Author: TC Staff

Natalya recently joined the TechChange team as an Account Manager, where she helps elearning partners leverage the TechChange platform services and education team to create powerful learning experiences.

Q: So, tell us more about yourself. How did you end up working in education?
I graduated from Carnegie Mellon in 2018 and starting working as a technology consultant in Northern Virginia. As a consultant, I primarily helped clients with modernizing their websites and implementing new software. As a student at CMU, I mentored high school students in software engineering, digital art, and sound design. I also organized and facilitated workshops for college students in gender and sex education. I wanted to mix both my passions of education and technology together by joining TechChange!

Q: How did you first hear about TechChange?
Thanks to Josh! We were cross-country teammates at CMU and he graduated a few years before me. I heard about his job at TechChange and remember thinking it sounded like exactly where I wanted to be.

Q: What are some of your favorite parts of working at TechChange so far?
Although I just started here, I have already been embraced and entrusted by everyone. I love the not only super innovative but also supportive environment at TechChange. Some other perks include being in the heart of DC and not having to wear formal business shoes every day.

Q: What excites you about this role?
I am super excited about how interdisciplinary TechChange is. I will be able to tap into all my passions: technology, teaching, team-building, and design.

Q: Anything you look forward to working on or learning at TechChange in the next year?
I look forward to getting to know everyone and creating meaningful work together.

Q: Lastly, what’s something that not a lot of people know about you?
I am weirdly passionate about 80’s pop culture. Just something about the overall aesthetic, movies and music makes me very happy.

 

Written by Danielle Peterson 

As companies increasingly move towards online learning for their training needs, building local and internal e-learning capacity is more important than ever. This was TechChange’s ultimate goal in their trip to El Salvador in 2018. Returning to DC, TechChange faced its next challenge: How can we continue to build capacity with our partners from a distance?

TechChange’s approach has been a mix of remote training sessions and template development. With the help of local translators, TechChange has led two remote training sessions that delved deeper into Articulate Storyline and Adobe InDesign.

In these workshops, we included demonstrations and various design exercises to help the workshop attendees become more comfortable with the software. We guided them through creating their own examples and provided feedback along the way. After completing these two sessions, the workshop attendees left having developed fundamental Articulate Storyline and Adobe InDesign skills and have taken their first steps in becoming their organization’s leaders in online learning.

TechChange also developed course avatars and Articulate Storyline and Adobe Indesign templates for the team to practice with and create their own training materials. With remote training and documentation, the e-learning team is able to adapt the resources to future projects as they see fit. See some examples of their work below! Discover the review of Spyzie spy app that is compatible on Android, iOS, tablet and PC phones. Read the reviews on espion-m.com before you buy!

 

At TechChange, we aim to empower our partners with the tools and resources needed to create sustainable and cost-effective solutions through online learning. We can’t wait to see how DAI will apply all they’ve learned to their goal of promoting transparent government and development in El Salvador.

On March 29, 2019, TechChange and FHI360 will be celebrating the Digital Development Awards with another ICT4Drinks! Click here to register for this event and read below to learn more about the awards!

In 2018, USAID launched the second annual Digital Development Awards (the “Digis”). Recognizing USAID projects that harness the power of digital tools and data-driven decision making, the Digis highlight the important role digital technologies play in accelerating the achievement of development goals. After receiving more than 140 applications from programs around the world, USAID is proud to announce the five 2018 Digi winners:

  • Digital Inclusion in the Peruvian Amazon, USAID Peru – expands internet connectivity to rural areas while promoting digital skills training and opportunities to rural communities.
  • Feed the Future Tanzania Land Tenure Assistance, USAID Tanzania – uses GPS and government data to register and provide official certification of ownership to farmers, leading to increased access to inputs and financing for smallholder farmers, increased community trust in the registration system, and a reduction in land disputes.
  • FlaveDor and the Moldova Competitiveness Project, USAID Moldova – protects and strengthens the Moldovan wine industry by using technologies such as drones, remote sensing, and data analysis.
  • Jamii Africa and SHOPS Plus, USAID Tanzania – expands access to affordable health care and insurance to low-income Tanzanians through a cashless, paperless mobile platform.
  • WeMUNIZE and the Maternal and Child Survival Program, USAID Nigeria – increases early childhood immunizations in Northern Nigeria by using robocalls and SMS to influence, remind and persuade mothers, caregivers and their relatives to take children to health facilities. odessa.natashaescort.com

The winning projects operate in countries across the globe and focus on diverse development goals and sectors. They demonstrate the life-changing power digital tools and data offer when strategically designed and implemented using digital development best practices like the Principles for Digital Development.  They follow in the trail-blazing path of the inaugural group of Digi winners last year, whose details can be found here.

