Title: Empowering Indigenous learners in remote Australian communities
Author: Alison Elliott
Pages: 9 pp.
Source: Prato Community CIRN Conference 2009: Empowering communities: learning from community informatics practice

Date (published): 11/12/2009
Date (accessed): 23/03/2010
Type of information: peer-reviewed conference article
Language: English
On-line access: yes (pdf)
Abstract:
Remote schools in predominantly Indigenous (Australian) towns and communities are confronted by staffing challenges unimaginable in urban areas. Ideally, remote schools should be staffed largely by teachers who have strong social and cultural ties to their communities and who want to live and work in them. However, for a range of complex cultural, social and economic reasons, many Indigenous people living in remote Australia who would make excellent teachers are not in the position to participate in mainstream higher education programs to qualify as teachers, nor are they able to participate in regular external studies or ‘open’ learning programs because of limited ICT access and skills and other social and communication challenges. This paper outlines the pedagogical underpinnings of Growing our Own and particularly, ways in which community informatics are used to empower learning. Growing our Own addresses the long standing problem of engaging remote Indigenous learners in higher education, and in the longer term, building sustainable, Indigenous teaching workforces by delivering teacher education in situ in remote Northern Territory communities. Growing Our Own is a partnership between Charles Darwin University and Catholic Education Northern Territory. The program is delivered ‘in-place’ and empowers students by valuing and actively embracing cultural knowledge as it builds relevant ways of knowing and doing ‘schooling’ to meet the graduate professional standards for teacher registration in the Northern Territory. All students are employed as Teacher Assistants.
Growing Our Own employs one-to-one and small group tutoring along with digital technologies to personalise learning, build learning communities, provide access to the wider world of education, teaching and learning and build on students’ cultural knowledges and existing teaching skills. Simultaneously, digital tools are used to support academic staff and co-teachers enrich their understandings of local Indigenous cultures and blend local ways of knowing, being and doing with contemporary “school” knowledge. This ‘two ways’ approach infuses local cultural knowledges across all aspects of the program to empower learning. Its culturally responsive focus values Indigenous educators’ strong sense of cultural identity and learning styles including collaborative work. Importantly, digital technologies are instrumental in scaffolding personalised learning approaches, including assessment, that empower students and the wider community to calibrate personal and local knowledges with mainstream curriculum knowledge and effective teaching strategie

Title: Broadband Adoption in Low-Income Communities
Authors: Dharma Dailey, Amelia Bryne, Alison Powell, Joe Karaganis and Jaewon Chung
Pages: 103 pp.
Publisher: Social Science Research Council
Date (published): 01/03/2010
Date (accessed): 23/03/2010
Type of information: research report
Language: English
On-line access: yes (pdf)
Abstract:
The social function of the Internet has changed dramatically in recent years. What was, until recently, a supplement to other channels of information and communication has become increasingly a basic requirement of social and economic inclusion. Educational systems, employers, and government agencies at all levels have shifted services online—and are pushing rapidly to do more. Price remains only one factor shaping the fragile equilibrium of home broadband adoption, and library and community organizations fill the gap by providing critical training and support services while under severe economic pressures. Commissioned by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to analyze the factors shaping low rates of adoption of home broadband services in low-income and other marginalized communities, this SSRC study is one of the only large-scale qualitative investigations of barriers to adoption in the US and complements FCC survey research on adoption designed to inform the 2010 National Broadband Plan. The study draws on some 170 interviews of non-adopters, community access providers, and other intermediaries conducted across the US in late 2009 and early 2010 and identifies a range of factors that make broadband services hard to acquire and even harder to maintain in such communities.

Title: Developing a Methodology for Costing the Impact of Digital Exclusion
Publisher: University of Oxford for the Oxford Internet Institute
Date (published): March 2010
Date (accessed): 23/03/2010
Type of information:
Language: English
On-line access: yes (HTML)
Abstract:
This site presents a Methodology for Costing the Impact of Digital Exclusion, developed for the National Audit Office (NAO) by the LSE Public Policy Group and the Oxford Internet Institute (OII) and opens it up for expert deliberation. Please go to the How you can help tab to participate in the deliberation and improve the methodology!

