By Ismael Peña-López (@ictlogist), 10 September 2010
Main categories: ICT4D, Meetings
Other tags: aids, hiv, ipid2010, marcus_duveskog, mathias_hatakka
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Using Affordable Technology for Digital Storytelling in Rural Africa
Marcus Duveskog
A workshop was developed to educate on HIV and AIDS issues. The workshop was designed as a game, combining storytelling with HCG gaming concepts. The workshop used a platform that was collectively designed on a participatory design basis, and was used with XO-1 laptops.
The course run on 10 sessions in several weeks, with 11-15 y.o. children in Tanzania, and its theme was dreams, figuring out ambitions and interests of children, and figuring out the treats in reaching goals/dreams. Children were asked to come up with strategies to overcome potential life challenges.
Some of the threats were death of parents, keeping the health, not being able to get school fees, bad performance at school, becoming a prostitute, etc.
The workshop consisted in sharing the dream, sharing the challenges, one of them related to HIV and friendship and another one related to choosing a life partner/marriage.
The “HIV” challenge was about how will being infected with HIV affect reaching one’s goals, interaction with their peers (family, friends, etc.), having a life partner/marriage, etc.
More information about the workshop can be found at http://www.cs.joensuu.fi/games/ukombozi/.
The workshop succeeded in enabling students to use the technology in creative and expressive ways. It was good that everything started from the student, and that the whole story came from them, as the conclusions on HIV/AIDS became more legitimate as they came from their peers.
Discussion
Vanessa Frías-Martinez: can the workshop scale? can other schools implement it? A: The workshop is being modellized (publication forthcoming) and should provide some guidelines on how to reuse it, thought the project the workshop is part of does not plan to repeat it anywhere else.
Ugo Vallauri: did the workshop depend heavily to the technological solution chosen? A: It does not seem that the kids felt they were tied to a specific solution, but used it in a very natural way.
Development, Capabilities and Technology – an Evaluative Framework
Mathias Hatakka
What is the development potential of Open Content and Internet Resources? But… what is development? And how can we measure it?
There are several evaluation frameworks that aim at measuring development, but they usually are complex and hard to be put into practice. Besides, many frameworks are more about enabling development rather than development itself: enabling of freedoms, removal of barriers to such freedoms, etc. That is, indeed, the core of Amartya Sen‘s Capability Approach.
Some of the problems of the Capability Approach Framework is that it does not take into account the role of technology, the importance of context, and the difference amongst potential functionings and achieved functionings. Enabling something does not mean that people actually choose to do something.
A proposed framework would link initial intervention with a capability set of potential functionings (intended and unintended) that would open up a choice. This choice would determine actual achieved functionings restricted by some conversion factors (personal, social, environmental). Indeed, Conversion Factors both affect the capability set and the achieved functionings.
The framework is being tested in the Bangladesh Virtual Classroom, where e-learning is provided through mobile phones. And the test has shown that the technological part of the project works perfectly, and that the main problems come from the Conversion Factors.
As concluding remarks, it can be said that the framework can be used for planning and evaluation of projects; it definitely shows the importance of context, and that bottom-up is needed. The problem with the framework is that it is very difficult to capture capabilities and make them part of the scheme.
Discussion
Christopher Foster: how can the different factors be integrated, how can the individualist approach turn into a collective approach and vice-versa? A: It is not solved: so far, the framework looks very much into the context and some individualities scape at its scope.
Fifth Annual ICT4D Postgraduate Symposium (2010)
By Ismael Peña-López (@ictlogist), 12 September 2009
Main categories: e-Government, e-Administration, Politics, Education & e-Learning, ICT4D, Meetings
Other tags: annika_andersson, ict4d_symposium_2009, iginio_gagliardone, ipid09, mathias_hatakka, michelle_afifa_harris, oer
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Notes from the Fourth IPID ICT4D Postgraduate Symposium 2009, held in the Royal Holloway University of London, Egham, United Kingdom, on September 11-12th, 2009. More notes on this event: ict4d_symposium_2009.
The Social Construction of ICT as a Strategy for Development in Jamaica
Michelle “afifa” Harris
Development challenges in Jamaica: high crime rate, unemployment, inadequate resources, etc.
According to the e-Readiness Report 2006, Jamaica has inadequate ICT infrastructure, limited contribution of ICT to GDP, unreliable electricity, limited Internet connectivity, low computer ownership, low innovation in the area of ICTs.
Why ICT policies, though? Are particula perspective shaping ICT policy? Are particular interpretations of realities shaping policy? What are these interpretations of the reality?
Research questions
- How have decision makers interpreted ICT as a developemnt strategy for Jamaica?
- How do these interpretations construct the need for using ICT as a development strategy? What are the discourses associated with this construction?
The national ICT strategies are being analysed to see what the backing discourses are, and which the underlying assumptions and conceptions around ICTs that policy-makers used in their discourses. The research, in the end, wants to provide a critical analysis on the process of policy creation and therefore the ideas and perceptions behind the adoption of National Strategies, deepening the discussion on the role of discourse in agenda setting.
Initial findings on the meanings and interpretations of ICT4D-Thematic areas:
- Us the power of communication to make us better
- About empowering people
- About enabling people
- Using the IT sector to generate development
But this was placed in the context of what “modern” development required particularly with definitions which seem to underscore the importance of creating a “knowledge based economy”.
Initial findings on the reasons for ICT as a tool for development
- Ability to drive development
- Necessary Government action
- Responding to Global developments
Initial findings on the themes and areas of Discourse
- Education and e-Learning Jamaica projects
- Agriculture-ABIS system for Farmers
- Community Development-Community Access Points
Open Educational Resources for Development. Let’s be realistic about its potential!
Annika Andersson & Mathias Hatakka
Do open educational resources (OER) have any impact in education and/or developing countries? There’s a good amount of literature that state one or the other one or both, so this research pursues testing it in a real environment.
The problem is how to measure the impact of OER on development, as development itself is a complex concept. So, the research will look at its use, how are they looked at and what’s the impact on development.
ICTs regarding to use: OER are seen as a commodity, supporting development activities, as a driver of economy (increases productivity, efficiency), and directed at specific activities.
ICTs views: OER as a tool (OER as seen as a way to build your own resources), computational, ensemble, proxy (OER as an enabler for empowerment).
ICTs impact: OER as a replacement, the increase of a phenomenon, OER as a transformation.
Issues/hypotheses:
- Tertiary effects are hard to measure?
- OERs do not contribute to development?
- OERs are not designed in a way that they can contribute to development?
- OERs are not used enough to have an effect?
Re-shaping ICTs for nation building: the Ethiopian case
Iginio Gagliardone
In Ethiopia there were some projects that costed a total amount of 300,000,000$, coming from the government treasury (not the donor agencies), projects that you wouldn’t find in the richest countries of the World. How did they came to think of, design and implement such projects? What was the mindset behind them? How was the political discourse embedded in technology?
In the late nineties, the minority from Tigray came to power and are since building a federalist while centralized state. There’s thus a need to decentralize to suport their ideology but also to exert a central control to make sure they can stay in power. Here is where ICTs come to the rescue.
Videoconferencing technologies for political administration, or broacasted lectures for education, are indeed being used to disseminate discourses about the nation at the grassroots level and among those in power. On the other hand, they reinforce the presence of the government around the nation (just for the record, all the web servers and their related services are hosted at the president’s seat).
This is a clear case where technology is not created to empower but to control.
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Fourth Annual ICT4D Postgraduate Symposium (2009)
