BPN 1567 World Summit Award Winners 2011 Category 3

Category 3: e-Learning & Education

3001  Wikigoviya, Sri Lanka

3030  Bitstrips for Schools, Canada

3039  Rufoof, UAE

3044  Technology and Civilization in Ancient China, China

3057  Dnevnik.ru, Russian Federation

Wikigoviya, Sri Lanka, Audio Visual Centre, Department of Agriculture,

URL: http://www.goviya.lk

Description: The latest ICT initiative of Cyber Agriculture Wikipedia known as Wikigoviya is a participatory and interactive web tool for agriculture development in Sri Lanka through the participation of agriculture community (AC). Wikigoviya serves as a common meeting place for AC of farmers, experts, academics, students and general public interested in agriculture. This is a read-and-write web rather than the traditional read only website which has been hosted under the domain name of www.goviya.lk. It provides necessary platform for disseminating and sharing agriculture information among interested groups while serving as a room for discussing and constructively criticize the present agriculture policies and adoption. The detailed agriculture crop technology guide is given with the support of latest multimedia applications in order to understand easily. All information is presented in a very user friendly manner and in a ‘tone’ & dialect in

which the rural farmer feels comfortable.

Bitstrips for Schools, Canada, Bitstrips Inc.

URL: www.bitstripsforschools.com

Description: Bitstrips for Schools is a groundbreaking educational website that enables any student to create, share and collaborate on amazing comics without having to draw, and gives teachers an entirely new teaching medium. Bitstrips for Schools engages kids by making the process of writing more visual, interactive and fun. It introduces elements of identity, role-play and digital storytelling to schoolwork, letting students demonstrate their learning in a more personal and creative way. Since launching in September 2009, Bitstrips for Schools has been used by over 60,000 teachers and 600,000 students in every grade and virtually every subject. Over 20,000 kids log on each day and create 20,000 new comics!

Rufoof, UAE, Flagship Projects Marketing FZ-LLC

URL: www.rufoof.com

Description: This product is one of a kind e-content store application that targets the Arab audience with thousands of books and publications covering various sectors. Rufoof offers an amazing reading experience for the Arabic and English Content. Steps to live a quality reading experience with Rufoof are very easy because we strive to make technology easier and user friendly to everyone. Rufoof app is absolutely free of charge. The language is 70% Arabic and 30% English, thus targeting the Arab audience. The platform complies with iPad, iPhone, iPod, Android, web app and Windows Phone coming soon.

Technology and Civilization in Ancient China, China, Information Center of China

Association for Science and Technology

URL: www.ancientech.cn

Description: “Technology and Civilization in Ancient China” is an e-learning and education website, designed as a special introduction to the development and advancement of ancient Chinese scientific techniques. The website contains a vast amount of information, with over two hundred thousand words of text, 1,500 images, and more than 100 movies. The website is divided into a Chinese-language section, an English-language section, and a discussion forum. The website is steadfastly devoted to disseminating scientific understanding, explaining the creative process behind scientific principles, and using modern multi-media methods to reinvigorate and reconstruct ancient inventions. It uncovers their underlying scientific thought and reasoning, displaying the value and wisdom of our human inheritance to today's society.

Dnevnik.ru, Russian Federation, Dnevnik.ru

URL: www.dnevnik.ru

Description: Dnevnik.ru is the first Social Educational Network in the Russian Federation that aims to create a single educational network for all participants (school administrators, teachers, students and their parents) in the educational process. Dnevnik.ru is making school life more convenient by creating a tool for efficient and convenient electronic document management by allowing participants of the program to quickly and simultaneously exchange information with each other as well as be informed of current developments in participating schools. Additionally, Dnevnik.ru houses a large learning resource centre, provides an electronic information exchange system, electronic messaging and distance teaching capability, educational audio and video materials and facilities for creating personal profiles, subject blogs and groups for schools and online learning communities.

BPN 1567

BPN 1566 World Summit Award Winners 2011 Category 2

"WSA - Turning the United Nations Targets on the Information Society regarding Local Content into Global Action towards the 2015 Review !"