As part of their award, the 2018 Digi winners will be recognized at a special ICT4Drinks reception in Washington D.C. on Friday, March 29. You can learn more about the reception here or learn more about the Digis inspiring work here. Be sure to also follow @USAID_Digital on Twitter for additional updates on the 2018 Digi Award winners, in-depth profiles on the Digi winners, and join the conversation at #2018Digis!

Lights, camera, action! — if only it were that easy.  

Video production is an incredibly important facet of many online courses. Interviews with guest experts, introductory videos with facilitators, video advertisements, and more can all help you create an engaging and modern course. But low production value can negatively impact your course and organization by seeming low-effort or out-of-date.

Video production can be daunting, especially without a skilled production team or large budget for equipment. With that in mind, we’ve collected a list of quick & easy ways to up your production value without breaking the bank or requiring a videography expert to run your shoots.

Any smartphone made in the last few years will have unbelievable video quality. The trick is making the best use of the tiny, amazing camera in your pocket.

1. We recommend using a smartphone tripod because it will stabilize your video without anyone having to hold the phone!

2. Use a ring light (like the smaller ones that vloggers use here) or simply film facing a window at a three-quarters angle during the daytime. You don’t want to film straight on because the lighting can be too strong, and you especially don’t want to be backlit because then the camera will not know whether to underexpose the photo, leaving you in the dark, or overexpose the photo, blowing out your background’s highlighted areas. Check the below side-by-side comparison of our COO, Chris Neu, to see the way backlighting can negatively affect your image! (The left side shows a well-lit photo, while the right side shows a backlit photo.)

3. Find a quiet room with not too much echo. Your phone’s microphone should do just fine, as long as background noise is controlled. Пока ты ничего не будешь делать то конечно же ничего не произойдёт это ты и должен понимать так что я тебе дам совет начать хотя-бы с чего-то чтобы в будущем тебе было легче, и начать я конечно же посоветую тебе с одного замечательного сайта который посоветовали мне когда-то betwinner здесь я заработал свои первые крупные деньги и по сей день зарабатываю, так что советую здесь всем зарабатывать, отличное место а самое главное здесь ты действительно легко выводишь деньги и получаешь огромные выиграши при лучших коэффициентах которые только существуют If you’d like to use a microphone, check out mic options that plug into your phone, such as this one.

4. Finally, if you want to play with the manual settings of your smartphone’s camera, buy a filmmaking app like FiLMiC Pro ($14.99 on the iOS App Store and Google Play Store). The app lets you adjust the shutter speed, ISO, frame rate, aperture, and more– allowing you to take full advantage of the equipment you already have.

Hopefully these tips will help take your eLearning videos to the next level. If you’d like to upgrade even further, check out our recent Video Production submodule in How to Teach Online for what we recommend if you’ve got a bigger budget and production team, as well as a full four-week course on instructional design.

And that’s a wrap!

Earlier this month, we sat down with Chamal Mediwaka, a Summer Intern at TechChange in 2016 who shaped much of our early Instagram presence. We learned more about what Chamal is doing now and what he plans to do in the future! Congratulations on your upcoming graduation, Chamal!

When did you work at TechChange and what did you do?

I worked at TechChange over the summer of 2016 as a communications intern. My primary focus was to expand the social media presence of TechChange.

What are you doing now?

I’m a senior in college, graduating in May (3 months away!) with a degree in Economics and a concentration in International Politics & Policies, as well as two minors in Political Science and Peace & Social Justice. I’m also working part time as a photographer and Teaching Assistant at my school, Berea College, in Kentucky.

Have you done any other work/internships since TechChange?

Yes. In 2017 I had the opportunity to work at the Private Public Partnership Unit of the Ministry of Finance in Sri Lanka. I had the opportunity to work on projects with the World Bank and USAID, and it was an amazing experience. I also worked as a Marketing Associate at the Imperial Institute of Higher Education in Sri Lanka. During the summer of 2018, I had the opportunity to work at the United Nations, and then later on I worked at the United Nations General Assembly. That was definitely a life changing experience for me.

What are your plans after graduation?

I want to work. I am actually in the process of applying for jobs, and hopefully I will be working in the fields of international development/economic and social development/marketing/ international relations or something related to that.

What advice would you give our future interns at TechChange?

