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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)

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

Gurumurthy Kasinathan participated in the OpenNet Initiative (ONI) 2010 Global Summit on “Should Cyberspace be Secured as an Open Commons?”, on June 30 at Ottawa. This event featured three high-level panels of experts and practitioners on prominent topics related to cyberspace governance, security, and advocacy. Participants included International Development Research Centre, BBC, Google, Opennet.Asia, Opennet.Eurasia, United States Department of State, National Endowment of Democracy, United States Broadcasting Board of Governors, Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, Canada, Public Safety Canada, Bell Canada, Sesawe and Psiphon Inc.

Guru was a panelist in the session: “What is to be done? A conversation with the OpenNet Initiative’s global partners”

The ONI is a network of regional-based research groups, advocates, and activists. This panel will feature a larger roundtable on the future of research and advocacy in cyberspace, with a particular focus on the future of the ONI and its promotion of an open commons. Issues to be discussed include the balance between research and advocacy; methods and ethics; funding and sustainability; and future possible directions for the ONI’s mission.

OpenNet Initiative global partners include: Tattu Mambetalieva (Eurasia i-policy Network), Jac SM Kee (Malaysia), Shahzad Ahmad (Pakistan), Guru Kasinathan (India), Ali Bangi (Psiphon-Iran), and Laurent Elder (IDRC).

The gist of my submission in the panel is summarised below:

It is good that the summit considers cyberspace as a ‘Commons’. As per http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_commons , the commons is terminology referring to resources that are collectively owned or shared between or among populations. These resources are said to be “held in common” and can include everything from natural resources and land to software. commons cannot be exclusionary. The internet is a powerful digital commons. Like all digital resources it is non rivalrous.

There are at least three categories of threat to the ‘cyber commons’ and to secure the commons all will need to be addressed:

1. Autocratic governments censoring and surveillance

This has been the original concern of ONI and needs to continue to be a focus area.

2. Net Neutrality – attack on the global commons by large and powerful transnational companies based in the western world

Infrastructure level – eg. AT&T and Comcast tampering with nature and flow of information on the net

Application level – eg. Apple and Microsoft impeding information flow through filters of proprietary technologies. Skype not allowed on most cell phones. The ‘mobile internet’ is a highly proprietised space.

Content level – eg. Google books proprietising orphan books or google search engine logic being private

3. ACTA – attack on the global commons by group of powerful western governments

Western democracies through ACTA – deriving rules for a global resource in a small group that consistently undermining existing global fora such as the IGF, these rules will then become defacto global rules,

“ The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement is a dangerous proposal to radically expand intellectual property rights at the global level. The draft agreement has been negotiated in secret, without inclusion of developing nation perspectives, and without any participation from civil society or regard for the global public interest. ACTA specifically targets the Internet and regulates the flow of information in a digital environment. ACTA would create significant negative consequences for fundamental freedoms, access to medicines, innovation, the balance of public/private interests, access to knowledge and culture, to name a few of its problems. ACTA represents a ‘wish list’ from Hollywood and Big Pharma which will be imposed unilaterally on developing countries through trade pressure from the US, Europe and other wealthy states. We find that the terms of the agreement threaten numerous public interests, including nearly every concern specifically disclaimed by the negotiators in their announcement. The proposed agreement is a deeply flawed product of a deeply flawed process”.

Rebecca MacKinnon, Visiting Fellow, Center for Information Technology Policy, Princeton University

The Free Knowledge Institute (FKI) states that “the current draft of ACTA would profoundly restrict the fundamental rights and freedoms of European citizens, most notably the freedom of expression and communication privacy.

These countries need to engage with the global policy process dialog forum, the IGF where all countries / stakeholders participate to evolve global public policies that can guide countries, communities and companies in their participation in cyber commons.

ONI hence has to consider all three ‘pieces of the puzzle’ towards securing the cyber commons, if it wants to be a credible process for securing the cyber commons.

Gurumurthy Kasinathan