Hello all I had the opportunity of working on the designing liberation course as a supervisor/teaching assistant the very first year when Josh and Terry came to Nairobi to launch the project.
I had little perspective of what ICT4D meant(probably still do) but i learnt a lot from working with the team. Like any academic process, most of the things you do for school work are never completely used, and i still have the original needs finding documents that we used for the course. As we know the focus in Africa by mobile manufacturers like Nokia has been to improve content available to their subscribers, and hopefully build a business around these, this was a good example of a north to south, private public partnership. The students from Kenya were purely limited to computer science, while Stanford were mixed from all disciplines. I identified the key staekholders, at that point the broad challenge was " Mobile tools to improve access to health care in slum areas" Through a collaboration, both teams of students engaged each other in understanding the problem, and feedback on where the solution was appropriate. After the summer, the Stanford students came to Kenya to test the mobile prototypes, and a few Kenyan students had a chance to visit silicon valley Back in Kenya during the summer, i am working to focus on young enterrenuership mobile for people intrested in mhealth and ehealth. I think the university of washington is able to do this effectively , producing researchers and innovators in business as seen in the ICT space worldwide It will be interesting to watch how the ICTD space evolves Judy Ps: here is a link that holds some of the class activities: http://liberationtechnologydcourse.pbworks.com/w/page/24948376/Welcome! On Fri, Mar 23, 2012 at 4:27 PM, Batya Friedman <batya at uw.edu> wrote: > I think this is a really neat idea. I've talked with Terry about the > course a couple of times over the last year or so. I also think there's a > possibility to do some interesting capacity building with faculty as part > of the process. If others are interested, this is a model I would like to > explore further. I have some contacts in Rwanda that might be interested. > > Cheers, > Bat > > > On 3/23/12 11:14 AM, "Gaetano Borriello" <gaetano at cs.washington.edu> > wrote: > > >What do you think about this approach to ICTD courses? > > > >Harnessing Mobile Tech and Students to Promote Development in Kenya > >Stanford University (03/19/12) > > > >Stanford University professors Joshua Cohen and Terry Winograd teach a > >course that brings interdisciplinary teams of Stanford students > >together with students from the University of Nairobi and local > >nongovernmental organizations to design new uses for mobile platforms > >that promote human development in Nairobi's informal settlements. > >Cohen says the course, called Designing Liberation Technologies, is > >premised on the idea that mobile tech is a promising means for > >providing jumpstarts in human welfare. He says the reason the class > >focuses on using mobile applications in areas of health, education, > >and economic development is because mobile is the most rapidly growing > >technology, especially in the developing world. The students use a > >problem-solving process that involves starting with the potential > >users themselves, and then developing insights about how their needs > >can be solved with mobile applications, Cohen notes. The projects have > >involved locating malaria drugs and checking them for counterfeiting, > >helping health workers collect patient information and control patient > >workflow, and helping pregnant women save money for prenatal care. The > >group is readying the launch of a six-month pilot for the M-Maji > >project in five villages in Kibera, which is designed to help people > >find clean water, especially during water shortages. > > > >http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/news/headlines/cohen-mobile-kenya.html > >_______________________________________________ > >change mailing list > >change at change.washington.edu > >http://changemm.cs.washington.edu/mailman/listinfo/change > > > _______________________________________________ > change mailing list > change at change.washington.edu > http://changemm.cs.washington.edu/mailman/listinfo/change > -- Judy -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://changemm.cs.washington.edu/mailman/private/change/attachments/20120323/cae9d62c/attachment.html>
