IT for Change's blog

Response on ‘What is Public Software’
IT for Change

The key issues raised in the mails are: the term Public Software is a distortion of FOSS and takes away the key principle of freedom implied in FOSS; and that using these terms in a somewhat overlapping manners causes confusion and introduces a new agenda which is harmful to the FOSS movement and its goals.
Narendra called it a ‘altogether new agenda’. Yes, it is indeed a relatively new agenda, though proceeding from the same old agenda (while we are it, maybe we need to revisit and have a discussion on what our basic agendas are). Therefore whether it is a ‘altogether’ new agenda may need to be debated. Further, though we are convinced that the two agendas are mutually reinforcing – it may still be useful to discuss here whether the public software agenda is prejudicial to the FOSS agenda.
The underlying rationale of the two concepts are different and need to be understood so that we have clarity on both. That would be a good basis of a continued discussion on this important subject.
What is public software
The point of departure for articulating, and for understanding, the concept of public software is the concept of ‘public goods’ or commonly shared goods, as against private and commercially traded goods in a society. What are the implications of ‘public goods’ thinking and requirements vis-a-vis the digital society? While this question merits close attention, unfortunately it has not received that attention, for a variety of reasons.
We can construct a response to this question in two parts.
1.How digital possibilities can be best applied for production/ provisioning of existing (pre-digital) public goods?
2.What new public goods, in the form of entitlements to digital possibilities, now become relevant in the digital age?
The first aspect of the emerging ‘public goods – digital society’ dynamic is about what kind of digital resources should be used by actors involved with providing traditional or pre-digital era public goods – basic health, education, livelihood support, security etc; and in what manner, in order to maximise the basic/ original objective of providing these pre-digital public goods.
The second aspect is about universal provision of such digital goods and services which can be seen as the ‘new public goods’ of the digital age. Participating in the digital society requires that basic applications such as operating systems, editors, web browsers, screen readers be seen as ‘public goods ‘ from which no one ’should’ be excluded, and thus whose universal availability is a societal responsibility.
(Apologies for a brief digression here. It is important to understand in what implications the term ‘public goods’ is being used here. The term is originally from economics, whereby it means such goods that are non-excludable and non-rivalrous. Non-excludable means, from which no one can be excluded. And non-rivalrous means that consumption of the good by one does not reduce its supply for the other. However, in its larger social meaning the term ‘public goods’ is used to mean goods from which no one ’should’ be excluded, whether they by their nature are non-excludable and non-rivalrous or not. On the positive side, digital goods are inherently non-rivalrous. However, on the negative side, the digital phenomenon enables new means of exclusion which may not exist earlier – for instance broadcast versus DTH TV. These characteristics complicates the digital ‘public goods’ discussion, but more on that some other time )
It is in this overall ‘public goods’ ecology that the concept of public software takes birth and is situated. Now since, a lot of objections on the list to the concept of ‘public software’ has been of the logical variety, challenging the very validity of the concept, I hope the above, and the following, discussions answers those objections. If not, I am willing and eager to discuss it further.
What is FOSS
The logic of FOSS arises differently. It came from the idea that locking down knowledge is essentially wrong in curtailing both freedom and opportunities of people. The knowledge embedded in software therefore should be freely accessed by all, and also be able to be used freely to develop more knowledge/ software. To this idea of freedom, the genius of Stallman added a brilliant new dimension. It is only freedom if it multiplies freedoms of others rather than curtail it (which is in fact adding a ‘positive’ element to the otherwise ‘negative’ – as in negative rights – conception of freedom). He very cleverly used the legal framework around proprietisation of knowledge (to which the basic idea of freely shareable knowledge is in fact prima facie antithetical) to posit an enforceable legal condition – anyone will be able to freely use free software knowledge only if any further knowledge produced by using this knowledge is also available freely. In fact this legal condition can be said to curtail the ‘freedom’ of the person creating some new knowledge using the old free software knowledge (the freedom to to keep this new knowledge created by him as private). But well, that is it, take it or leave it. This provision was expressly made for furthering the cause of common digital knowledge, a public good.
Convergence and divergence
Here, one can clearly begin to see the convergence between two concepts of FOSS and of software as and for public good (public software). One may even be tempted at this point to jump to the conclusion that public software is FOSS and vice versa. Well, it is ‘almost’ always so. But since the two concepts have clearly different constituent logics – even if practical convergence – it is ‘logically’ possible that there may be cases where FOSS is not public software and vice versa. A couple of examples used in the quoted write up on public software were made just to present this ‘logical’ though rare, if ever, possibility. (The exception was cited as an attempt to prove the rule.) Though an example like the one used, and much criticised on the list, of use of software for some extremely secretive purposes but serving public interest, would always be open to contestation. But as said, the point was only to provide a possible example showing the logical distinction, which comes from the very different logical construction of the two concepts. It is however possible that some other examples may be better than the one used in the quoted text.
