Microfinance - Rural Internet Kiosk Killer App

What started as a conversation about how to
enable would be rural internet operators apply
to the internet for start-up funding has broadened
into a larger conversation of how to train internet
operators to help members of their community submit
loan applications to online loan services like kiva.org.

more edu 2.0 ...

- videoblog training
make training videos for the web using all available
low cost technologies - esp. screencasting , but also
ppt presentations, and talking into the camera. develop
a standard format for this, which includes lecture, screencast,
and question and answer from the audience (probably asynchronous
online)

- blogging & forums, students should spend a substantial
amount of time blogging and answering questions on forums.
this will build up a reputation for them individual as well as for
the organization generally

- open source, the core technologies we work with are open source
contributing to these projects helps to establish us as experts in the
field, it also does alot for building up development process discipline,
and networking with high level people in the industry.

- probono, rentacoder, elance ...
fairly early in people's training they should start doing probono projects
for non-profits, and start to take very low paying jobs off of elance and
rentacoder. this will get people experience working on real projects.

- full price paying contracts

Cyber cafe business potential untapped -Educational Centres

The Asianage (11/25/2005 10:43:55 PM)
Mumbai, Nov. 25: Cyber cafes in India have the potential to become the educational centres of our nation, said Mr R.N. Bhaskar, chairman, E-Convergence Technologies Ltd, at a seminar on Thursday on “cyber cafes future prospects and challenges.”

“While we have only 5,50,000 broadband connections, China has 30 million. Using cyber cafes for education can become big business with the advent of voice telephony and the increase in broadband connections in the nation,” he said.

With a major dearth of skilled teachers in the country and with only three per cent of the population having completed graduate study, cyber experts suggested the use of virtual education classes over broadband connections as an effective method in lowering the cost of education and in reaching out to rural villages. There are more than 1,05,000 cyber cafes in the country and cyber cafes were reported to be growing at 45 per cent annually.