Yesterday we recorded more videos with Erkki and Bangu. I hope they will also be valuable for the course..

Jarkko

I am looking forward to the course. Whitin ICT4D is where my main academic interests lay and knowing you I am sure it will be a great course. I believe ICT holds a lot of potential for development but yet it seems like the gap of the digital divide rather widens than decreases at least in Tanzania where I spend a lot of my time. At the moment I am thinking of the role of ownership in ICT4D and believe it to be a key as technology and applications often appear very foreign.

I am expecting to learn and think about the different perspective of the ICT in the developing countries. My country is a developing country with lot of things changing rapidly. Other issues that developing countries have are similar to the one that we have but if we talk about the ICT is the issue related to the digital-divide that needs to be considered at this stage. Now when the developing countries are thinking about how basic telephone can be reached to the people at the remote places who have never seen lights before, the so called developed countries need to study about the usability and research in the color technology in mobile phones. The divide is more in the countries where at some place people have two or more mobile phones with them while other part even dont know what the radio is about.

My interest in this course is finding about the difference and problems that are being faced and trying to find a solution to them with the use of ICT in different perspectives.I am also interested to know the challenges and problems to use these technologies in education.I want to get familiarize with the topics realted to the ICT for development in the developing countries and its the social learning context. I also exxpect some comparision of them with globalizing world. My goal is to get a good understanding how the ICT for the developing countries in the various aspects of the most difficult cultural challenges (among Technical, Environmental and Cultural) can be dealt with. It will help me to be a resource person in educational technology in my country in general.

I am PhD student at the Department of Computer and Systems Sciences, Stockholm University; I am assistant lecturer at Eduardo Mondlane University Mozambique.

I am so happy to join you in this course, and I am interested in ICT4D. My country, Mozambique is developing country and I believe that ICT is a tool that can be used to fight poverty and as a tool to break the gap between the city and rural areas of the country.

My interest is related to elearning specifically how can we introduce elearning to give education opportunities for people living in different places across the country, and to learn how we can use ICT for another services like government, health, tourism agriculture, etc. I hope to learn with other participants within different perspectives and culture.

My name is Marko Oravainen and I am from Finland. At the moment I am studying masters degree of educational technology in the university of Joensuu. Previously I have studied computer sciences in the university of Tampere, where my major was interactive technology(HCI).

I am interested of this course because I want to expand my knowledge and skills conserning ICT use in different countries and cultures. I think ICT has potential to make people around the world more equal and provide the same opportunities for every one.

My primary interest is to participate in the development of ICT to make it more usable and suitable for diverse users. I think that when ICT meets properly the assumptions and requirements of the people, the benefits of ICT can be maximized.

(next time tape the intro indoors: all that snow and clothes scare me to the bones )

This is Moses originally from Uganda but like Clint (am somewhere between Europe, North America, Asia and Africa). Interests include ICT4D. Some specifics in this domain- developing content, knowledge capture, standardization, e-commerce… e.t.c

The approach proposed here is commendable and looking forward to exchanging ideas and experiences for today in this ever evolving world.

Cheers!

I am Andrés Moreno, PhD student at University of Joensuu. My topic is related to Computer Science Education, but I am interested in ICT4D as well. While I come from Spain, I have been in Finland 7 years, with a small break at Tanzania, where I was teaching programming.

I hope the course will help me to prepare my visit to Kenia, where I will be collecting information for a joint project with the Forestry dpt at Joensuu. The idea is to improve the capacity of the Forestry dpt at Moi University (Kenia). I’ll keep you informed!

As well, I consider ICT4D to be an interesting profesional field and this course should help me to grab the basics.

Cheers!

(small percentage of the book price will go to fund edtech students at Joensuu if book bought throught that link, use at your own will!)

Cheers!

The reason why I want to conduct this course is simply that I want to learn more. There are great opportunities in using ICT in and for development but ICT4D consists of two complex elements and integrating the two is in itself even more intricate.

I’m Lenandlar Singh(Len) from the Department of Computer Science, University of Guyana, Guyana, South America(sorry if i went into too much details, when we say Guyana, ppl who don;t know says ‘ah Ghana’, then we have to say no, Guyana, arrrr….Guy…ana)

Reasons for wanting to be on this course are many and diverse. However, i’m about to commence a PhD program (fingers crossed that all things work out)where i hope to pursue research in ICT4D.Particularly i hope to investigate the digital divide and models for measuring and reducing same.

I believe the course will provide me a great opportunity to explore and gain the much needed groundings in the area of ICT4D.

Regards.

Len

My name is Jussi and I’m originally from Rovaniemi, which is also in Finland, but feels like a totally different country compared to Turku, where I am studying

I’m a Bachelor student of computer science and of development studies at University of Turku, but I am also just about to hand in my doctoral dissertation “Capacity building with financially sustainable open source software - Essays from an action research project” to Turku School of Economics.

My PhD research has been on open source and business networks in developing country context, and it’s mostly based on a ICT4D project done in Kenya with FAO. However, my view on ICT4D issues has been limited to the perspective of this project, so I am looking forward to extending my understanding of the relevant issues.

I am also traveling during the course - I will be in RMIT University in Melbourne Australia as a visiting researcher, so I’m a bit worried if I have time to participate on everything.. But the course sounded so interesting that I couldn’t stay away Looking forward for the discussions!

