Five Windows into Africa: A CD-ROM by Patrick McNaughton, John H. Hanson, dele jegede, Ruth M. Stone and N. Brian Winchester. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press 2000. $39.95, 2 CD-ROM disks for Macintosh and Windows platforms.
Five Windows into Africa is a good interactive tool for introducing course material on the West African culture, religion, Islam, art, politics, history, urbanism, dance and theater by professors at Indiana University. Patrick McNaughton covers the "Kono Don" (Bird Dance) of the Mande people and explains its cultural and religious significance. Although there little actual dancing shown, the narrative is excellent. John H. Hanson skillfully narrates the diverse practices of Islam in the town of Wa in Ghana. He also covers the background and founding of Islam in the eighth century by Prophet Muhammad in Arabia. However, Hanson leaves out important historical and political connections of the Muslims in Ghana with the Muslims in the rest of Africa. That connection could have been made in a few sentences and by including statistics. Dele deje does a wonderful job about life in Nigeria as illustrated by Lagos. Wisely, deje simplifies his presentation by dividing the City of Lagos into ten windows according to ten important themes. These themes are spirituality or religion, art and theater, visual expressions, celebration, urbanization, living in Lagos, transportation, the city vibrates, trade and politics.
In contrast, Ruth M. Stone covers Christianity in Liberia by looking at a funeral service for Gberbea, one of the Liberian politicians who had been forced to flee into exile in the USA, by General Samuel Doe's military coup. Notably, N. Brian Winchester is the only scholar who discusses the African material outside West Africa. Winchester presents an insightful brief discussion of the political history of Zimbabwe from the perspective of the proceedings of the 1979 Lancaster House Constitutional Conference in London.
Five Windows into Africa consists of two CD-ROM disks for both Macintosh and Windows platforms. The recommended minimum technical specifications for Macintosh computers is Power Mac 7100/66, quad-speed CD-ROM drive; System 7.5; 640 x 480 screen resolution; 16-bit color display; 32 MB RAM; QuickTime 3.0 or higher, and about 40 MB free hard drive space. For computers running Windows, Intel Pentium 166 or higher is recommended. The system must have quad-speed CD-ROM drive; Windows 95, 98, or NT; 640x480 screen resolution, 16-bit color display; 32 MB RAM; QuickTime 3.0 or higher; Sound Blaster-compatible sound card; Direct X version 3.0 or higher; DirectDraw and DirectSounds drivers, and approximately 40 MB of free space on the hard drive. The CDs come with a readable handbook and guide on how to install them. My work study students and I read the instructions and still failed to install the CDs correctly. Finally, I called in the university's computer and information technician to come and install them.
The Five Windows into Africa CD requires proper hardware, specified software and correct installation, otherwise the CDs will not work. That was my painful discovery. Unlike video tapes, music CDs and DVDs, which are simply "insert and play," these CD-ROM disks are not very user-friendly or easy to use. They require the above specifications and prior proper installation before they play or become interactive, and ready for use by students or professor in the context of the classroom, or another place. As such, installation of the material on a computer the laboratory or another suitable sound-insulated work station in the library or dormitory may be ideal for students' convenience. Since there is sound, in addition to the text, the workstation must be soundproof and closed off from the rest of the library. In the classroom context, there is need for a large screen and computer-projector. Otherwise, the windows provided on the ordinary computer screen are too small to be seen by students in the class. In this respect, these CDs are limited in their portability and usefulness when compared to video tapes for VCRs, such as those containing the African material by Basil Davidson (African History) and Ali Mazurui's famous series, The Africans.
However, once the technical difficulties have been overcome, these interactive CDs can provide the professor and students the necessary freedom and ease to select what they want to see, hear or read on a given topic within the Five Windows into Africa. With exception of Winchester's material on Zimbabwe, the Five Windows into Africa are really five perspectives on West African life, religion, culture, history and urban life. Otherwise, there are no "windows" or "doors" opened into the regions of East Africa, South Africa, Central Africa and North Africa. Yet, these regions constitute most of Africa, and possess interesting cultures and major histories, such as those represented by Emperor Haile Selassie in Ethiopia, Idi Amin in Uganda, the Pan-Africanist Julius Nyerere in Tanzania, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela in South Africa. Swahili cultures, the rise and fall of apartheid could have provided additional interesting information and essential educational windows into Africa as a whole. The Hutu and Tutsi conflicts and genocide in Rwanda could have provided another window into the cultural anthropology and ethnic-based politics and nationalisms which dominate much of the African post-colonial history and politics.
Despite these serious deficiencies and lack of academic depth on the most of the topics discussed or presented, as an introductory device to African Studies, Five Windows into Africa is a very innovative and helpful teaching tool. The students who love to play games on their computers may find the interactive nature of this material an attractive feature that may invite them to study the material and in this process learn something about Africa. This is important if the students would not have read material presented the traditional scholarly format of "a boring, but detailed history textbook!"
Ultimately, despite some deficiencies and limitations, this pioneering project and product represent an excellent pedagogical innovative example and technological challenge to other scholars and university or college teachers to follow. The challenge is to come up with similar or better technology-based information, teaching tools and academic software products. This is an important academic and essential pedagogical task facing the academy today. It can be best accomplished by collaborative and interdisciplinary projects aimed at designing new, effective, comprehensive and interactive technological teaching tools that draw upon the expertise, research, scholarship and teaching experience of many scholars from many institutions. To this educational goal and pedagogical destiny, Five Windows into Africa both points and leads the way. It provides an essential "open window" into the future of the academy and the dawning "New Age" of technology-based classrooms and pedagogy.
Emmanuel K. Twesigye, Ohio Wesleyan University