Category 2:e-Health & Environment

2004 SPARX New Zealand
2031 COLLAPSUS Netherlands
2039 EPI Life Singapore
2040 Beijing Traditional Chinese Medicine Digital Museum China
3012 Verdeate.com Colombia

SPARX, New Zeeland, University of Auckland

URL: http://www.frozenflameweb.com/sparxmain.html
Description: By the age of 18 a quarter of young people have suffered from clinical  depression and a massive three quarters of them never get any help. There are good therapies, but they can be expensive, there is a shortage of therapists and young people may be reluctant to talk about their problems. For the current generation of "digital natives" computers may provide a solution. SPARX is a computerised self-help programme designed to deliver cognitive behavioural therapy, one of the best psychological treatments available for depression. SPARX is an animated 3D game where users learn real-life skills by solving challenges to rid a fantasy world from gloom and
negativity. It was developed by therapists in collaboration with young people, computer games developers, and is grounded in e-learning theories. It has been designed to appeal to young people internationally. An evaluation of SPARX (187 participants) has shown that young people found it effective, engaging and helpful.

COLLAPSUS, Netherlands, Submarine
URL: www.collapsus.com
Description: Collapsus looks into the near future and shows you how the imminent energy transition affects a group of ten young people, who appear to be caught up in an energy conspiracy. What will their world look like after the turbulent transition from fossil fuels to alternative energy sources? Following the adventures of Vera, Jack, Tony and Amir, you are lead into a world of conspiracy, treason and, most alarmingly, failing energy supplies. In this story, set in the near future, the international powers try to cope with a transition from fossil to alternative fuels, while dealing with political dissension, uprisings and a population terrified by increasingly frequent black-outs. As a player, you are required to make decisions that leave their mark on a national and a global scale, in your quest to find solutions to the energy crisis.

EPI Life, Singapore, EPHONE INTERNATIONAL (S) PTE LTD
URL: www.epi.com.sg
Description: EPI Life is the World's First mobile phone with integrated ECG
(Electrocardiogram) and health monitoring functions. It allows the user to record their ECG anytime, anywhere, simply by touching the sides of the phone with their fingers, eliminating the need for complicated electrodes or messy gels. Other than ECG, it also allows the user to input key health parameters such as Blood Glucose, Blood Pressure and Cholesterol and transmit these data to their online Personal Health Folder via the EPI Life, which can be accessed by the user via the internet. ECGs are sent to EPI’s 24-hour Health Concierge from the device via GPRS, where qualified doctors and cardiac technicians compare the ECG against the user’s baseline ECG, and respond via SMS based on the results of the comparison. EPI Life, coupled with the 24-hour Health Concierge and online Personal Health Folder, offers an end-to-end solution for remote health monitoring, allowing the end-user to have timely feedback (on-demand) on their heart condition anytime, anywhere.

Beijing Traditional Chinese Medicine Digital Museum, China, Beijing Traditional Chinese Medicine International Exchange and Cooperating Center (BTCMIECC)
URL: www.tcm-china.info
Description: Beijing Digital Museum of Traditional Chinese  Medicine is a top science museum and a website to spread and propagate culture of traditional Chinese medicine and scientific knowledge to the world. Beijing Digital Museum of Traditional Chinese Medicine has two versions: English and Chinese. There are many columns, such as medical care, Chinese material medicine, acupuncture, health and life, Qigong, Tuina, imperial court medicine, culture and history, cosmetic treatment, education, science and technology and international exchange.


Verdeate.com, Colombia, Ideas Online
URL: http://www.verdeate.com/
Description: VERDEate.com enables individuals and organizations to create progressively new environmentally friendly habits in their consumption routines through our "Green challenges". These challenges motivate action in a massive and different way through the current web and social media technologies. Through our green challenges users understand the relation between their habits and Climate Change, gain control over their own CO2 emissions and we are able to address the climatic issue from the root. Here’s an example of a Green Challenge that any user (person or organization) can take: "don’t eat meat in the following 2 weeks". This produces a reduction of 5.95 Kg of CO2. Get all of our challenges here [Spanish] http://www.verdeate.com/verdeate/retos


BPN 1566

BPN 1565 World Summit Award Winners 2011 Category 1

"WSA - Turning the United Nations Targets on the Information Society regarding Local Content into Global Action towards the 2015 Review !"