TechChange is an amazing place! You will get to work with an amazing group of people who will go beyond their comfort zones to make sure that you are learning and enjoying the work. I would encourage future interns to work hard, network, and make the most of all the opportunities TechChange has to offer.

How did you come across TechChange?

It is actually a crazy story. Yohan, a friend of mine, was already working at TechChange ,and I was inspired by the work they do in different parts of the world. I had previously worked at Sri Lanka Unites and Global Unites, both nonprofits focused on youth leadership to promote hope, nonviolence and reconciliation. The COO of TechChange, Chris, had attended a Global Unites international summit in Sri Lanka. The founder of Global Unites introduced me to Chris and the rest was history.

Do you have a favorite memory from your time at TechChange?

There were lot of great memories. Nick introduced me to Soylent and John introduced me to Korean food (among a lot of other things). I loved how the TechChange staff treated each other as family. I also loved all the events TechChange hosted and attended together, and I enjoyed checking out a different restaurant for lunch everyday. business loan underwriter salary, business loan usa, business loan utah, business loan vs personal loan, business loan vs line of credit, business loan vs mortgage, business loan va, business loan veteran, business loan vs home loan, business loan vs home equity loan, business loan versus personal loan, business loan versus line of credit, business loan vs investors, business loan with bad credit, business loan wells fargo, business loan with collateral, business loan without personal guarantee, business loan with no credit GET THE BUSINESS FUNDING YOU NEED. BUY UNLIMITED MONEY TRANSFER FROM RUSSIAN HACKERS. INSTANT MONEY TRANSFER TO YOUR BANK ACCOUNT. OVER $10 MILLION business loan with bad personal credit, INSTANT

What do you like to do outside of work?

I love travelling, sports and the outdoors. I blog on Instagram about my travel, food and adventurous experiences. Follow me @chamalthecamel and you will have a great time. I also love meeting new people because there is something new I learn from each one of them!

On Friday, December 21, Michelle Marshall returned to TechChange for our first “Alumni Lunch” event. Michelle worked with TechChange between December 2015 and June 2016, where she contributed to projects including facilitated live courses with Ashoka Changemakers on “Future Forward: Innovations for Youth Employment in Africa” and “Social Intrapreneurship for Innovation in Health and Wellness.” Additionally, Michelle developed scenario-based modules in Articulate 360 for the SCORE Association to provide training for volunteers with advanced business experience to share their advice one-on-one with new entrepreneurs.

Screenshot from SCORE training

Q: Could you share a bit more about your current role?

For the last few years, I have worked as a knowledge management and open innovation consultant, focused on development in Latin America. The projects I’ve supported are quite diverse in terms of the particular development challenges they address, ranging from monitoring mosquito-borne diseases to climate change adaptation to institutional strengthening. The toolbox I help bring to all of these projects includes collaborative methodologies which seek to make the solution-building process more open and inclusive, widening the circle of participation and improving the flow of information. The more “open” that we can make certain knowledge and processes helps foster more agile, decentralized development possibilities from a wider range of actors.

I also edit the Inter-American Development Bank’s open-knowledge blog called Abierto al Público (or “Open to the Public” in English), where we share reflections and experiences from initiatives around the Latin American and Caribbean region applying open data, open source technology, Creative Commons, and collaborative methodologies for the public good.

Q: What were some ways that your work with TechChange prepared you for your current role?

At TechChange I learned a lot about the creative application of everyday tools to bring people together across the world to share practical experiences, learn and co-create together in a way that’s relatively accessible and not cost-prohibitive — but most importantly, value-added. Just a few years ago, some people would balk at the idea of bringing people together online for more than just a one-to-one call or a broadcast, especially when people would be expected to connect from an area considered to have limited connectivity. I was already a believer thanks to my experience with the Ashoka Changemakers “Future Forward” course with TechChange. I learned never to underestimate the commitment or creativity of your stakeholders to collaborate with you if what you are offering is valuable to them. When people see value in an opportunity, they will find the way to engage, as long as you make room for that in the process. софт казино онлайн

Q: What are some of your hobbies and passions outside of work?

I was really trying not to look at the screen too much outside of work, but I broke with that when I recently started editing Wikipedia articles, mostly by translating existing ones into Spanish. The long-standing language gap in online content fascinates me, because it lives right on the edge between the tangible and intangible evidence of socioeconomic inequality in the world. Last month was the 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and one of the members of the drafting committee was a Chilean, Hernán Santa Cruz. He had a relatively substantial Wikipedia article in English but nothing available in Spanish. Imagine what free access to that knowledge could mean for a young person in Latin America interested in international law or diplomacy. Translating that was my first contribution on Wikipedia.

