Neil Butcher
Independent Researcher
The state of school-networking in Africa :
Baseline study
Neil
Butcher has been responsible for SAIDE's interventions in higher education,
technology-enhanced learning, and planning and administration of education.
He has worked extensively with the national Department of Education in the
areas of distance education and technology-enhanced learning, helping to
develop quality standards frameworks for the former and policy positions for
the latter.
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Neil Butcher... the moving
force behind many projects including one currently, an innovative
educational TV channel called Mindset. |
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An opinion:
Poor
online content available for use in Africa
More about Neil Butcher
Neil was the project manager and co-report
writer of SAIDE's contribution to the 1995/1996 audit of teacher education.
He also led a national study into the feasibility of establishing a
dedicated educational broadcasting service, and a Department of Education
project on open learning in General and Further Education. He recently
coordinated the development of ICT Curriculum Frameworks for the Gauteng
Department of Education, as well as IT policy positions for the education
Departments of KwaZulu-Natal and the Northern Cape. He is coordinating an
extensive Kellogg Foundation-funded project exploring the potential of using
distance education methods in rural South Africa, as well as helping to plan
a Rural Education Trust being launched by the Nelson Mandela Foundation in
2002. He is also now the education strategist for My Acre of Africa, a major
conservation fundraising initiative initiated by South African National
Parks and Johnnic.
Neil has worked with various institutions
of higher education - including the Universities of Cape Town, the Western
Cape, Port Elizabeth, and the Witwatersrand - assisting with institutional
transformation efforts that focus on harnessing the potential of distance
education methods and educational technology as effectively as possible.
These include major components of strategic, programme, and financial
planning. He has coordinated a range of planning exercises for the South
African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC). In addition, he has worked with a
large Internet Service Provider, M-Web, to support the implementation of a
pilot project that harnesses the power of Internet and satellite
technologies to support the professional development of teachers in South
Africa. He is currently working with the Liberty Foundation to support the
launch of a new dedicated television channel, Mindset.
Neil runs the Telematics for African
Development Consortium, an information network designed to keep people in
touch with key initiatives taking place with respect to use of the Internet
to support development initiatives. The Consortium, which has over 1250
participants, runs a free e-mail information distribution service focusing
on issues of South African interest. He sits on the Advisory Board of the
World Bank’s Global Distance Education Network, and coordinates the
development of a Southern African web site for this network (as well as a
higher education-focused knowledge base on sub-Saharan distance education
for UNESCO). He is also a member of the American Journal on Distance
Education’s editorial board. He recently participated in the generation of a
World Bank Strategy Paper on distance education and educational technology
use in Africa, as well as running a more specific consultancy focusing on
building distance education capacity in Nigeria’s higher education system.
In the field of IT applications, Neil has
designed databases for Educator Development Support programmes in South
Africa on behalf of the Department of Education’s Teacher Development
Directorate. He has also designed financial planning databases for use in
SAIDE evaluation and planning projects. He is currently managing the
development of databases and web interfaces for a web site for the Gauteng
Institute for Education Development, as well as connecting the teacher
centres in Gauteng to the provincial wide area network. He is or has been
involved in a range of database development projects for various
organizations, including the Independent Examinations Board (student
record-keeping systems), the Joint Education Trust (online questionnaires on
educational programmes and online courses), the Mvula Trust (web site), the
Primary Open Learning Pathways Trust (online curriculum management system),
the Department of Labour and ETDP SETA (online databases for tracking ETD
practitioner development), SABC Education and the Liberty Foundation
(knowledge management systems for a dedicated educational broadcasting
channel), the Commonwealth of Learning and SADC’s Human Resource Committee
(online courses on distance education policy-making), and the World Health
Organization and UNAIDS (online courses on communication).
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