Category 1: e-Government & Institutions

1014 e-Annual Report Estonia
1015 my cpf – CPF Service Transformation Singapore
1020 Empowering India India
1028 Tunisian Industry Portal Tunisia
1038 DigiD Netherlands


e-Annual Report, Estonia, Mr. Margus Mägi
URL:  http://www.egov-estonia.eu/xbrl
Description: In Estonia, entrepreneurs can submit annual reports in XBRL format via the e-reporting environment of the e-Business Registry Company Registration Portal. About 99% of more than 120,000 companies registered in Estonia use the new reporting environment. The created uniform e-reporting environment makes the entry and submission of data significantly more convenient for companies, as there is one specific place, form and way for submitting all required data. Furthermore, this way companies do not have to submit data to the public authorities twice, as they all get reporting data from the central system and this in turn means less red tape. The processing of business data became significantly quicker and easier, as the data can be processed immediately and are accessible to all interested parties both in the private and public sectors. XBRL format used for submitting annual reports is among the candidates for the W3C XML standard. The reporting feature corresponds to the WCAG AAA level.

Mycpf – CPF Service Transformation, Singapore, Producer: Central Provident Fund Board Singapore
URL: http://cpf.gov.sg
Description: My cpf has revolutionised service delivery model of public service in Singapore. The closed engagement with the citizens, and innovative use of Infocomm Technology (IT), has resulted in a suite of retirement planning e-services customised according to the citizens’ life events, and accessible to all citizens regardless of their IT savviness. This "Different Strokes for Different Folks" approach serves the different retirement planning and IT maturity of citizens. To educate and empower an aging but increasingly sophisticated population to plan early for a secure retirement, interactive retirement planning tools and content are presented from their perspective. My cpf also caters to citizens at opposite extremes of IT savviness. For the IT savvy citizens, they can use new mobile and media channels. For the less IT savvy citizens, creative use of biometric, wireless and conventional e-services, often together with human touch,
ensures that they too can "Bridge the Digital Divide".

Empowering India, India, Liberty Institute

URL: www.empoweringindia.org

Description: Empowering India seeks to empower citizens with easy access to information about political parties, candidates and electoral constituencies, at national and provincial levels. The basic premise is that information promotes transparency in the democratic process, and allows citizens to hold their political leaders more accountable. A more responsive political process encourages citizens to actively participate in the largest democratic exercise in the world. Consequently, the primary focus of Empowering India is the citizen, who can actually contribute to making democracy meaningful, not just in form, but in substance. Currently, the website has detailed election results since 1977. It has also captured the background information filed by thousands of candidates who have contested elections at national and provincial levels since 2003. The information is provided in an easy to compare manner at the appropriate constituency level and also available for various analytical purposes.

Tunisian Industry Portal, Tunisia, Agency for the Promotion of Industry and Innovation
URL: http://www.tunisieindustrie.nat.tn/
Description: The portal includes all the information you need to know about setting up a company, from the initial concept through strategic positioning studies for the various sectors, business plan and the role of support structures. It also gives a thorough review of financing possibilities, well as tax and financial incentives for new businesses, formalities for announcing your undertaking, and the legal steps for setting up a company and others services like (Overview of Tunisian industry- API products- A dynamic Industrial Data Base Enterprises Virtual Exhibition- on–line project declaration- Legal constitution of company on line – Enterprises incubators). 

DigiD, Netherlands, Logius
URL: http://www.digid.nl/
Description: DigiD has been developed for citizens and (representatives of) businesses as well as public administrations. All citizens with a citizen’s service number and a registration in a Dutch municipality can get a DigiD login code. All Dutch administrations offering e-government services can use DigiD. The only requirements are that an administration carries out a public task and is permitted by law to use the designated registration number (citizen’s service number).

BPN 1565

Non-commercial, non paid-announcement

Young People use Internet and Mobiles for Social Good

Do you use social media to do good for your community and for your own future? Do you use blogs and vlogs to raise critical questions? Do you create websites or mobile apps that fight discrimination, hunger or diseases? If yes, take your chance to show that you are at home in digital and social media and know how to bring about positive development, be it in your neighbourhood or in another country: Submit your new media project to the World Summit Youth Award (WSYA) and win the chance to meet engaged Youth from around the world and network with representatives of NGOs, governments and media!

