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National Commissions for UNESCO
MINEDAF
activities with National Commissions
Introductory course on using the Internet
The plan by the MINEDAF Secretariat to organize Introductory courses on using the Internet for Secretary-Generals of National Commissions for UNESCO of African Member States, as part of the agreed Follow-up to MINEDAF VII, had been under consideration for sometime but delayed by the lack of funding resources. An opportunity to initiate some actions arose following the allocation of some funds by the UNESCO Sector of Education
late last year. Initially, such introductory courses on using the Internet had been planned to target SADC Member States (because of South
Africa's and a number of other Member States wish to be involved in such activities). However, following consultations, Secretary-Generals of many African Member States expressed a need for a training programme encompassing many, if not all interested African Member States.
The opportunity to hold the first workshop in Pretoria on 22-24 June 2000 was received with great enthusiasm by many African National Commissions. The training programme was organized on the indicated dates for reasons of economy ---
in order to take advantage of the expected presence in the region of a large number of Secretary-Generals from the African Member States (for their bi-annual consultation, this year held in Windhoek, Namibia on 26-30 June 2000).
The programme in Pretoria was organized in collaboration with the South African National Commission for UNESCO
and the University of Pretoria School of Information Technology. Participants from some 12 Member States attended
(Botswana, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mauritius,
Nigeria, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda and
Zambia). Many more had been expected to attend but had to cancel out at the last minute because of problems obtaining immigration Visas. For logistical reasons, it was decided that the first round of these proposed training workshops on
using the Internet should involve participants from English-speaking Member States only.
The MINEDAF Secretariat hopes to organize two similar introductory courses for Secretary-Generals of the French-speaking and Portuguese-speaking African Member States, in collaboration with the
UNESCO Dakar Office.
The workshop involved eight modules, each 90 minutes long, excluding the Opening and Concluding Sessions (session on the
Way Forward). Specific elements covered included:
- Internet and Browsers
- a brief description of the Internet, its origin and how to access
it
- a detailed description of the functions and features of the WWW, as well as evaluation of Web
resources
- helper applications
- specialty sites (e.g., those of the U.N., UNESCO, MINEDAF, Governmental, Educational institutions, NGOs,
etc.)
- introduction to Web retrieval techniques
- subject directories and portals
- search engines and meta-search engines
- specialty searching
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