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Communities, Technology and Participation
A Workshop open to all
Friday Sept 24th 2010
3354, K R Road
servelots.com/directions.txt contact: tgc at janastu dot org
We invite you to participate in this workshop to help bring about critical reflection through presentations or discussions.
The workshop interrogates three concepts: “communities”, “technology” and “participation” by looking at two projects – the School Information Management System conceived as an open source tool where teachers can participate in using the technology; and the introduction of tele-centres in parts of Karnataka state for providing services to rural citizens through an intermediary, in this case the tele-centre operator and the private parties who established and continue to run the tele-centres. Such interrogations and analyses are critical to understand how communities are configured and reconfigured through implementation of technology and around the use and development of both ICTs and digital technologies. We believe that this work will also inform future interventions which intend to use ICTs for developmental purposes and for existing communities that have shaped around ideologies and projects such as free software, Wikipedia, open source, among others. In the process of looking at these questions, issues and objects, the project seeks to address the problem of ‘extent of participation’ in different circumstances and what do more or less participation tell us about the technologies themselves and the processes accompanying the introduction of ICTs as well as the social and historical context of communities.
11:00 to 11:20 Introductions
11:20 to 11:40 School project report by Megha and Dinesh
11:40 to 12:00 Remarks and Feedback
12:00 to 12:20 Nemmadi Research report by Zainab and Bhuvana
12:20 to 12:40 Remarks and Feedback
12:40 to 1:00 Open Source as Infrastructure Discussion (Moderator: Jace)
1 to 1:45 Lunch
1:50 to 2:30 5 min short notes on impressions, inputs, feedback from participants and guests
2:30 to 3:30 Break out for further explorations on
1 Nemmadi and related e-governance
2 Schools,information management, teachers and software
3 Open source as Infrastructure, etc
3:30 Tea and thank yous.