It is certainly at least ‘logically’ possible that there could be (some extremely rare) times when a software needed to be used in ‘public good space’ may best not be FOSS. This can and will be contested, but most people traditionally in the public goods space (not only governments but also outside it), whom we have spoken with, understand it in this way. Lets accept that. On the other hand, a software can have its source code open, but its design may be directed towards ways of stealing personal information or for triggering mines (banned under a global treaty) as a person approaches them, which though obviously FOSS (because FOSS is about open publication of the source code and the underlying licensing condition and strictly nothing else) can not be called a public good software, or public software.
Why we need the term ‘public software’
If FOSS and Public Software are mostly the same, then the question would come, why should we have two different terms then. The reason is somewhat obvious. There is a big sector in society long devoted to the ‘public goods space’ which understands the idea and concept of public good much better than that of FOSS, which, I may be excused for saying, is often thought by them as a technical obscurity that will never be of much interest to them. (I agree, this may not be completely true, but that is how they feel). Now this ‘public goods sector1′ is a serious business, a big and necessary part of our social arrangements. They need to understand, and internalise in their work, the role of software in the digital society. And they will best understand it, and do what is necessary to do thereafter, if it is presented in the ‘public goods’ framework which they not only understand but take it to be their serious responsibility to work on.
But it will be wrong to tell these ‘public good’ actors that FOSS was always meant to be the ‘public goods software’ or ‘public software’ and that the two are exactly the same, because that would be unfair to both this group and the FOSS groups. As mentioned earlier, there is a clear logical distinction between the two concepts even if a very large practical overlap.
If those involved traditionally with public goods space or sector in the society find it useful to use the concept of ‘public software’, why should they not be able to do so? Public software is defined in terms of its public good nature, inherent in the outcomes arising from its use. ‘Logically’ it has nothing to do with publishing the source code or the nature of copyright licence involved, though it is quite clear that publishing the software and using a GPL licensing will almost always serve the best interests of the public. On the other hand, FOSS is ‘logically’ only about publishing the code and copyrighting under GPL licence and it has nothing to do with the purpose for which the software may be used – which in fact could be quite destructive, and whereby the software cannot be called public software. In fact, FOSS being GPL licensing condition based concept will exclude software released in the public domain. However the concept of ‘public software’ could include such software it is best qualifies the conditions of ‘public good’ in the given circumstance.
This above was about the logical basis of the term ‘public software’ and the distinctions as well overlaps involved vis a vis the concept of FOSS. Now we can move to practical matters. Even if logically defensible, an obvious question is, why should or did we expend so much energy in developing and promoting the concept of public software.
Public software – the practical imperative
It has mostly to do with having encountered great difficulties in promoting FOSS among public sector agencies (which agenda we found very important per se, as well as to promote the overall cause of FOSS in society), and less than satisfactory progress in promoting it with academic institutions, NGOs and community based bodies. Through these experiences we realised that these agencies responded so much better if engaged through notions of publicness and welfarism vis-a-vis different software models. For instance government officials engage so much better if we start with the objectives of the work of the government and of her particular department, and then extend the characteristics of the public goods work she is involved with to the kind of software that should be used by her/ governments.
Similarly, in discussions with government school teachers, we find that it is intuitive for them to grasp the idea of software as a basic learning resource that should be free, and a universal entitlement. They are also immediately attracted to the idea that the learning software be produced and supported by public interest groups/ bodies rather than commercial ones, whereby instinctively there is greater trust. It is then easier for the teachers to relate to the fact that since the interests and motivations of the public interest/ goods actors (or public actors) are only to help them, the software has all the qualities that makes their and students work easier and education more fruitful. They then relate to the features of the such software as its openness to modification, sharing etc as the way they see normal public education processes. Using the term ‘public software’ (accessible to all, involving participation of all) seems to them quite aligned with the underlying philosophy of the public school system (accessible to all, involving participation of all). At this point, they can of course be explained the production and licensing model underlying the software they are using, and why it is called FOSS. Frankly, starting with the license model of the software they are going to be introduced to, makes little sense to them.
