My Experience at Info Poverty World Conference (Written By Mitch Roberson)

Recently I was asked to speak at the info Poverty World Conference. This was obviously a great opportunity for me. Specifically I was asked to focus on alternative methods of connectivity for ICT’s. As I started researching this I found that many locations in the world do not have connectivity at all. 

As I did more research I found an article that talked about an individual with limited education that watched a couple of videos on his phone and started collecting junk from the Local trash heap. He was able to build a complete radio from the videos and the junk he was able to find.  

This made me think about what it would take to provide just video education to the locations in need. We all know that the best education is in person education this allows for interaction and allows for the instructor to  adapt his or her teaching methods based on body language and input from the students. 

The second best method is Online in person training. In this type  of training the instructor is remote but has the ability to interact with the  students via video and voice. In some cases there is a virtual white board and  may even have survey capability. This is a pretty good method of instruction but
often times it does not allow for the instructor to keep track of all the
students and or see if they are actually understand the content. 

The 3rd method of instruction is via a recording  that people can watch. This method obviously does not allow for interaction.  However if the video is well laid out and follows some general principals of  instruction. They are often very successful. Think about this. If you have ever  had an instructor that was capable of holding your attention and explaining a  process or subject better than anyone else you had seen. Wouldn’t it be a good idea to have them be videotaped and then post that for others to watch? This  allows for one to many type of educational solution with some of the best  instructors in the world. Kahn Academy is a great example of this. 

Knowing the above I started to think about can we deliver the video’s  as cached content. As I did more research on this I found that World Computer
Exchange is already doing something similar. In some cases their computers that they deliver may have portions of Kahn Academy already cached on the local machine. However the problem they have is often the hard drives do not
have the space needed in order to really cache all needed content. 

As I started to think about this it made me want to find out what content could be included and how could we make this more viable. This started me thinking first of what content we could cache. Here are some of the things that I found:

USAID (provides video’s for Agriculture
improvements these are made with local farmers that have the solution
working)
Kahn Academy

Project Peanut  butter  (how to treat malnutrition videos)

CDC (putting your hands together hygiene videos)

Unicef Hand washing campaign (I have not found a video yet)

This is just a few of the potential options. I am sure there are  many more. As I continued to look at this. It started to make more sense to add  the Cacheing server to something like the LifeBox Container that ACI is  currently deploying. Based on this idea we started to expand this. 

The LifeBox can become the central hub for the community. We can  actually add wireless to the container. This would make it easier for people to  use the content on their local devices if they have them. With initiatives like  one laptop per child And the World Computer Exchange this is becoming more common.

At the same time we can start pre-educating people before teams  arrive on site. This could be handled by the initial evaluation team that is  reviewing the location in preparation for an onsite team. The lead team could  deliver and upload additional content related to their project and instruct the local group on how to view the content. Then the teachers could learn with the students at the same time. And the community would be prepared for the arrival  of the onsite team.

I  know this is a long post and there is much more we can do with this. I will
attempt to post more over the next several days.