Dear all, I would like to attribute another role to the Intermediaries which we have used a lot in both Community Telecenters and School-based Telecenters in Uganda. Here we talk of Info-brokers.
These are normally influential people of the community by:- their knowledge, traditional mentoring roles or special role in the community as say agricultural extensionist, educationist etc. The important role the group plays in the mediation between technology and the people/potential users in a manner easily understood by the user group. For instance in the case of agricultural information, its the info-broker (extension officer) who is trained first to access, use and filter agricultural related information say on the Internet or CD ROMs (like the FAO agric bank). She is expected then to help the rest on the farming community in understanding how this info relates to the community's activities - the chain spans of from the community when the use of such info is demonstrated by the extensionist. The emergence of the Community Multimedia Centers (CMCs) supported by UNESCO is a unique opportunity to expand the benefits of this strategy as the CMCs have both Internet, access to digital info and radio that bridges the distances and language very effectively for the case of Africa. We are also implementing a project in Uganda with support of the World Bank Institute (WBI) to strengthen efforts towards achieving the MDGs of Education for All (EFA) using ICTs, using primary school teachers as an entry point. They are positioned as info-brokers/intermediaries in this case. This strategy is built along the understanding that the majority of our people in Africa will take a while before they could gain the optimum efficiency in information searching and utilisation when information is still largely in English. However through intermediaries, they can reap the benefits of such information as alternative programs are being developed to increase local content on the Internet and other digital resources. Meddie Meddie Mayanja ICT Community Development Specialist ICT for Education Program World Bank Institute Tel: 256 77 502 288 [EMAIL PROTECTED] OR [EMAIL PROTECTED] ------------ This DOT-COM Discussion is funded by the dot-ORG USAID Cooperative Agreement, and hosted by GKD. http://www.dot-com-alliance.org provides more information. To post a message, send it to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To subscribe or unsubscribe, send a message to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. In the 1st line of the message type: subscribe gkd OR type: unsubscribe gkd For the GKD database, with past messages: http://www.GKDknowledge.org