Principles of universal access, full inter-operability, not getting exclusively dependent on a private vendor for any government (or public education) process, collaborative building of governance processes (including digital ones, and software is nothing but structuration of such social/ governance processes), principle of transparency, of community monitoring, right of information, full and perpetual public ownership etc are clearly understood by public sector actors. It is easy to argue with them that same principles should apply to software used by and in the public sector. We could also easily agree mutually to call such variety of software as ‘public software’ as opposed to commercial software used for commercial sectors of the society with completely different contexts and objectives.
By emphasising that the starting point for public software is the role of the public sector, (including the government) for the purposes of achieving larger societal goals of equity and social justice, we could even get down to write principles for public software, which public officials clearly could own (rather than FOSS principles which looks to them coming from areas largely alien to them). We could speak together of coming out with a public software policy, which would simply list what would be the characteristics of software that governments should produce/procure and use (in terms of public service principles listed above). Within this larger advocacy it was much easier to argue that FOSS is the right kind of software for governments to use, and that this fact should specifically be mentioned in the public software policies. In these discussion we, the government officials and us – seemed to be going forward together, collaboratively, in a manner that the agenda and discussions were co-owned.
This unfortunately mostly does not happen when we take the FOSS agenda – direct and simple – to government officials, since, many tend to treat software per-se as a ‘technology issue’ which is best dealt with by technology experts or IT associations – see for instance the role that NASSCOMM, a industry body with vested interests, plays in many e-governance processes, including at the policy level2. They tend to treat FOSS as just one kind of software model which can be considered beside other proprietary, models. They start talking about ‘overall’ cost implications and performance factors as the ‘obvious’ key factors for taking the software procurement decisions. The ideology involved, which motivates the FOSS advocate, is largely lost on non-techie public sector actors.
Public Public Partnerships
Beyond governments, there are many social actors who involve themselves in production/ provisioning of public goods. FOSS groups are one such set of social actors. All kinds of voluntary, community groups are examples of such social actors. However, we will have to accept that the state or governments are a very big part of this ecology of social actors producing public goods. Unlike other actors involved in this process, governments, especially democratic/ welfarist ones, uniquely also have the ‘responsibility’ for producing these goods (and for this reason, the other groups in the public goods ecology are often called ‘voluntary’ groups3).
It is a part of what has been called the ‘deepening democracy’ project to work towards larger partnerships and programs in the public policy as well as public goods space, involving non-state actors working with government’s in a mutually supportive and complementary manner, whereby these relationships are characterised by trusts and mutual respect, though the elements of dissent and even antagonism on many socio-political issues need not be completely forgone. It is even more important in the digital space, with its unique collaborative and distributed system management capacities, that we seek to build partnerships among all the public interest or public goods actors. It is perhaps impossible to sustain even FOSS ecologies beyond a point without some kind of institutional public support – whether of a big NGO or a government agency. On the other hand, governments on their own are not upto the task of making and maintaining the best public software needed to maximise public interest opportunities in our society – especially of ensuring that the egalitarian and social justice potential of digital technologies is in fact realised.
The ‘news’ of Oracle stopping support for ORCA development illustrates this case. There were mails on the FOSSCOMM list that we should write to Oracle to continue its support to ORCA development4, but what is Oracle’s accountability to us. (That is the basic difference between a private/commercial actor and a public actor.) Since for the visually challenged, a screen reader is basic to their participation in the digital society, it needs to be an entitlement and not contingent on corporate social responsibility or voluntary effort. By definition for anything to be an entitlement or a right, there needs to be a corresponding societal commitment or obligation to ensure that right is fulfilled. And this requires the positive/committed action of the government/public sector as the primary societal agent for development and even democracy. This notion of public software thus puts the onus on governments to ensure universal availability of such basic applications, through funding, distribution, promotion etc. However, use of this concept of ‘public software’ also draws all other social actors motivated towards public interest to collaborate as well as they can for universal provision of such public goods.
What Brazil’s Public Software Centre has been doing for past few years, is along these lines – creating collaboration between government entities and FOSS enterprises/ communities to develop public software to promote governance goals. We need to build similar collaborations in India and that is one of the principal goals of our work.
It is important to note that our work on public software arose from our own experiences in advocating FOSS in governments and schools and took shape independent of the Brazil project. (We learnt about the Brazil project much later, after the Kochi workshop, where the public software site was launched). Neither for the Brazilian agency involved, nor for us, the idea and concept has taken complete shape and is largely work in progress. We invite feedback and comments in this process.
However we are convinced that there are very useful possibilities in using this concept for both the public sector and for the FOSS community.
regards,
Guru

