ICTlogy

While reading about some articles about the US$ 100 computer developed by Nicholas Negroponte at MIT Media Lab, I also wonder about the shift “from hard to soft” that the (upcoming) Web 2.0 is making happen.

Simplifying at the maximum, there are four aspects to consider when bridging the digital divide, say, the four classes of digital divide:

1. Infrastructure: hardware, software and connectivity
2. Capacitation and training: capacitation on infrastructure installation and maintenance, digital literacy (technological literacy and informational literacy
3. Content and services: information, e-government, e-health, e-learning (not to be confused with capacitation), e-business, etc.
4. e-Law and Internet government: intellectual property rights, domain registration, free access to the Internet, etc.

It has always seemed that point (1) was the most important to lesser developed countries. While we should argue on this, we’ll keep this debate aside. So, Negroponte’s project is just a means to bridge the digital divide caused by access to hardware (and software if free software was to be included in his computer).

Wondering about Web 2.0, it seems to me that a shift from infrastructure to content and services is taking place. In other words, if some things that were done by infrastructure (i.e. filing photos needed a hard drive and a software to organize them) are now done by a web service (i.e. Flickr), some of the problems that Nicholas Negroponte is now facing will be shifted to the content and services digital divide class.

And this is a good or a bad thing?
It depends.

It is good, case one, as it looks like user hardware and software are less demanding on power and features, and we’ll go back to simple clients that just have to “show” what happens on the server side.

It is bad, case two, if we have not solved a correct access to these content and services for people on the wrong side of the digital divide because of language issues (digital divide class 3), because of digital illiteracy (digital divide class 2) or just because of censorship (digital divide class 4).

Case one will make Negroponte’s life (and all others) much easier.
Case two will make Negroponte’s effort a complete waste of time.

Next Monday (May 23rd) I’d be speaking in Sabadell introducing the presentation of the cooperation for development projects granted by the Fundació Sabadell Solidari.

I’ve been asked to talk about what cooperation for development can do to bridge the Digital Divide. As my speech will only be 20 minutes long, I’ll split it in four parts which are the main subjects one should focus when facing the digital divide. All in all, the force idea will be that bridging the digital divide is not (only) about connecting PCs to the network.

Thus, the four parts will be as follows:

• Infrasctructure and connectivity: You must have a PC connected to the Internet to bridge the digital divide… o maybe not. What about cellulars? handhelds?
• Capacitation and digital literacy: Enough with hardware and software? Know how to install it or customize it? Know how to use it?
• Uses and services: Got a PC and know how to run desktop applications but… what for? e-Health? e-Learning? e-Governance? information and communication?
• Law and rights: This is new but I think it’s getting more and more interesting. If all previous items are covered but copyright and intellectual property rights do not avoid the user to do anything at all… what for the whole ICT stuff? and… who should define how to rule the Internet, how to define it? is it a human right?

Only in 20 minutes, quite a challenge :)

This is an e-mail I sent to my students of the Digital literacy and exclusion course I’m giving virtually at the UOC. I found it interesting to share with my future myself.

First of all, a digression. Afterwards, an example. Last, a conclusion. (In between, patience: yours ;)

Digression

In marketing, a push strategy is the one a brand designs to push the costumer to buy something by affecting the distribution/distributor. i.e. “this week, 10% discount on lettuces” (discount on lettuces so that they are cheaper than a beef steak and thus people prefers lettuce)

A pull strategy is the one that pursues that the customer himself pulls the demand. i.e. “eating vegetables is good for your health” (thus the customer will buy lettuces instead of beef, because he feels the “need” of it)

Example

In digital literacy issues, we tend to foster “push” type actions, say, “let’s give digital tools to the people of the world so they get free” “let’s make anyone empower him with text processor skills” “let’s make anyone have a computer”. Two problems arise here:

• we can find someone hammering in a nail with the mouse of his computer… didn’t he need a hammer rather than a computer? The example is – of course – exaggerated but we’re maybe teaching someone Java or PHP programming when, actually, teaching him how to make a very simple web page with a very simple (WYSIWYG) web editor will be enough. And tempting the student to give up because Java was far too difficult for his purposes.
• The other problem is, simply, that we can give away something that will let the user half way from the start, half way from the goal. Typical example is content: we teach someone to browse the Internet but he does not find content in his mother language (the only one he can speak) that are of his interest. Or he cannot find them. He knows they are out there, but he cannot reach them. What, then, digital literacy for?

Conclusion

Dealing with senior digital literacy programs, whether “grandpa’s page” is interesting at all, whether it is good for an aged person – in risk of social exclusion – to get in touch with friends through e-mail, or if he or she will help grandson with his homework… they are all of them are ways of thinking totally “push”, say, we’re making it easy for senior people to use the tools, we put them at their reach, we make “discounts” on the personal “cost” of using them… and afterwards they will use it on whatever they want. Or not.

The proposal could – for senior communities, but also other communities in risk of digital exclusion – a point of view from the “pull” side, not in competence with the previous one, but complementing it, both good, but normally forgotten.

We’ll soon be able to ask for an appointment with the doctor only through his website. We’ll soon get our X-ray images only by e-mail. We’ll soon have information concerning public administration or elections only through digital media. Or we’ll only be able to follow a course by e-learning means. Etc.

It surely won’t be “only” most of them, but a good bunch of them will.

My question is… do we have to think in training grandpa to make is own website… or train him so he can keep on being a first class citizen, avoiding having his son to read the e-mail he gets in his grandson electronic address?

This semester I’m teaching Digital literacy and exclusion here at the Open University of Catalonia.