The WSYA is an annual award and a network for young people, under 30 years of age, using the internet, mobile phones or other digital media to put the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) into action. The MDGs were set in 2000 by the UN to prompt member states and civil society to fight poverty, hunger and disease, inequalities, lack of education and environmental degradation.

Starting May, 2^nd, and until July, 15^th, you can submit your product to this international competition at www.youthaward.org in one of the six WSYA categories:

1.         Fight Poverty, Hunger and Disease !        4.         Create your Culture !

2.         Education for All !                                        5.         Go Green !

3.         Power 2 Women !                                         6.         Pursue Truth !

Three winners and two runners-up for each category will be selected by an international jury of young ICT experts. They will evaluate the projects in two rounds of online judging.

Being a WSYA Winner, your project will be elevated to a new level. All winners will be invited to the WSYA 2011 Winners’ Events in Skopje, Macedonia. This is where they will have the chance to present their projects on a world stage. Aside from the award ceremony, meetings, discussion rounds and workshops will provide the space to exchange ideas and make friends with engaged youth from all continents.

Representatives of governments, NGOs, media and other renowned experts in the field of ICT for Development will take part in these events and be available to the winners. This is a unique chance to boost your project by getting access to the WSYA network. The Youth Award network offers you the possibility to develop your project, refine your business plan or even find sponsors.

World Summit Youth Award winners 2010 at the New York StandUp meeting in New York in September 2010

 

About the World Summit Youth Award (WSYA)

The WSYA selects and promotes best practice in e-content and new media, demonstrates young people’s potential to create outstanding digital content and serves as a platform for people from all UN member states to work together in the efforts to reduce poverty and hunger, and to tackle ill-health, gender inequality, lack of education, lack of access to clean water and environmental degradation. The WSYA is organised as a follow up activity of the World Summit on Information Society (WSIS) and its action plan towards the year 2015. The Youth Award is organised by the World Summit Award Network for the fourth time after 2005, 2009 and 2010.

WSYA is supported by the UN Global Alliance for ICT & Development (UN GAID), the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Internet Society (ISOC), INTEL, the telfree Group, the Fundação para as Comunicações Móveis (FCM) and the Layla Fakhro Foundation.

Website: http://www.youthaward.org

Social media: http://friends.youthaward.org/ http://www.facebook.com/youthaward | http://twitter.com/#!/youthaward

BPN 1564 U-TOUR Mexico stopped in its tracks

Today I received the following sad announcement of my Mexican friend Rudy Laddaga:

"With great sadness and frustration we announce that after 2 international awards, 3 national awards, half million dollars and 3 years invested in this project, U-TOUR will turn off the switch due to the lack of interest, commitment and vision of the Mexican Government.

When a great application with great content like U-TOUR is killed by the bureaucracy of a country, there's a red light showing that the content gap and digital divide is a bigger enemy to fight for. Hopefully U-TOUR will serve as an example of how institutions and government that are wrongly managed can help to make wider the digital divide.

We must say that has been a painful yet enlighten journey that although never saw the light, it gave birth to new projects, jobs, companies and opportunities.

Our hearts are restless and our minds blurred by a roller-coaster of contradictory feelings. We don't want to take any action at this point. That's why we call to your bright minds to think of any way that we could send a message to the Mexican Government from out broad and help my country to understand the damage that they're doing by killing initiatives like this."

For the big project mentioned see http://www.americanegypt.com/blog/?p=629

For more information on the WSA award for this project: http://buziaulane.blogspot.com/search?q=youtour

BPN 1564

BPN 1563 More foreign languages online

While 90% of Internet surfers in the EU prefer to access websites in their own language, 55% at least occasionally use a language other than their own when online according to a pan-EU Eurobarometer survey released today. However, 44% of European Internet users feel they are missing interesting information because web pages are not in a language that they understand and only 18% buy products online in a foreign language. The results underline the need for investment in online translation tools so that EU Internet users are not excluded from finding information or products online because they lack the language skills.

Currently the European Commission manages 30 different research projects working at the interface of language and digital content, supported by EUR 67 million of EU funding and the new projects submitted this year will get an additional EUR 50 million. One of the objectives of the Digital Agenda for Europe is to ensure more accessibility to web content for everyone.

11 May 2011
Press release Europe"s Information Society

BPN 1563