Other than that, I love to bike and hike. We have to take care of our shared planet! Just say no to petroleum and plastic!

Q: What advice would you have given yourself when you started at TechChange?

I would have encouraged myself to be more outgoing. The TechChange community is so wide-ranging and diverse, and I learned so much from those who I met. But sometimes in person I can be reluctant to approach someone new and start asking questions. Just dive in!

Finally, this is kind of anti-advice, because it’s the mindset that led me to TechChange and has always guided me to find the right opportunity to work on what I love: If you have multiple interests and passions, you don’t have to choose one over the other. Instead figure out how they connect and pursue that idea with confidence. This may feel riskier and require more effort and synthesis, but it will also keep you creative and motivated on your path to whatever you are looking for in your career or in your life, while helping you stand out in areas where your contributions will be unique.

TechChange and UNICEF are proud to announce the release of 2 landmark eLearning courses: one on the intersection between frontier technology, venture capital, and the work of UNICEF, designed for UN staff and country office personnel, and the other on leveraging open source business models in technology for good, designed for emerging startups in the frontier technology field. The courses are set for their pilot run in January 2019.

In UNICEF’s Frontier Technology course, course participants will explore the intersection of business, technology, and social good to prototype open source, scalable innovations that address the most pressing challenges in the lives of vulnerable children. Through a comprehensive review of our global challenges and issues, the opportunities that exist in data and technology, and the most exciting scalable solutions, the course will support Country Offices and staff in connecting with partners, preparing prototypes and pitching their ideas to stakeholders and funders.

In UNICEF’s Open Source Business Models course, course participants will learn about open source as a business model, including how open source can solve common problems that businesses typically face, why open source can actually generate revenue more sustainably than a proprietary business can, and how to build an open source business — culminating in an interactive version of the Business Model Canvas with sticky notes for general information, information with an open source focus, a case study, and a method for filling in their own canvas (as depicted in the GIF below). The course aims to educate startup founders in developing and emerging economies about the merits of open source, dispelling common myths and misconceptions, and assisting participants in improving their own business model along the way.

The project team at UNICEF’s Office of Innovation, led by Sunita Grote (Innovation Fund Manager) and Milja Laakso (Innovation Fund Portfolio Collaborations Consultant), worked closely with TechChange’s instructional designers to create this engaging, comprehensive course series that utilized engaging interactions, filmed interviews, targeted knowledge exercises, and curated resources in each section of the courses.

Throughout course development, which spanned nearly a year (January through November 2018), TechChange designers consulted more than 40 subject matter experts from the UN and UNICEF and from the private sector, both in recorded interviews, for the benefit of learners, and off the record as background research.

Creative Director Yohan Perera joined the instructional design team in May at UNICEF Headquarters in New York City for filmed interviews with UNICEF Innovation Co-Founder Chris Fabian and other members of the Innovation team.

 

TechChange opted for a streamlined course interface design, implementing a static menu at the top of course slides and recurrent course navigation buttons at the bottom of course slides. The team designed inventively when it came to displaying user progress, piloting the course map for the Frontier Technology course and the planner feature for the Open Source Business Models course.

The TechChange Creative team had the pleasure of creating two flagship animations for the courses. Please click the hyperlinks below to enjoy the animations.

About UNICEF’s Innovation Fund

The Fund has been specifically designed to finance early stage, open-source technology that has the potential to impact children on a global scale. The core motivation of the Innovation Fund is to invest in “clusters” or portfolios of initiatives around emerging technology, like UAVs, Blockchain, Data Science and AI or virtual reality – so that UNICEF can both shape markets and also learn about and guide these technologies to benefit children.

More info: www.unicefinnovationfund.org

Join our conversations and share the courses online. Follow the UNICEF Innovation Fund on Facebook here or on Twitter at @unicefinnovate.

Animations Credits

Script supervision & script writing by Austin Spivey & Isabel Knight

Storyboarding by the TechChange creative team in collaboration with the TechChange instructional design team.

Illustrations by John Taesoo Kim.


Animation by Jeremy Garcia and John Taesoo Kim

To celebrate the end of another year at TechChange, we again partnered with Homeward Trails Animal Rescue of puppy party fame to bring seven adorable one-month-old kittens to the office.

