The conference started yesterday to much fanfare, including the Minister of Somesuch and a full marching band. They went on playing for close to 30 minutes, time that might have been better spent discussing library matters. I am not a Zambian so I don’t want to pretend to understand. Either way, I would wonder away occasionally from the solitary booth I was manning and wander outside for a second. The conference center is in the middle of the city, a city of over a million people. It looks rural, but it is not. The pictures I took were literally from the door of the conference center; I didn’t walk anywhere to take these photographs.

I am not sure if they were delegates or attendees, but they most definitely didn’t seem interested in Aluka. I tried to hand them a few brochures and they ate them. Quite boorish behavior, if you ask me.

By Michael Gallagher

My name is Michael Sean Gallagher. I am a Lecturer in Digital Education at the Centre for Research in Digital Education at the University of Edinburgh. I am Co-Founder and Director of Panoply Digital, a consultancy dedicated to ICT and mobile for development (M4D); we have worked with USAID, GSMA, UN Habitat, Cambridge University and more on education and development projects. I was a researcher on the Near Futures Teaching project, a project that explores how teaching at The University of Edinburgh unfold over the coming decades, as technology, social trends, patterns of mobility, new methods and new media continue to shift what it means to be at university. Previously, I was the Research Associate on the NERC, ESRC, and AHRC Global Challenges Research Fund sponsored GCRF Research for Emergency Aftershock Forecasting (REAR) project. I was an Assistant Professor at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies (한국외국어대학교) in Seoul, Korea. I have also completed a doctorate at University College London (formerly the independent Institute of Education, University of London) on mobile learning in the humanities in Korea.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.