My colleague and responsible for the subject, professor Jordi Planella, told me he’d rather entitle the subject as Digital literacy and inclusion. Well, now that I’m fully into it, I guess the original title is better: in fact, it first deals with digital exclusion issues and how digital literacy projects must be designed to pursue an inclusion.

Besides this digression, the aim of the post was to share some questions that arose when correcting my students’ “homework”. They are invited to write three essays/analyses of a real digital literacy project. Last week they gave to me their first one.

Here come the questions or comments I made on them. Please consider them more rethorical/pedagogycal questions than real doubts (though there might be some ;). There are also some points the students made that I found also interesting to add here:

• In a project to provide technologycal capacitation for women, these women found (68%) it interesting to because they had learned this or that, but just because they had passed the “challenge”
• Why are there few digital literacy projects focused to immigrants? Them being illegal in the host country might be a good answer. If you don’t “exist”, I cannot adress any program to you. Same happens in the private sector?
• The government has the means to start ambitious programs and has a wider/macro point of view. The civil society has the knowledge of the “real reality”. Who should run these programs? Where’s the correct balance on the design? 50-50? 30-70? 70-30? Who should ask for a project to be run and who should accept it be run?
• In programas for young people with high risk of exclusion, where’s the priority: empower them to find (better) jobs (and maybe don’t succeed in the final goal) or just be successful in keeping them away from crime (by giving leisure alternatives) even if it is a very short run point of view?
• Foundations… do they act as public actors or private actors? civil society???
• The mere diffusion of the advantages and benefits of ICTs… is digital literacy? digital advocacy???
• There are digital literacy programs for elder people, there are digital literacy programs for women… why not digital literacy programs for elder women? Aren’t they in a more serious risk of exclusion as they belong, at the same time, to two groups in risk of digital exclusion?
• Some digital inclusion projects focus risk of digital exclusion in the labor market (skills updating and so) but… do they have in mind access to the labor market?

Why on-line learning in cooperation for development projects and organizations

The best way to understand how can online learning benefit nonprofits is looking at it from the point of view of the educational/training needs and the main reasons why these actions are not carried on: lack of time, lack of financial resources, geographical barriers or commuting difficulties to attend onsite training, impossibility to expatriate the trainer, etc.

Online learning allows, in most cases, overcome these barriers:

• Making possible training: when other models have proved non-viable, plenty of times virtuallity is the only option
• Training without boundaries of time or space (asynchrony and ubiquity). This also implies a huge increase in the accessibility of training (economies of scope), which might be of a special importance for rural communities or nonprofits with a big decentralized network of headquarters, offices and expatriates
• Possibility to adapt and customize the educational action, incorporating south-south collaborations, more interculturallity, sensitivity towards local socioeconomical reality, etc.
• Turn economies of scale possible, thus making training sustainable in the medium run or for a greater number of people, possibiliting the increase of these trainees with a lesser effort and easing the replicability of the educative action
• Enhance the feedback and virtuous circles of the process: through training for trainers, the once trainees then become trainers, positively feedbacking the process by bringing local knowledge. Feedback, at the end of the project, becomes a powerful tool for the empowerment of the target community

What for on-line learning in cooperation for development projects and organizations

Training of the cooperation for development agents

NGO’s – and nonprofits in general – consist of people on staff, volunteers, expatriates, punctual collaborators… All of the need some training and specific skills to carry on with their responsibilities.

Courses about cooperation for development, humanitarian law, volunteering management, cooperation projects management, accountancy, ofimatics, foreign languages, etc. can be imparted and followed through the Internet, thus easing the training receivers to follow the courses comfortably and also enabling the organization to include as trainers those who are the real experts in the subject – not the ones just available –, besides the concerns about communing or assisting onsite sessions.

Advocacy

There’re some organizations whose aim or mission is just let people know about or report human rights violations, unequal wealth distribution situations, etc. It is then a key for success to reach the major number of people. The same effort invested in a determinate action can be focused to a virtual action where the potential target will be the whole world – or, at least, the ones with connectivity to the network and understanding the language of the action. Indeed, the learning materials and the exchange of experiences could be reused for future training editions or by people interested in one specific area of interest.

Capacitation for development

Once the technology has reached developing and underdeveloped countries – and this is becoming more and more feasible thanks to huge infrastructure programs to foster ICTs – it is easier to let their less favored communities get reached by knowledge, a transmission of knowledge that, until now, was only possible through expensive travel and mobilization of experts or people to be trained.
Energy resources management, setting up of water systems, microcredit, self entrepreneurship, cooperativism, digital literacy, infectious diseases prophylaxis and treatment, and a long etcetera of possibilities that, sometimes, they require presence, but that in many others can just be solved virtually or be extremely eased by virtualizing a part of the whole training project.

The article at Goiaba Knowledge Bridge mainly deals with language matters when working internationally. Not that it is very original, but yet it arises some aspects you’d easily overlook.

Just three contributions (one is repeated ;)

• To the problem of communication: well, this is not new and we’d surely must communicate in some lingua franca, i.e. English, Spanish, etc. I know the problem is still there. Then: literacy in this language is a must, not for development, but for living (if I’m allowed to exagerate a bit ;)
• To the problem of translating and so: online volunteers is quite an option
• To the problem of social/tacit knowledge spread all over the world: online volunteers again, stuck to the community and with their knowledge at a click’s reach. If correctly designed, the online volunteers community will not have language matters
• To the problem of local content: well, the internet and, especially, intranets, wikis and blogs just ease this creation of local content. Digital literacy is, then, also a must. And technologies focused to content (and not technologies for technology) are the tool.