk/readingcris.htm
·
GINIE seminar series
A pilot for an on-line course in emergency education was
created in CourseInfo on the University of Pittsburgh’s course development
servers
The GINIE seminar series discussed emergency education at
the 2000 Comparative and International Education Studies Conference in San
Antonio, Texas
·
Humanitarian Times archives (searchable format)
http://ginie1.sched.pitt.edu/htimes/times/index.html
·
"emer-edu" list
Continues to be maintained in partnership with
Interworks, Lynne Bethke, moderator
·
GINIE Noticeboard
http://ginie1.sched.pitt.edu/forum/forum.asp?FORUM_ID=5&CAT_ID=2&Forum_Title=GINIE+Notice+Board
Ø These
maintenance and expansion activities include:
·
Maintenance and upgrades of the GINIE web servers
·
Maintenance and upgrades of the GINIE multi-media
database
·
Maintenance and upgrades of GINIE's web interactivity
capacity (discussion groups, translations, surveys, etc.)
·
Updating web page content and formats
ü Testing
pages for broken links
ü Searching
for new links and materials
ü Annotating
new links
·
Upgrading GINIE' s on-line training capacity
ü Restructuring
the Rapid Ed site to make it more training-friendly
ü Work
with UNESCO, UNICEF, UNHCR and USAID on developing interagency training
cooperation
In June, 2000 a report
was made outlining the comments to the Interagency consultation made by the
Ministers of Education at the crisis session at Dakar, and outlining the
possibilities that GINIE could offer as follow-up. It was designed a set of options to choose from, and not a direct
plan for action. The paper requests
guidance from the Consultation in setting priorities for the next year.
Maureen W. McClure
Director, GINIE Project
June 20, 2000
What a success! The Emergency Education meeting with the
UNESCO Member States went even better than all had hoped. Many emergency countries were in attendance
(Albania, Algeria, Bangladesh, Burundi, Iraq, Mozambique, Rwanda, Sudan, Sierra
Leone, and others), giving the cooperative Anglophone and Francophone session a
gravitas perhaps unparalleled in modern educational statecraft. UNESCO, UNICEF, UNHCR, Norwegian People’s
Aid, USAID and many others have played a central role in creating and
supporting the consultation’s activities over the last five years. We should all be very pleased that the
Ministers themselves expressed a great need for the consultation’s activities
to be formally recognized.
What directions did they
suggest for the Consultation? Their
comments appeared to fall into four policy phases for emergency education:
·
Preparedness
planning
·
Intervention
·
Transition to
sustainability
·
Outreach
These phases were
not always discussed as a linear sequence. Sometimes they were modeled as loops
or as simultaneous occurrences. Each
phase had key activities that need to be discussed and prioritized in terms of
activities and funding for the next year.
The needs are so great and the resources are so few, the Consultation
needs to focus on building a solid foundation over the next few years.
How can GINIE help
support these directions? Given the
wide range of requests from Member States, it was useful to describe a wide
range of responses, knowing full well that only a few can be chosen. The Consultation needs to set realistic and
practical priorities for GINIE for the coming year to ensure that we have an
even more successful collaboration.
This is not a plan for
action. This is a list of possibilities that need priorities. GINIE should stay very focused on
identifying a few things and doing them very well.
There are many ways to
create useful frameworks for action.
This is only one.
1. Preparedness planning
·
Organize a
communications and reporting plan to send documents from the interagency group
to GINIE for archiving and distribution.
·
Help governments
prepare national emergency plans as part of
EFA country action plans over the next two years: include special
populations (refugees, IDPs, disaster communities, children, teenagers, girls
and boys, special needs, etc..)
·
Coordinate and
generate norms and standards for interventions.
ü What constitutes an emergency? (armed conflict, natural and man-made
environmental disasters, pandemics, rapid political/economic collapse, silent
emergencies)
ü When do emergencies begin and end?
ü How can reasonably accurate counts be taken?
ü What are responsible indicators of both
populations' needs and program successes?
·
Develop more
realistic planning models and reporting formats that balance programmed
responses with emergent strategy, using intensive telecommunications, on-line
databases and distributed decision-making.
ü Complex insecure environments require real-time
communications systems. In emergencies, chronic security threats can
destabilize traditional institutional systems of rewards and sanctions,
rendering them unenforceable.
ü Practical and flexible planning models using
alliance-based emergent strategy assume shifting goals, inadequate and
inaccessible resources, and fragmented commands unable to control security.
Continuous assessments are needed using real-time communications systems
·
Prepare public
advocacy programs with joint visibility to generate resources
·
Archive national
curriculum, textbooks and other key policy and program materials on CD ROMs
regionally or internationally so 'backup' records are available in case of
disaster
·
Create guidelines
and templates for student records and assessments that can help teachers
working with children who have to leave their country, as well as children who
are being repatriated (regional or international backup)
·
Develop norms and
standards for immigration and repatriation
What can GINIE do over
the next year to support this phase?
2. Planning for Interventions
What can GINIE do over
the next year to support activities in this phase?
·
Update and generate
country and regional pages in cooperation with ministries of education, lead
agencies, national commissions and/or country missions
·
Update database and
links to program and training guidelines, manuals and materials
·
Create web pages to
share country-level assessments and indicators
·
Develop pilot agency
and NGO registry system in one country
·
Develop pilot
expertise database in emergency education
·
Assess IS system
compatibility across UNICEF, UNESCO, UNHCR
·
Develop
communication channel for assessment team (web pages, web board)
3.
Transition to
sustainability
UNESCO Member States’ related requests
·
Improve financing to
ensure institutional stability
·
Need for analysis of
planning and intervention and their consequences for transition-Key lessons-
country as case study: (eg. rights and normalization, gender inequality,
response and reconstruction, innovation, community participation, coordination,
preparedness, prevention)
·
Improve local,
regional and international continuing professional development communications
networks
·
Mentor system
created by experts in countries with experience in emergencies
·
IS support for
institutional capacity building
What can GINIE do over the next year to support activities in this
phase?
4. Outreach
UNESCO Member States’
related requests
What can GINIE do over
the next year to support activities in this phase?
·
Outreach through
Pitt's Institute for International Studies in Education (IISE) and the US-based
Comparative and International Education Studies (CIES)
·
Feasibility and
pilot studies for outreach and e-commerce networks
If all of these
activities were undertaken, GINIE would have a fifty-year plan! The Consultation needs to provide guidance
in terms of realistic goals.
It is important it is to
keep and build on the momentum created by the success in Dakar, and so it is
important for GINIE to provide the technical assistance needed to support the
Geneva meeting.
Thanks to Kacem’s group
at UNESCO for keeping the ball rolling by creating an excellent world emergency
map and emergency ed advocacy posters.
In conclusion, we believe these sites
demonstrate the GINIE project’s full commitment to the development of a
high-value website for the Network on Education in Emergencies.
