Random Winners
Technology and Civilization in Ancient China is an e-learning and education website for the development and dissemination of ancient Chinese scientific techniques. China is the birthplace of silk and porcelain, where paper-making, printing, gunpowder and the compass were invented. The website contains a vast amount of information, with over two hundred thousand words of text, 1,500 images, and more than 100 movies divided into a Chinese-language section, an English-language section, and a discussion forum. The website is keenly devoted to disseminating scientific understanding, explaining the creative process behind scientific principles, and using modern multi-media methods to make ancient inventions come alive. Technology and Civilization in Ancient China uncovers their underlying scientific reasoning, displaying the value and wisdom of ancient Chinese technology, a centrepiece of our human heritage, to today's world.
Vaeggen (The Wall) is a massive but mobile interactive video installation on the streets of Copenhagen that allows citizens and visitors to explore in depth the cultural past, present, and future of the city together with its diverse ethnic and cultural communities. Open and inclusive in its philosophy and operating mode, Vaeggen also provides a vehicle for citizens to contribute their own material to the experience via its innovative street level and web user interfaces. Multi-touch and multi-user, the interface uses a strong graphical idiom understandable by all community groups and encourages them to not only explore the 14,000 cultural assets accumulated to date, but to also create new original contents that enrich, comment on or incorporate the heritage collection. The giant on-screen touch keyboards make it possible to email these assets around the world and insert them into their own social media networks. Based initially on the rich heritage collections of the Museum of Copenhagen, Vaeggen is also a public multimedia repository for new discoveries emerging from the large-scale archaeological excavations being undertaken in the old city centre for the next 7 years. In the first half year of operation, Vaeggen has attracted more than 400,000 users, who viewed more than 2 million cultural media assets, sent more than 60,000 digital postcards, and uploaded 2,500 new contributions of their own. The idea is already being taken up by other cities in Scandinavia and attracting interest around the globe.
Inspired by the Green Movement in Latin America and involving regional actors committed to the environment, VERDEate.com enables individuals and organizations to adopt progressive environmentally friendly new habits in consumption routines through "Green Challenges". These challenges motivate action in a significantly different way by using current web and social media technologies. With Green Challenges users understand the relation between their habits and climate change, gain control over their own CO²emissions and are able to address the climate issue from the perspective of root causes. Here is an example of a Green Challenge that any user, whether individual or organization, can take: “Don´t eat meat in the following 2 weeks”. This action produces a reduction of 5.95 Kg of CO². You can get all of the Green Challenges in Spanish here: http://www.verdeate.com/verdeate/retos Through thoughtful content and the creative use of social networking, VERDEate.com creates awareness by promoting specific actions which radically change daily habits, so as to reduce CO²emissions.
Erada is a specialized portal addressing the needs of people with disabilities (PWD) in Egypt. Information empowerment for PWD ensures their full participation and inclusion at all levels of society. Free, accessible, comprehensive, user-friendly, the Erada portal provides knowledge of concern to PWD in all categories of impairment: hearing, visual, physical, mental, as well as, autism and learning difficulties. Important topics such as definitions of disabilities, laws & rights, early intervention, genetic diseases etc. are covered. Erada also provides a web creation & technical support service to ensure sustainable knowledge for concerned communities. According to 2007 WHO statistics, approximately 11% of the Egyptian population, around 9.4 million, live with some kind of disability/impairment. Given a helping hand, they can get along independently and contribute meaningfully to society.
Find more Al Ahram online Interviews with Word Summit and World Summit Youth Award Winners
PORDATA is a free public service provided and promoted by the Francisco Manuel dos Santos Foundation and responds to the growing need for credible statistical information. The database includes thousands of official statistics from more than 50 bodies. PORDATA started with a database for Portugal and more recently augmented its contents with another for Europe (including the USA and Japan, whenever possible). Data are displayed in an innovative and easy way, covering many subjects of public interest (such as Population, Education, Health, Economy, Environment and Science & Technology), within a time frame of up to five decades. In a just few clicks, the information is displayed in both static and dynamic tables or graphs. Indicators from different subjects can be added and cross-referenced in the same table and a variety of statistical operations can also be applied. Complete and detailed metadata is also available. PORDATA keeps up with technology like iphone, facebook and twitter, making facts easily available as you need them in different situations.
