Andy Carvin wrote quoting Ravi Venkatesan:
To move forward, he said teachers and students must be at the center stage of ICT initiatives. "Putting them center stage and using ICT to solve real problems rather than perceived problems is an important step." ... You also must get the community involved.... we really, really need to have local ownership of initiatives."
I'd like to agree that on behalf of CawdNet, especially regarding "using ICT to solve real problems rather than perceived problems"
One of CawdNet's long term aims is to teach communities about the *potential* of ICTs so that they can say how ICTs might usefully serve their needs. When we designed the Teachers Talking (about ICTs) course it wasn't just about teaching teachers to use computers, and it wasn't just about giving them relevant ICT content to teach back in school on their "no computers computer courses". It was about enabling all of them to experience the *potential* of ICTs in ways that they could share with their pupils, their colleagues *and their communities* even where those communities have not seen computers..
Our vision is to run more courses, so that we get a good number of high-flyers coming through, people who will go forward to enter into informed debate about the role of computers in rural education and in rural development. The teachers want more courses. They want us to give their colleagues the same opportunity they have had. They also want more advanced courses to continue their own development. (They told us this and also wrote it, strongly, on their - anonymous- feedback sheets.)
Government policy is that teachers must become computer literate but there is no government budget to support their training. Teachers are willing to pay but cannot afford sufficient fees to cover the full cost. Our first course was made possible through voluntary effort and the free use of Fantsuam Foundation facilities, plus a subsidy from the FF micro credit bank.
This means that the course was paid for partly by the teachers themselves and partly through local - but unrepeatable - sponsorship. To me it seems amazing that the necessary sponsorship was from the profits of the FF micro-credit bank. This means that this initial course was made possible through the savings of poor women hoping to demonstrate that they are fit to be given loans and through the faithful repayments of those women who have borrowed (repayments are close to 100%).
The course was run by Fantsuam Foundation (a CawdNet associate). Fantsuam Foundation was set up by Nigerian professionals, it is led by Nigerians for Nigerians, in a rural area, with a view to replication. Its training initiatives are already being shared with the InfoCentre in Ago-Are (another cawdnet associate) - two days journey away from FF's centre - but linked by VSAT.
For details of the teachers course, including a photo of the participants with the children they taught as part of the "no computers computer course" practical sessions see http://teacherstalking.xwiki.com/xwiki/bin/view/Main/TeachersTalkingCourse
We believe this is a good example of a community driven, appropriate way forward through teacher training, but have no resources to sponsor any follow up course yet. If list members know of any potential sponsors then CawdNet - and the teachers we are trying to serve - would appreciate help in finding them. Please consider passing this email on to appropriate contacts.
Forgive me if this is not an appropriate request to make through the list, but it seems to me that members on this list do genuinely want to *act* to bridge the digital divide - not just *theorise* about it. Encouraging federal and state government to pay for training courses would be a useful action that some list members may be in a position to make. Sharing this need more widely, and thus gaining sponsorship, could result in another practical step towards reducing the digital divide.
Pam
<>Pamela McLean - CAWD volunteer and CawdNet convenor
CawdNet – Networking in rural Nigeria and through the virtual communities of the Internet (CAWD is registered charity number 1104228).
<>To subscribe to the newsletter http://lists.kabissa.org/mailman/listinfo/oocd2000plus
To contribute to CAWD’s work www.bmycharity.com/cawd1 <http://www.bmycharity.com/cawd1>
For an introduction to CawdNet www.cawdnet-intro.blogspot.com <http://www.cawdnet-intro.blogspot.com>
A CawdNet website bringing all these odd bits together will soon be set up on www.cawd.net <http://www.cawd.net/> (time scale depending on the conflicting demands of our website volunteer’s baby and day job).
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