The Policy Planning Unit (PPU) of the Education Department, Government of Karnataka, organized workshops to train 120 government teacher educators’ from DIETs and BRCs, as ‘Master Trainers on Public Software educational tools’, during August 2010, with resource support from Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) and Azim Premji Foundation, infrastructure support from RV College of Engineering and faculty from IT for Change and RV Educational Consortium. The participants came from all parts of Karnataka and will work with teachers in their respective districts to build their capacities to use these tools in the regular teaching-learning processes in mathematics, science and social science subjects.

Almost all computer programs in schools so far have focused primarily on teachers and students acquiring basic computer skills, and there is not much attention to ‘computer aided learning’. The teachers also have no opportunity to use these basic computer skills acquired and the training in many cases becomes redundant and irrelevant. The workshop premise is that by shifting the focus to training teachers to use ICT educational tools for teaching regular subjects , it will enable greater ownership and commitment of teachers to using new possibilities offered by ICTs and consequently to more effective use of the ICT tools in the schools.

This is the first program in public education system in Karnataka, that focussed on ICT educational tools, covering mathematics (Geogebra), science (KTech), english (KAnagram) and geography/ environmental sciences (KGeography, KStars). Since these tools are publicly owned, a copy of the software applications was given to all the master trainers to install in their offices and elsewhere. Master trainers from the Kerala IT@Schools program (which has pioneered the use of such public software educational tools), invited by Azim Premji Foundation, also shared their ideas, lesson plans and gave feedback to the participants .

These ICT tools adopt a learner centered approach based on a theory of learning called constructivism, its core idea being that knowledge is actively constructed by the learner, building on her existing knowledge and it is not passively received from the teacher . The premise also is that by the teacher herself experiencing this pedagogical approach through use of these educational tools, she would be more amenable and able to adopt it while teaching in her classroom.

State Project Director, Sarva Shiksha Abhiyaan, Ms Sandhya Venugopal Sharma interacting with participants in State Master Trainers in ICT educational tools program. The background screen shows the “Marble” public software tool useful for teaching of geography

In order to move beyond narrow ‘tool focus’ of ICTs, where techno-fascination is often a serious limitation and even danger of such programs, the program also had sessions on educational perspectives and the National Curriculum Framework 2005, where the potential of ICTs to support constructivistic teaching-learning approaches was discussed. The program resources are available on www.KarnatakaEducation.org.in.

