Hi, I'm working on Digital Divide related topics.
I have spent one year (Oct 2003-Oct 2004) in Sri Lanka, as volunteer coordinator in the startup of an IT Training Center (ITTC). The ITTC is managed by a local ngo and we started it from scratch, involving more than 500 students. We built the ITTC starting with 8 desktops and after seven months we had 50 laptops (Pentium 1), a Local Area Network (LAN) with one server (Pentium 2), an Internet connection shared on the LAN, a Database and an internal web site with administration, teaching and learning tools (such as online resources, online tests, etc.). One of the main goals was the training of local people as future teachers, also able to run the school after the volunteers. I was the only foreigner until May and after new volunteers came from Japan, in May 2005, and from Spain, in August 2005, and again from Japain in Oct 2005. So far, the ITTC has had a very strong impact on the local community, allowing many students (almost none of them had touched a computer before) to have both basic literacy and a deeper touch in IT. Of course we also had to face some questions on the relationships with local attitude, surely not so "frenetic" as in western countries (or "developed" world); the real impact was on people, not about physical resources availability. To be short, the question is how to deal with "fast" technology and "slow" attitude. If you are interested in such a topic I will try to send you more details about whatever you'll ask. Thanks Raffaele Moles -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Joyojeet Pal Sent: Sun 23 Jan 2005 8:24 PM To: The Digital Divide Network discussion group Subject: [DDN] ICT for Development research from Berkeley Hi All, I had posted to the group earlier a plan I had of teaching a class this year on IT for Development at University of California, Berkeley. We have started teaching the class (I will post the syllabus and slides shortly, and can mail them offline to anyone who wants them). At this point, I am looking for projects for my students which are both worth their time, as well as useful to the general body of knowledge on IT and Development. If there is anyone out there who is interested in research in a specific direction, and would like to have me get a few students to work on it for you (gratis), please drop me an email. I have a group of highly competent and qualified students (evenly split between masters, doctoral and bachelors), and am going to assign class projects over the coming weeks. Essentially a typical project would be a short research document (15-20 pages), including a presentation of the project and a defense in front of the class of research design and conclusions. If you have projects in mind that you are interested in having people work on, please send me a short _one or two-page description_ on what you would like done, and specify whether you would consider being a mentor for the project. Also include any contact information students would need to get in touch with you and discuss the project to greater detail. Please cc this reply to joyojeet(at)berkeley.edu. If a proposal interests a group of students, they will use the initial brief to work on a paper, and update you from time to time on their work, and perhaps seek some guidance (and access to information if the project centered around a topic to which propreitary information is needed). I will give preference to projects for which the research is in the public domain. Thanks, Joyojeet _______________________________________________ DIGITALDIVIDE mailing list DIGITALDIVIDE@mailman.edc.org http://mailman.edc.org/mailman/listinfo/digitaldivide To unsubscribe, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of the message. _______________________________________________ DIGITALDIVIDE mailing list DIGITALDIVIDE@mailman.edc.org http://mailman.edc.org/mailman/listinfo/digitaldivide To unsubscribe, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of the message.