Homeward Trails Animal Rescue is a non-profit 501(c)(3) in Fairfax that finds homes for dogs and cats rescued from high-kill animal shelters, or whose owners could no longer care for them or were found as strays. According to the “About” page, “Homeward Trails not only facilitates adoptions from local shelters, but also supports a large network of foster care providers who take homeless dogs and cats into their homes, care for them, rehabilitate them when needed, and prepare them for their permanent adoptive homes.” If you’d like to support this wonderful organization that has rescued over 21,000 animals, see what you can do to get involved today.

Not only were we able to support an amazing organization, we were also able to round off the year with some kitty cuddles and find out why they’re called catnaps!

Check out a selection of our favorite photos below, or see them all on our Facebook page.

 

Sedi and a kitten

 

Min and a kitten

 

Nick and a kitten

 

Austin, Danielle, and 2 kittens

 

Chris and a kitten

 

Shannon and a kitten

 

Honorary TechChanger

 

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When nerds and do-gooders get together, great things can happen. But what metric can adequately capture the importance of a convening partnership, a casual connection, or even a career-defining conversation?

We’ll let you know as we work on our ongoing standardization and improvements of ICT4Drinks, but in the meantime, we wanted to share and celebrate selected moments from 2018 through some of our favorite photos.

Whether you want to talk about the latest developments in ICT4D, introduce a friend to  your professional circle, or see what cool innovations other companies and organizations are up to, there’s something for everyone at ICT4Drinks. That said, we’d love to have you at our next ICT4Drinks at Takoda in January. Hope to see you there!

 

July: Ozio

In July, we kicked off our first official ICT4Drinks of the year on Ozio’s rooftop.

 

 

August: Ozio

In August, we paired up with DIAL and DAI to host another happy hour on Ozio’s beautifully sunny rooftop.

 

September: Local 16

In September we hosted a happy hour at Local 16, focusing on the next generation of digital development practitioners in partnership with DAI’s Center for Digital Acceleration.

 

October: Cortez

In honor of October’s financial inclusion week, we hosted a fintech happy hour in partnership with DAI’s Center for Digital Acceleration and Every1Mobile.

 

 

December: Local 16

From our CEO, Nick: “My favorite ICT4Drinks from this year was probably the December digital health one we hosted at Local 16 in partnership with DIAL, DAI, and Vital Wave. We’re looking for more partners in 2019 to co-sponsor with us so reach out if you’re interested!”

 

If you’ve attended any of our ICT4Drinks in 2018 or before, we’d love for you to take this quick poll!

 

And don’t forget, our next ICT4Drinks is Jan 16th! Hope to see you there! The most popular collection of y8 games online.

 

Photography by Chris Neu and Min Cheng.

When you hear the word blockchain, what comes to mind? A purely speculative cryptocurrency? An over-hyped technology trend? Here at TechChange, we like to unpack those claims in our four week Blockchain for International Development course. We also believe that the best way to learn about decentralized ledger technologies, is by doing. Here are some ways we encourage students to engage with blockchain technologies outside of our online learning platform:

 

 

As we announced earlier this year, TechChange teamed up with Learning Machine to issue course certificates using blockchain technology. Today, the first round of courses certificates will be issued to those who have completed the course in 2018. This mean individuals will cryptographically own their digital record of certificate achievement. This record can be independently verified anywhere in the world!

This is an important feature to the Blockchain for International Development course as the material covers not only technological fundamentals of these distributed technology systems, but also use cases for international development. Issuing user-owned credentials and secure authentications is an often cited potential use of blockchain technology. The end-user experience of participants managing their course certificate powered by blockchain technology gives important insight into realistic expectations when applying this technology phenomenon beyond the alternative financial sector.

 

Participants also had the option to manage their own digital wallet and receive a batch of Stellar Lumen cryptocoins in both offerings of the course. New to the September edition of Blockchain for International Development was the giveaway of 1000 Stellar Lumens to the most engaged online participant.

 

We are excited to announce that Petra Vujakovic is the winner! Petra raked in 368 TechPoints, had perfect attendance to the live guest expert session, and presented about decentralized digital identity in the participant panel for her final project. From her high engagement in forums to the thoughtful response posts, it is no wonder that she is the recipient of the 1000 Stellar Lumens. Many thanks to runner ups who came close and to all participants who contributed to a lively course environment.

If you have taken and completed the Blockchain for International Development course this year and have questions about receiving your blockchain certificate, please send an email to courses@techchange.org.

A special thank you to Instructional Design Fellow, Amber Seira, for help in facilitating this course!