An inexpensive netbook costing Rs 15,000 was demoed to the participants – this has all the features of the latest computers (except it has no DVD drive), provides 7 hour power backup and is highly portable being less than half a kilogram in weight. A netbook or laptop needs to be seen as a basic learning tool that all teachers must possess, and looking at it as a luxury or only as a sophisticated typewriter can retard powerful teacher professional development possibilities. Two of the participants were motivated to buy this during the workshop and many others expressed that they would too purchase their ‘learning tools’.

The participants were enthusiastic about the possibilities of these tools in daily teaching learning processes. Some even came up with creative lesson plans on the above tools taught. An e-mail list pskarnataka@googlegroups.com has been created for them to network, discuss these tools and also share their ideas, issues and solutions.

The assessment process for these participants included reviewing their pre training and post training learning through simple tests, participation during the training and reading the ‘reflections’ written by them after each days training. The participants who would be ‘certified’ as master trainers based on the assessment, would train five high school teachers in each block who would then train their colleagues over the next three years.

Below is Anita’s Editorial for the special issue on Gender of The Journal of Community Informatics:

I came into this special issue of the Journal of Community Informatics as guest editor with the rather common sense hypothesis that the notion of ‘community’ as well as information and communication systems are unequivocally gendered. It is well acknowledged that the marginalities crafted by the information society pursues gendered hierarchies, creating, first of all, the primary faultline separating those with access to and membership in digital spaces and information networks and those without. As important, from a women’s standpoint, are the predispositions of the dominant information society paradigm– its neo–liberal tendencies and hyper–individualism which are excluding knowledges and networks of solidarity that may not find direct meaning or belonging in the emerging social spaces and their codes.

Having worked with the Centre for Community Informatics and Development (CCID) of IT for Change (www.ITforChange.net) in enabling women to create a communications syntax that corresponds to dalit (lower caste) women’s ecologies of information, their worldview, aspirations, struggles and solidarities, I knew community informatics did bring a breath of fresh air to the endeavours of feminism, unlocking new possibilities. There was in the villages of Mysore where we worked with the Mahila Samakhya collectives, a new space for the battle of creative, subaltern energies against structures of information hegemonies steeped in the cultures of oppression and in the exploitation of poor, dalit women.

The art of the (technology) possible held new hope for women, whose rights as citizens and relationship with local institutions as well as with collective organisations and social action were beginning to break out of old impasses. With their own radio program in their local dialect, video content that they customised for their collective learning and reflection processes, and public information centres that they built and began using for making claims for their entitlements, they were able to find and employ a new technique of feminist action through an emerging unique community informatics strategem that gave them voice and unleashed their agency. The resulting changes were non–linear and deeper; less didactic and more self–directed, and a curious mix of the dialogic (with the men of their own families about gender discourse) and the antagonistic (with assertions against vested interests in the immediate community and institutions).

The CCID team was also learning alongside; helping women with appropriate technological formats, meanwhile encountering an uneven playing field with very little market innovation or supportive policy intervention appropriate to enabling or complementing the community informatics project of the Mahila Samakhya women. On the contrary, the nature of the playing field seemed to be replete with patriarchal, elite and inflexible content and technology models, not in the least congruent with the ethos of progressive and inclusive change that could place at the centre, the burning desires and brilliant capacities of women determined to break out of their compact with structures of oppression and perhaps even, the dominant project of development.

With CCID’s own experiments, and in the course of the long gestation of this special double issue of the JoCI, through the keen insights of the scholars and practitioners who have contributed their writings, I have learnt much more and especially about what feminism brings to community informatics!

A methodology of transformation …..

