December 2010 - change - Mailing Lists

Discussion on Information Access in Developing Countries
by Eleanor O'Rourke 08 Dec '10

08 Dec '10

This Thursday at Change, Luis Baron, Aniruddh Nath, and Wayne Gerard will be leading a discussion about current research that looks at information access in rural areas of developing countries. They will be providing short overviews of three articles, and leading a discussion around questions inspired by this work. The articles covered will include: Public Access to the Internet and Social Change: An experience in Colombia, between silence and hope (UW) Content Creation and Dissemination by-and-for Users in Rural Areas (IBM India Research Lab) Evaluating the Accuracy of Data Collection on Mobile Phones: A Study of Forms, SMS, and Voice (MIT, MSR India) Please join us for sandwiches, and to discuss current research in ICTD and information access! What: Discussion on Information Access in Developing Countries When: Thursday, December 9th at noon Where: Paul Allen Center, Room 203

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change site project/people listings
by Yaw Anokwa 07 Dec '10

07 Dec '10

if you are uw affiliated and consider yourself a member of change, please check http://change.washington.edu/projects and http://change.washington.edu/people to confirm your information is listed and accurate. if your name is not listed or is wrong, use this http://goo.gl/wFNGU if your project is not listed or is wrong, use this http://goo.gl/KVhUS this process should only take a few minutes and it will ensure the surge of visitors we get during the ictd and dev conferences can find out about you and your project. yaw

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Funded OpenROSA Mentorships
by Yaw Anokwa 07 Dec '10

07 Dec '10

The OpenROSA consortium was formed in an effort to create a set of standards to allow mobile data collection tools to interoperate. These standards allow you to mix-and-match tools from Cell Life, Dimagi, DataDyne, UW, D-Tree, AED-Satellife and a number of other institutions. If you've used CommCare, EpiSurveyor, XLS2XForms, GATHER, Open Data Kit, JavaRosa, openXdata, PurcForms, Kobo, or EMIT, you have used an OpenROSA tool. OpenROSA is seeking applications from organizations mentor Coded in Country (CIC) organizations to complete OpenROSA-related projects. The objective of these projects is to engage mentoring organizations seeking to hire CIC partners in low-income countries for projects utilizing OpenROSA technologies. Applying organizations should have a goal to continue the relationship after the project is completed. OpenROSA will provide $5,000 for up to three projects to start in early 2011. The money will go to the implementing organization. The project should be of direct benefit to the mentoring organization. If you are interested in mentoring a project, please apply via http://openrosa.org/2010/11/mentor-a-cic-organization by December 13th. The selected projects will identify implementing organizations early next year, and then we’ll providing funding to complete the projects. If you have questions, email Neal Lesh at neal.lesh(a)gmail.com

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ICTD 2010
by Nicola Dell 03 Dec '10

03 Dec '10

hey everyone As many of us know, the 2010 ICTD and DEV conferences are just around the corner. The Change group has a number of publications/posters/talks that will be presented and I would like to compile a list of all these contributions for the Change website. If you are going to the conference(s) and/or making any contribution, please send me the title of what you will be doing along with a sentence or two about your work so that I can include it. Thanks Nicki

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Joe Cook on Water Accessibility in Ethiopia
by Eleanor O'Rourke 01 Dec '10

01 Dec '10

This Thursday at Change, Joe Cook from the Evans School of Public Affairs will be speaking about his work on measuring water accessibility in Ethiopia. The vast majority of academic research pertaining to water supply projects in developing countries has focused on health improvements, although the benefits of convenience and time savings are often reported by households as being more important. Time saved may be used for education, income-generating activities or increased leisure. It may, however, be re-allocated within the household so that women and girls (who are the primary water carriers) continue to perform most of the menial, low-value tasks. I will discuss a two-year panel study in rural Ethiopia that recorded household time use before and after water supply becomes more convenient. I will also discuss our use of pedometers on water-collection containers to test measurement error in self-reported time use data, as well as other possible uses of sensors to verify social science or behavioral data. Join us for lunch this Thursday to learn more about water supply projects in developing countries! What: Joe Cook on Water Accessibility in Ethiopia When: Thursday, December 2 at noon Where: Paul Allen Center, Room 203

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Design Opportunities and Challenges in Indian Urban Slums - Community Communication and Mobile Phones
by Yaw Anokwa 01 Dec '10

01 Dec '10

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Abhigyan Singh <abhigyan.singh(a)gmail.com> Date: Wed, Dec 1, 2010 at 04:25 Subject: Introduction To: yanokwa(a)gmail.com Cc: abhigyan.sub(a)gmail.com, change(a)change.washington.edu Dear Yaw and Change Group members, I hope you all are doing good. I write this email to introduce my research which may be of some interest to members of Change Group. Earlier this year, I finished my master's studies in New Media Design from Aalto University School of Art and Design (previously known as University of Art and Design Helsinki) Finland. My master's thesis (title: Design Opportunities and Challenges in Indian Urban Slums - Community Communication and Mobile Phones) is based on two ethnographic field studies done in urban slums of India. The aim of this master’s thesis is to identify design challenges and opportunities for mobile based community communication services for marginalized communities belonging to Indian urban slums. The thesis is grounded in the conceptual frameworks of Community Informatics, Communicative Ecology and Communities of Practices. This qualitative research is best identified as participatory bottom-up exploration. In the context of Indian urban slums this thesis discusses the existing practices of mobile phone's use, identifies the 'Human Nodes' of community communication, presents design opportunities and challenges for community communication services, and proposes a design concept called 'Asynchronous Voice based Community Communication Service'. You could see/download thesis presentation and full-text from the following links: Master's Thesis Presentation: http://www.slideshare.net/abhigyan1107/masters-thesis-presentation-abhigyan… Master's Thesis: http://www.mobileactive.org/research/design-opportunities-and-challenges-in… I will be available for any discussion in any aspect of this research or similar works. Please feel free to write to me. Best Regards, Abhigyan Singh LinkedIn: http://in.linkedin.com/in/agsingh Sample Portfolio: http://www.slideshare.net/abhigyan1107/portfolio-abhigyan-singh

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Fwd: CFP: Social Media for Development Workshop at CSCW 2011, Hangzhou, China, March 19-23, 2011
by Sam Kaufman 30 Nov '10

30 Nov '10

This was sent to the sustainable-chi list. —Sam ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Susanne Hupfer <shupfer(a)gmail.com> Date: Tue, Nov 30, 2010 at 8:30 PM […] Call for Participation: Workshop at CSCW 2011, Hangzhou, China, March 19-23, 2011 Social Media for Development http://sites.google.com/site/sm4dev Recent projects and studies suggest there is interesting and diverse work emerging at the intersection of ICT4D--the application of information and communication technologies to socio-economic development--and social media. One trend both fields share is the rise of mobile: While ICT4D has been devoting increasing attention to mobile technologies due to their global reach, there has also been a surge in mobile social media applications for the developed world. Whether mobile or web-based, work by social media researchers indicates that social software may have significant potential in developing regions through support for citizen reporting, crowdsourcing, grassroots mapping, and education. Through position papers and interactive discussions, workshop participants will explore current work at the intersection of ICT4D and social media (we'll call it "SM4D"), as well as challenges, emerging themes, and future directions. Workshop Organizers: Susanne Hupfer, Beth Kolko, Kentaro Toyama Workshop Date: March 19 or 20 (TBD)

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