This online consultation was commissioned by the NAO to inform its understanding of the evidence base on the costs and benefits of digitial inclusion activities. Please do not quote or reference the research without the express permission of the NAO. The NAO has yet to decide when and how it will publish the results of this exercise.

BACKGROUND

Recent work by OII has shown that technological forms of exclusion are a reality for significant segments of the population, that different groups experience different types of exclusion, and that for some people they reinforce and deepen existing disadvantages, such as social and economic exclusion.

We were asked by the National Audit Office to develop a methodology for working out the benefits foregone to citizens, government and the economy through digital exclusion - and the costs of overcoming them. This methodology is presented here.

Title: New Innovators in the Field of ICT4D
Author: Siena Antsis
Source: Youthink! but do you know?
Publisher: The World Bank Group

Date (published): 15/03/2010
Date (accessed): 23/03/2010
Type of information: blog post
Language: English
On-line access: yes (HTML)
Abstract:
...I wanted to introduce a few projects, most “new” in the field...:
* iHub
* Voices of Africa & Rural Internet Kiosks
* Battery Operated Systems for Community Outreach (BOSCO) Uganda
* Open Action
* Digital Hero Book
...
All these projects have one key similarity: flexibility. While most operate as traditional non-governmental organizations with donors to report back to, there is breathing room for change.

Title: Empowering communities: learning from community informatics practice
Author: Leopoldina Fortunati
Pages: 12 pp.
Source: Prato Community CIRN Conference 2009: Empowering communities: learning from community informatics practice 

Date (published): 25/01/2010
Date (accessed): 23/03/2010
Type of information: peer-reviewed conference article
Language: English
On-line access: yes (pdf)
Abstract:
As the call for papers of this conference emphasizes, ‘there is a widespread expectation that Community Informatics will enhance democracy, develop social capital, build communities, develop economies and empower individuals and groups, and result in many different forms of social change’. While all this might constitute a shared perspective and aspiration, I would like in this keynote to address the notion of empowerment. The aim of this paper is to contribute to the substantial debate on empowering by re-examining some issues of the classical sociological debate on power. Consequently, my hope is to propose some reflections which might help to expand critically the analysis of the notion of empowerment.
The ownership of the means of production and the control over labour are, according to Marx, the most important resources of power. In this century, the explosion in ICT diffusion means that billions of people now directly possess these technologies and directly control access to information. The power to control ICTs gives people the right to decide if to use them, how to use them and to what extent, and finally for which purposes to use them. The technologies of information and communication might therefore be considered as the means of production for immaterial goods such as information, communication, education, entertainment and so on. But, said that, does the use of ICTs directly empower individuals, groups or communities? And if the answer is in the affirmative, in which sense and to what extent?

Title: Collaboration Patterns as Building Blocks for Community Informatics
Author: Aldo de Moor
Pages: 21 pp.
Source: Prato Community CIRN Conference 2009: Empowering communities: learning from community informatics practice 
Date (published): 24/11/2009
Date (accessed): 23/03/2010
Type of information: peer-reviewed conference article
Language: English
On-line access: yes (pdf)
Abstract:
Community Informatics is a wide-ranging field of inquiry and practice, with many paradigms, disciplines, and perspectives intersecting. Community informatics research and practice build on several methodological pillars: contexts/values, cases, process/methodology, and systems. Socio-technical patterns and pattern languages are the glue that help connect these pillars. Patterns define relatively stable solutions to recurring problems at the right level of abstraction, which means that they are concrete enough to be useful, while also sufficiently abstract to be reusable. The goal of this paper is to outline a practical approach to improve CI research and practice through collaboration patterns. This approach should help to strengthen the analysis, design, implementation, and evaluation of socio-technical community systems. The methodology is illustrated with examples from the ESSENCE (E-Science/Sensemaking/Climate Change) community.