By presenting new ways of knowing and doing, and thus making way for new ecologies and cultures of communication, feminism transforms CI into a radical practice. Axes of power get realigned as women’s appropriation of technology for transformative change democratises the local public, embedding women’s voice as a valid moral–political force in the local political agora and deliberative space (for instance with women owned/controlled local radio and video). Institutional norms begin to change deeply as new information architectures lead into new pathways and information flows, creating and deepening the legitimacy of women as social actors with valid claims.

New community constellations based on sub-altern ontologies and epistemologies …

From communities of solidarity and resistance, collective memory and history to communities of choice that disrupt oppressive relationship configurations, the notion of community acquires emancipatory content in feminist constructs of community informatics. Such local and trans–local community configurations are about a possible new geography of communities that rearticulates gendered locations, and a new spatiality of collective organising that is based on new social identities.

The local–global as non–linear, contiguous space and feminist practice of technology as deepening the publics…..

The practice of community informatics through gendered analytical frames underscores the fact that the local and the global are not polarities but categories representing multilayered space. Thus, the local appropriation of technology is in a dialectic relationship with trans–local forces in as much as the dominant logic shaping information and communication flows globally is simultaneously permeated by sub–global cultures and communities. While the situated experiences of women in relation to information processes do derive also from social norms, the very experience of ‘doing technology collectively’ can be disruptive of these normative frameworks. The wider policy ecology – again, global, national and sub–national – can enable or constrain these situated experiences. Most importantly, feminist practice of technology in the multilayered local–global invokes debates around knowledge ownership regimes to recover the notion of the commons. An information architecture that is relevant to the most marginalised women cannot be shaped by the logic of commodification, but of the publics. In the emerging spatialities of the information society, forging communities is not about an escape into digital utopia, a self–aggrandizement online of the neo–liberal variety we spoke about earlier, but a methodology of reclaiming and creating publics – spaces for the collective – that correspond in an accountable way to a contextual and territorialised politics of knowledge.

A framework that brings production and social reproduction together….

The theory and practice of feminist community informatics challenges the celebratory macro–narratives about technology and globalisation in a brave new world. From a critical feminist standpoint, community information and communication architectures cannot derive from a techno–deterministic valorisation of IT jobs or the magic of mobile phones, but must catalyse a new economics and sociology of the local. These include the possibilities for a more environmentally bound and embedded economics that fetches the surpluses of globalisation to women in their contexts – an antithesis to the dominant information society architecture that co–opts the political economy of weak institutions, poverty and gender division of labour to expropriate women’s labour. Also, as mentioned earlier, community informatics practice opens up the possibilities of cultural transformation through discontinuities of tyrannical normative structures. A feminist constructivist approach to women’s technology appropriation therefore is about a new ethics of gender that challenges the reproduction of unjust values and practices in and through new knowledge and cultural arenas when the material and the symbolic are simultaneously recast.

I am deeply grateful to Michael Gurstein for his unwavering faith in IT for Change. Embarking on this collaborative project with him has been a great learning experience for me. It has taken long to bring different authors’ works to this point, through the processes of reviews and rewritings. I thank all the authors for their contributions, and hope they see this collection as a useful addition to their learning. This issue has had the benefit of the commitment and editorial talent of Anja Kovacs and Shivani Kaul. Anja and I had intense editorial discussions on what kind of mosaic would befit the grand idea of a special issue on gender, and Anja devoted considerable time to cast the net far and wide to extend the call for proposals to many places across the world and engage the interest of authors through facilitative discussions. Shivani has been meticulous in her coordination and copyediting support and a wonderful team member with whom I have had many spontaneous discussions on the insightful observations of the authors. Eduardo Villanueva and Anupama Joshi have worked very hard on the last mile – enabling the text to be converted into publishable online formats. Anupama also used Krupa Thimmiah’s special header design for this issue – in the colour of the women’s movement – embedding the text to make it part of this distinctive collection on gender. I am ever so grateful to IT for Change’s legacy of critical thinking, theoretical grasp and engagement with the politics of the everyday – the research and CCID team members, past and present, have been remarkably inspiring colleagues.

