« For the Woman With the Green Eyes and the Children of Mahabalipuram | Main | Tsunami News Digest Now Available, Seeks New Feeds »
December 29, 2004
DDN, LearningTimes Launch Online Community for Tsunami Relief Efforts
In response to this week's devastating tsunami in the Indian Ocean, I've created an online community workspace on disaster relief and emergency preparedness.
This virtual community can be used for posting online resources, documents, news, and articles about tsunami relief efforts. Users also may take advantage of the site's Web bulletin board and post their own blog entries. For the time being the space will focus on tsunami-related relief efforts; in the long haul we hope the space can be used for discussing the role of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in emergency preparedness and disaster relief.
Additionally, LearningTimes has generously donated an e-conference tool to aid coordination and discussion of local relief efforts. This means users with a microphone and speakers connected to their computer will be able to talk to each other over the Internet, or host their own virtual meetings and webcasts. I'm hoping NGOs will use the e-conference tool to help coordinate their efforts, as well as for tsunami survivors to share their stories.
To introduce users to the website and the e-conferencing tool, we will host a live webcast twice on Thursday, December 30. The first webcast will take place at 7am ET (12:00 GMT) to accomodate users in Asia and Europe, while the second webcast will occur at 12pm ET (17:00 GMT) to accomodate North American participants. Both webcasts will be conducted in English, while recordings will be archived for future online listening and podcasting.
To participate in the live webcast, please visit our e-conferencing tool. Next, type in your name; the e-conferencing tool will then be downloaded to your computer and log you into the webcast. We recommend you do this at least 15 minutes prior to joining the virtual tour. You may also log on now if you would like to experiment with the e-conferencing tool, as it is being made available 24 hours a day.
This new DDN community is free and open to the public, but participants must first join the Digital Divide Network website in order to post content or chat on the bulletin board. If you're not already a member of DDN, please create an account.
Once you're registered and logged in to the website, please visit the community's homepage and click on the button in the center column that says "Join this community." This will give you posting privileges and allow you to participate in the bulletin board discussions.
We are just beginning to post content to the site, so by the time you read this email there should be several tsunami-related resources published already. Meanwhile, you are invited to join DDN, log in and post your own resources and content to share with colleagues around the world. -andy
Posted by acarvin at December 29, 2004 10:13 PM
Listen to a computer-generated podcast of this article
