Chloé Zollman and Arpita Joshi had the opportunity to attend and participate in the Mobile Plus- International Conference on Inclusive Growth through Mobile Applications held in Chennai from the 15 to 17 September 2011. The three days of the conference were divided thematically. The first day looked at 'The emerging mobile landscape' covering a wide range of issues related to mobile development. The second day covered 'Strategies and applications' while the last day covered 'Communities and growth'.

Last week, I attended my first class at Government Model Primary School (GMPS) Puttenahalli. Mary Shyla, one of our English teachers was taking an English class on Demonstrative Pronouns for her 5^th Std students using Tux Paint (a public software tool). Before Shyla brought her students to the computer lab, I helped her switch on the computers and open Tux Paint. Her class walked in a line, very quiet and sat themselves down in groups in front of the computer. There were about 5 students per computer. Immediately they started playing without the tool without waiting for instructions from their teacher.

The last day of the State Master trainer's Social Science workshop saw an interesting discussion emerging out of the presentation of the local government. One participant made an interesting statement: “yesterday the buzzword was behaviourism, teachers were following it. Today it is constructivism and teachers are following it. Tomorrow it will be something else and teachers will be forced to follow it”. This is a controversial yet powerful statement, where it is evident that unfortunately teachers are bound to the system and barely have a voice in the decision-making process.

I visited the Raita Kendra in Chikballapur as part of the reseach on Samudaya Jnana Kendras for Karnataka Jyana Aayoga. This was a special kendra as opposed to the others across the State as it was part of a pilot project of computerising the Kendras.

When I was there, I was lucky to witness a meeting, or training as they called it. There were about 50 farmers from different age groups at this meeting.

A week ago, I was in Gangavati taluk of Koppal District, as part of ITfC's research study on “Developing an institutional design for Community Knowledge Centres”, for the Karnataka Knowledge Commission. The study aims to develop an appropriate design for centres at the village level, which can provide entitlements-related information to village communities as well as facilitate co-creation of knowledge in various domains pertinent to everyday life (such as agriculture, animal husbandry, health, etc.); and also spark off a local culture of knowledge-seeking behaviour and knowledge-oriented collective processes (e.g., community-initiated discussions and debates on scientific and indigenous knowledge).

The Gender and Citizenship in the Information Society (CITIGEN), launched in 2010, is an Asia-wide research programme co-ordinated by IT for Change and supported by the The International Development Research Centre (IDRC). It aims to explore the notion of marginalised women's citizenship as a normative project or an aspiration for equitable social membership contained in the promise of an emerging techno-social order. CITIGEN also hopes to build a network of researchers and scholars engaged in policy research and advocacy on information society and gender issues in the Asia region. Currently six research partners from Sri Lanka, Philippines, China, Thailand/Taiwan, Bangladesh and India are studying various aspects of the terrain, and four eminent scholars from Costa Rica, Pakistan, Thailand and Germany, are writing think pieces delving into the research subject from their perspectives to further enrich the research process.

This is a response to an article by Osama Manzar. Read the original article here.

Being part of the education team in IT for Change, I have been talking about the greatness of the Kerala IT@Schools project for about two years now. But I had yet to visit this project and learn from it first hand. Such an opportunity finally came along when the DSERT staff arranged for a one-day trip to the Kasaragod IT@Schools project.