Can read this article online here: http://ci-journal.net/index.php/ciej/article/view/679/558

Please also do read other articles in the Journal here:http://ci-journal.net/index.php/ciej/issue/view/26

Gurumurthy K, IT for Change, participated in the “CeTIT 2010”(Citizens Empowerment Through Information Technology), the second edition of Conference-Cum-Exhibition on “e-governance” on 27^th and 28^th July 2010 organized by FICCI, Department of Information and Technology, Government of Tamil Nadu, Electronics Corporation of Tamil Nadu Limited (ELCOT) and Tamil Nadu eGovernance Agency (TNeGA) at Chennai and spoke on ‘Public Software for Public Institutions – rethinking e-Governance’.

To download the agenda, click here.

To display the presentation, click the ‘fullscreen’ button in the following reader. To download, click the download button.

Presentation at CETIT, Tami Nadu – Public Software for Public Institutions July 2010

On the 21^st of July IT for Change organised an interaction for around 50 student-teachers from Netherlands and around 20 of their counterparts from Bangalore.

These student-teachers from The Netherlands were part of Edukans Education Experience Program where students exchange information and knowledge with students abroad. The Indian students were from a teacher training institute called Nottredam. These groups had interacted with each other in various other educational environments over the past 10 days. The agenda of the interaction with the TCoL team was to understand the project, the role of ICTs in Education and its possibilities for the future.

The interaction started with an introduction to the project, which was followed by a short briefing on the National Curriculum Framework and its guiding principles regarding the aims of education, pedagogical practises and Social Dynamic and Concerns prevailing in the Indian Society (from an educational perspective)

Bindu Introducing KGeography to the student teachers

This was followed by a demonstration of the computer aided education tools that are being used in the TCoL programme. Mathematics tools such as Geogebra along with some English language and Geography tools were demonstrated, which was followed by a discussion on the usefulness and applicability of these tools.

The students from Netherlands especially loved the Kgeography tool and had a good time figuring out their country’s map and where all its districts lie.

Overall, the students felt that the TCoL was indeed a unique project. One remarked saying that she was really happy that the project was concentrating on teachers and teacher’s empowerment which is so essential to any education system.
This event also opened up new possibilities that such a pilot project can offer to the current teachers. Our NCF 2005 is such a powerful book, which even a developed country like Netherlands cannot offer an alternative too. This batch of students were also impressed that we were using free and open source educational tools within the system as Netherlands still relies on proprietary formats for its ICTs based education. Thus, the interaction turned out to be a learning experience for both the student-teachers and the TCoL team.

The session ended on a sing-song note with a chirpy “thank you” song and dance by the Dutch students which was aped by the Indian students as well! (A picture of this can be found below)

The Dutch Students singing and dancing to their "Thank you" Song

Talk on “Locating Gender Politics in the New Techno-Industrial Complex” by Dr. Lisa McLaughlin, Associate Professor in Media Studies and Women’s Studies, Miami University-Ohio, USA

Date: Jul 23, 2010 (Friday)
Time: 4 p.m.
Place: CIS – The Centre for Internet and Society No. 194, 2nd ‘C’ Cross, Domlur 2nd Stage Bangalore 560 071 Phone: 080 – 25350955

CIS – The Centre for Internet and Society, CSCS – The Centre for the Study of Culture and Society, and IT for Change are hosting a lecture “Locating Gender Politics in the New Techno-Industrial Complex” by Lisa McLaughlin, PhD, Associate Professor in Media Studies and Women’s Studies, Miami University-Ohio, USA, on Jul 23, at 4 p.m. at CIS.

Dr. McLaughlin will address the gendered ties that bind the “new global governance” to the “new information economy”, with a focus on women, work, and information and communication technology.