See also: Slides in pdf

Title: Some thoughts on Research as an Element in Telecentre/Community Informatics Practice
Author: Michael Gurstein
Source: Gurstein's Community Informatics
Date (published): 20/03/2010
Date (accessed): 21/03/2010
Type of information: blog post
Language: English
On-line access: yes (HTML)
Abstract:
Community Informatics research differs from conventional social science research in a number of ways:

1. it is future oriented rather than retrospective i.e. it looks towards what could (should) be done rather than what has been done in the past

2. it is iterative i.e. it builds from research (and practical) result to research (and practical) result

3. its desired outcome is practical success rather than explanatory models with explanatory models being inputs to practice rather than vice versa

4. it operates in a highly volatile environment where basic conditions such as the underlying technology platforms, service offerings and cost structures, and policy contexts may be in rapid and unpredictably evolution

What is notable in my various travels and equally in reflecting on the experience elsewhere is how little actual useful research has been conducted or is being conducted into the community use of ICTs particularly from a perspective which attempts to understand the current in order to inform the future.

Title: The Kenya Digital Study Report
Author: Moses Kemibaro
Source: www.moseskemibaro.com

Date (published): 05/03/2010
Date (accessed): 17/03/2010
Type of information: blog post
Language: English
On-line access: yes (HTML)
Abstract:
Earlier today the Kenya ICT Board and TNS Research International launched the Kenya Digital Study Report. The report details how Kenyans ‘consume’ the internet and is part of a global series of studies funded by TNS Research International which explore how digital services are changing the lives and demands of consumers. Ultimately, the report will lead to new ways of providing services and marketing in Kenya via the Internet and other digital channels.

The report was based on 1,669 responses that we’re conducted online between the months of December 2009 and February 2010.

The report:
Digital Kenya: A study to understand the on-line life of Kenyans: Key findings
59 pp, 3 MB, pdf (slides), download

via ICTworks by Inveneo

Title: Open ICT Ecosystems Transforming the Developing World
Authors: Matthew Smith, Laurent Elder
Pages: 7 pp.
ISSN: 1544-7529
Source: Information Technologies and International Development; Vol 6, Issue 1 - Spring 2010, 65-71 pp.
Publisher: USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism

Date (published): 10/03/2010
Date (accessed): 15/03/2010
Type of information: peer-reviewed article
Language: English
On-line access: yes (pdf)
Abstract:
The hypothesis of this paper is that open social arrangements, enabled by ICTs, can help to catalyze the development impacts of ICTs. In other words, open ICT ecosystems provide the space for the ampliacation and transformation of social activities that can be powerful drivers of development. Note that an ICT ecosystem is understood to be more than just a technological system; rather, it is a social system within which ICTs are embedded.

Title: Policies, Partnerships, and Pragmatism: Lessons from an ICT-in-Education Project in Rural Uganda
Author: Laura Hosman
Pages: 17 pp.
ISSN: 1544-7529
Source: Information Technologies & International Development; Vol 6, Issue 1 - Spring 2010, 48-64 pp.
Publisher: USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism

Date (published): 10/03/2010
Date (accessed): 15/03/2010
Type of information: peer-reviewed article
Language: English
On-line access: yes (pdf)
Abstract:
For at least the past decade, political leaders and policy makers have stressed how important it is for Africa to harness technology, leapfrog development, and take part in the global knowledge economy. In numerous initiatives aimed at realizing these goals, education is a primary target, viewed as a mechanism through which information and communication technologies (ICT) can empower societies to develop technologically literate workforces. Unfortunately, there is a considerable gap between policy rhetoric and effective project implementation. Even as ICT-in-education projects increase rapidly in number and scope across the continent, many still lack necessary pre-project assessments, enumerated goals for outcomes, or understanding of what technology can and cannot do. This article’s focus on policies, partnerships, and pragmatism is informed by a case study of a multi-partnered ICT-in-education project in rural Uganda that set pragmatic technology-use goals, a project for which governmental policy provided an important initial incentive, and which was subsequently revised to address actual student needs for acquiring technology skills. The case offers important lessons to inform both similar projects and government-led policy initiatives in the future.