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"18-20 March 2009, New York, UN Headquarters, Milan, European Parliament Office Infopoverty is a common platform aiming at fighting poverty through the innovative use of the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), able to provide broadband services such as telemedicine, e-learning, e-government, etc. to disadvantaged communities. Infopoverty is a Programme born in the ambit of the United Nations and coordinated by OCCAM, the Observatory for Cultural and Audiovisual Communication created by UNESCO in 1997. The Infopoverty Programme involves more than 100 international institutions that have taken part, in various forms, in the Infopoverty World Conference."

Can these cases be relevant to our class case study?

"beginning of the academic year warning them of social networking issues. Source: Individual schools * Share * Yahoo! Buzz * Add to Mixx * Facebook * Twitter * More o Fark o Digg o Reddit o MySpace o StumbleUpon o Propeller o LinkedIn * Subscribe * myYahoo * iGoogle * More o Netvibes o myAOL * By Kyle Oppenhuizen, USA TODAY More college athletic departments are developing or publicizing online social networking policies for student athletes, experts say. USA TODAY researched social networking policies for 27 schools in six major conferences, including the University of Iowa, which will implement a new monitoring policy Friday. Last fall, pictures emerged on Facebook of two 19-year old Hawkeye football players holding cash and liquor bottles. Five of these schools already have specific monitoring policies in effect - Auburn, Iowa State, Ohio State, Miami and North Carolina. Others warn athletes of the potential dangers of sites such as Facebook and MySpace through student-athlete handbook policies, meetings, coach's discussions and even letters. Some schools don't have a specific policy but allow coaches to monitor at their discretion, or take action if inappropriate material online is reported. Iowa's policy puts senior leaders in charge of monitoring profiles of athletes' on their team and bring problems to administrators, who then work with the athlete, associate athletic director Fred Mims said. Administrators will not get involved, Mims said, unless issues are brought to their attention, in which case they will talk to the athlete about addressing the issue and check out the profile, public or private. Ohio State, on the other hand, requires athletes to have a public profile or add coaches and administrators as friends (which gives access to the private profile). Fred Stutzman, a Ph.D. cand

After the January earthquake in Haiti, many people were left under extremely bad health conditions, with little or no health care being at their service. Haiti is a poor country, and with a natural disaster like that occurring, medical treatment for those that required it to the minimal extent was rare, let alone for the people that needed to be operated upon (such as surgical patients). The solution that some United States officials found after attempting to help Haiti with this issue was telehealth, better known as telemedicine; telemedicine was initially used for space astronauts back in the 1960s. In the situation with Haiti however (better known as "real-time"), it essentially involves a video-conference between a patient and a health professional and/or doctor in a different location (often times in hospitals or offices). Also during certain operations however, a doctor at the scene will be conferencing with a specialist at a different geographical location through the uses and benefits of telemedicine. The main IT system involved in this situation with telemedicine is satellite connections. A satellite communication system requires a satellite to function. Thus, a satellite is in high orbit over the Earth (stationary or geosynchronous, which means that the speed of the satellite is complementary to the speed of the rotaion of the Earth, thus it will always remain above the same spot). A satellite dish on Earth is then directed at the satellite, and all the signals (voice & data information, television signals, etc.) are transmitted on an uplink. The satellite itself (while still in orbit outer space) has a receiving antenna mechanism which is able to capture the incoming signals towards it and is able to diverge them through an amplifying network.

continued.... After this process, it then re-transmits the signals to the designated receivers (these signals are waves that go upon a certain frequency). Depending on what the frequencies are, when it comes to telemedicine, the frequencies are repudicated for an instance, and the digital data is then linked to set receivers. These data packets are routed through satellite, which makes the end (whether it is a phone call or the merging of voice and data transmission such as video-conferencing) come along. The satellite may be compared to a ground-based signal, in which the signal points upward and it is later reflected down back at the user/client. Therefore, with sufficient bandwidth, Haiti is running on high-speed Internet access. As a result of this IT system involved (as well as the use of telemedicine), social and ethical issues emerge. The use of such IT devices and systems such as satellite linkage and telemedicine through video-conferencing was not present in Haiti even before the earthquake. However, with the aid of other countries, more advanced form of health care came into view. This is a breakthrough from the digital divide, where Haiti was not able to provide proper medical care for its citizens. Another issue that comes into play (vexing from the digital divide) is globalization. Doctors on the seen are able to provide their patients with the best care by either consulting a specialist from a remote area far away, or the patients who require health care have video-conferences with doctors in order to discuss health related issues. This breaks down the barrier in which Haitians were facing with little or no medical support.

At George Mason University Saturday, at the Fourth International Conference on Writing Research, the Educational Testing Service presented evidence that a pilot test of automated grading of freshman writing placement tests at the New Jersey Institute of Technology showed that computer programs can be trusted with the job. The NJIT results represent the first "validity testing" - in which a series of tests are conducted to make sure that the scoring was accurate - that ETS has conducted of automated grading of college students' essays. Based on the positive results, ETS plans to sign up more colleges to grade placement tests in this way - and is already doing so."

The article speaks about the growth of telemedicine in the rural parts of India. It focuses on the advantages telemedicine provides the people living in the rural areas of India and how it is not only able to avoid serious conditions such as blindness but also how early detection can help them undergo an operation at a much cheaper rate. In this a local villager does not have to go to a hospital for diagnosis but is able to go to a local village and a doctor sitting in the hospital is able to treat via video conference which is conducted on a wi-fi network using webcams.