Bitstrips for Schools is a groundbreaking educational website that enables any student to create, share and collaborate on amazing comics without having to draw, and gives teachers an entirely new teaching medium. Based on the educational premise of differentiated instruction for different learning styles and multiple intelligences, Bitstrips for Schools engages kids by making the process of writing more visual, interactive and fun. It introduces elements of identity, role-play and digital storytelling to schoolwork, letting students demonstrate their learning in a more personal and creative way. Since launching in September 2009, Bitstrips for Schools has been used by over 60,000 teachers and 600,000 students in every grade and virtually every subject. Over 20,000 kids log on each day and create 20,000 new comics! By attending to the different needs of students, rather than relying on one mode of communication or one mode of literacy, Bitstrips for Schools demonstrates that hands-on interactive learning engages students in ways that traditional instruction simply can't match.
EPI Life is the world's first mobile phone with integrated ECG (electrocardiogram) and health monitoring functions. It allows users to record their ECG simply by touching the sides of the phone with their fingers, eliminating the need for complicated electrodes or messy gels. EPI Life also allows the user to input key health parameters such as Blood Glucose, Blood Pressure and Cholesterol, and to transmit these data to their online Personal Health Folder, which can be accessed by the user via internet. ECGs are sent to EPI’s 24-hour Health Concierge from the device via GPRS, where qualified doctors and cardiac technicians compare the ECG against the user’s baseline ECG, and respond via SMS based on the results of the comparison. EPI Life, coupled with the 24-hour Health Concierge and online Personal Health Folder, offers remote health monitoring, allowing the end-user to have timely feedback on their heart condition anytime, anywhere. The ability to detect heart rhythm abnormalities at the point of symptom/discomfort mean that ‘warning signs’ that may result in a fatal cardiac event will never be left unnoticed. Timely feedback on the ECGs sent also means that users are able to make informed decisions on their next course of action, be it visiting the hospital emergency department or the nearest 24-hour clinic. The highly scalable technology allows medical coverage to be extended into remote areas which have little or no access to medical services, making it perfect for rural health programs. EPI Life has won countless national and international awards.
La Maja Desnuda is an ongoing website housing a multimedia archive for poetry, with biographies, images and especially, voices of poets narrating their work. The growing collection concentrates on Venezuela and Latin America, but includes numerous other international artists. La Maja Desnuda has a database with more than 900 poets recorded reading their poetry, among them contemporary poets as well known as Adonis (Lebanon), Fina Marruz Garcia (Cuba), Blanca Varela (Peru), Ledo Ivo (Brazil), Casimiro de Brito (Portugal), Nidaa Khoury (Lebanon), Ide Hintze (Austria) and Luisa Castro (Spain). The portal is complemented by a radio program on poetry, also called La Maja Desnuda, which has been on the air for more than 22 years and currently broadcasts in Venezuela. More than 1144 programs were produced during this time, presenting the most representative voices in world poetry, including: Walt Whitman, Tomas Tranströmer, Adonis, Pär Lagerkvist, Jorge Borges, César Vallejo, Miguel Hernandez, Sophia de Mello, T.S. Eliot and Pier Paolo Pasolini.
DigiDis a safe and personal identification tool for citizens and companies dealing with government websites. All citizens with a citizen’s service number registered in a Dutch municipality can get a DigiD login code. All Dutch offices offering e-government services can use DigiD provided they carry out a public task and are permitted by law to use the citizens’ service number. Thanks to DigiD, public institutions can be sure of the authenticity of your application, whether for a driving license or an overview of your state pension. DigiD is unique world-wide. It was chosen by the Dutch public as the best government website in 2010.
My cpf – CPF Service Transformation has revolutionised public service delivery in Singapore. Close engagement with citizens and the innovative use of Infocomm Technology (IT) has resulted in a suite of retirement planning e-services customised to suit citizens’ individual life events. Most importantly, the e-services are accessible to all citizens regardless of their IT savvy. The “different strokes for different folks” approach accommodates the retirement planning and IT ability of diverse citizens. To educate and empower an aging, but increasingly sophisticated, population to plan early for a secure retirement, interactive retirement planning tools and content are presented from the user perspective. My cpf – CPF Service Transformation also caters to citizens at opposite ends of the IT skills spectrum. IT advanced citizens can use new mobile and media channels. The less IT savvy citizen is also assured of being able to “bridge the digital divide” thanks to the creative use of biometric, wireless and conventional e-services, often combined with a human touch.