Dr. McLaughlin is spending two months in India (June and July) to work on a joint research project with IT for Change titled, “Women’s Enterprise and Information Technology”. The study explores ICT policies and practices that seek to integrate women entrepreneurs, especially from the informal and small business sectors, into formal and global markets. She is also part of the Advisory Group of the research program “Gender and Citizenship in the Information Society”, coordinated by IT for Change. This initiative aims to explore the the concept of citizenship, and use citizenship as a framework to understand gender issues implicit in the ‘Information Society.’

Bio

Lisa McLaughlin, Ph.D.
Ph.D., University of Iowa, 1993
M.A., University of Iowa, 1985
B.A., University of Iowa, 1983

Dr. McLaughlin is an Associate Professor in Media Studies and Women’s Studies at Miami University-Ohio, USA. She teaches undergraduate courses in media and society, global media, and gender and media. She also teaches graduate seminars in feminist media theory, global media, technology and culture, and media governance. Her research has been published in scholarly journals including as Media, Culture and Society, Journal of Communication Inquiry, Critical Studies in Media Communications, and Sociological Review. She is the author of two forthcoming books, one titled Global Communications and the Public Sphere and the other titled Keywords in International Communications. She also has worked as an academic journal editor and is founding editor, and current co-editor, of an international journal titled Feminist Media Studies. Her research interests include feminist studies, critical theory, gender and information work in the knowledge economy, and global communications governance.

We take this opportunity to thank our friends and colleagues who share our values and support our work on the innovative and effective use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) to promote socio-economic change in the global South.

With significant local, national and global recognition, IT for Change is now entering a new institutional phase. We embrace the challenge to mobilise energies and act strategically at the national and global level in the areas of research, advocacy and field projects and to respond positively and maturely to the trust that organisations and social movements have placed in us.

The Special Issue of the Journal of Community Informatics on Gender, guest-edited by IT for Change, launched today. The Journal of Community Informatics (JoCI) is a focal point for the communication of research to a global network of academics, community informatics practitioners and national and multi-lateral policy makers.

The articles in this special issue address how information and communication technologies have a transformatory impact on gender identities within Latin American, South Asian, East Asian, and North American societies. From e-governance techniques that exclude women, virtual spaces that cultivate community identity, mobile phone units that empower entrepreneurship, and migrant women’s ICT links, the special issue spans a variety of topics exploring the relationship between community informatics and gender dynamics.

Please click here to see the journal.



IT for Change with the support of Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan (RMSA), Policy Planning Unit (PPU) of the Education Department, Government of Karnataka and RV College of Engineering will train and certify about 120 government staff as ‘Master Trainers’ on Computer Aided Education tools. There will be three batches of hands-on training on selected tools in August 2010; each batch will be trained for four days and there will be an assessment at the end of the workshop for the certification.

Mathematics tools will be the focus of the training along with some English language and Geography tools. The participants of this programme are from all districts in Karnataka. Each district will have four participants that include two DIET faculty members, 1 subject inspector and 1 BRP(Block Resource Person). Each of these master trainers will then train teachers in their respective districts (Cascade Model).

Most computer based training so far has focused on acquiring basic computer skills and learning how to document using computers, which included acquiring skills of using the text editors, spreadsheets and presentation. This is the first that is focussing on ‘Computer Aided Education Tools’ to enable the teachers to integrate technology into their classroom lessons and pedagogy.

On July 9th, 2010 IT for Change will deliver two lectures at the Fifth Summer School on Philosophy for the Social Sciences and Humanities, at Manipal Centre for Philosophy & Humanities, Manipal University.

Anita Gurumurthy brings the gender perspective to analyse the Information Society in her talk ‘Fat-free ice cream, alcohol-free beer and feminism without women – How to make sense of gender discourse in the information society?’.

Parminder Jeet Singh proposes a debate on the local to global political systems that are adequate to the context and needs of an emerging information society in his talk ‘Political action in the brave new digital world’.

The course, held from July 1 to 15, 2010, explores various aspects of justice from different theoretical traditions. The sessions will approach several philosophical ideas that are necessary to understand justice, such as reason, meaning of concepts, notion of freedom and choice.

For more information on the event, please visit Manipal University Website