Cheers, Jussi

I like the title of your PhD dissertation. Would it be possible to say share some of this?if you can, then i;d be most happy to have an insight into your work.

lenandlar.singhgmail.com

Thanks.

Len

This is kasinavrao from India doing doctoral work at SJM School of Management, IITBombay in the area of M4D specific to Indian rural areas. I am masters in CS and seeing at M4D as my research work. Looking interesting to the newsletters today, I found a wonderful opportunity to interact and learn in my research area where I am doing my PhD work. I love to add my name in this “ICT4D Course” which will benefit my doctoral work mainly and also make networking in my area.

Cheers!

kasinavrao

My problem at the moment is my skepticism when it comes to ICT4D and how demandin are computers to install and maintain. Thus, I’ll try to check for some mobile apps which may have further reach than computers. However, I’d like to hear from the other participants what sustainable activities can be done to support and maintain computers in remote places.

Cheers

I have BS degree in Computer Engineering.
This course is a great opportunity for me to contribute, communicate and participate on ICT4D.
I am so happy to join you in this course.

I am participating this course after an extended period of non development oriented work in the ICT sector. As a M.Sc. in International Agricultural Develpoment I devised and implemented from 1988 to 1998 database driven management information systems for project cycle management (monitoring & evaluation). This eventually led my activities away from development cooperation (technical assistance). Now I am fully back into my initial area of competence, and I am trying to acquire as much as possible knowledge relating to ICT4D.

Glad to be here and looking forward to a lively learning experience and exchange of thoughts with all of you.

Cheers,
Frank Kiel

You might know of the SIMputer. Recently met a colleague who told me how well this device works for farmers in India.

Cheers

It is a pleasure to communicate to you all . I come from the Pearl of Africa but to be more specific Uganda. I believe that in this new era where the world has gone wireless,every one should embrace ICT as being the center of Development. However, it is unfortunate that not many people especially in this side of the world have come up to push for ICT as a priority for Development. I hold a Bachelors Degree in Adult and Community Education of Makerere University.My conviction is that meaningful development today should embrace ICT as a central Player.
It is in this regard that I wish to join the ICT4D course, seeing it as a great opportunity to instil and bring to light the Major role that ICT plays or can play in the Development of economies especially Africa.
Don’t look back…

I’ve heard about the Simputer, and in Joensuu we found it not to be practical in our ICT4D, we should have some master’s thesis about it around. But maybe we have different texpectations than Indian farmers, the target group. Good to know it works.

Cheers,

I’ve recently been on a project formulation mission for a Central Asian Ministry, i.e., in a rather developed country (however, historically a Russian ‘backwater’). While their Universities are building web based facilities (and soon e-learning) around an extremely poor backbone connectivity, that Ministry is very reluctant to enabling universal internet access … while every single household is equipped with at least one satellite dish.

Ergo: People are most hungry for information and education, but more than 10 years after the advent of the internet, web based ICT4D is still a very long way to go!

I come from the Eastern part of Africa-Kenya.It is a developing country which will soon be bursting into the world arena and this course will have a great influence in making me understand the concepts and application which much entail ICT development in such countries.

All what has been laid down will be beneficial personally to my articles and also assist me embrace the ICT world.
See you all at the postings…

Do you have more information about the Simputer and the use of it for the farmers. We had an early version of the Simputer in Joensuu and did some experiments with it in Tanzania. We found it quite useless as price was not low and commercial PDAs had better screens and more functions. One thing I remembered was good was the text-to-speach function. However I guess the newer models have been improved but it is still a surprice to hear that the Simputers are found to be useful by the farmers. The Simputer of today would in my opinion be the OLPC which is a bit more interesting and think they both meant a lot in triggering the more established companies to come up with cheaper computers especially targeting developing countries.

http://www.elounge.com/pages/ProductDetails.aspx?ProductIndeks=4844505

My name is Thai Bui, I come from Vietnam. Currently, I am PhD. student at IMPDET, Computer Science and Statistics Department, Joensuu University and I am working at Technical unit of Kemi-Tornio University of Applied Sciences.

In Vietnam, ICT is considered as an important factor in developing, especially in education. The Vietnamese government is investing strongly both infrastructure (e.g. bandwidth of the Internet, wireless communication) and human competence for ICT and they believe that ICT will help the society to be developed faster and more stable. However, as other developing countries the government has faced with many problems in deployment and management in ICT (e.g. e-government, e-learning…). And currently they are fighting with the problems and trying to find the best solutions to utilize the ICT for development.

Therefore, this course is interesting me very much and I hope that I can find many interesting things from here. I would like to know how is ICT is used and deployed in developed countries and also I want to know experiences from developing countries.
I am looking forward to working with all of you who come from many places on the world.

Cheers,
Thai

My name is Monika and I’m a master student at University of Joensuu.

I am originally from Poland. I moved to Finland over 6 years ago. I’ve also lived in Russia and South Korea for a while. I’ve been to a few developing countires in South East Asia.

I’m interested in taking this class because I’m intrested in helping people that really need help. I’d like to find out how with my IT skills I can help others. I guess I’m interested in seeing a different perspective to IT and new opportunities. I’d like to spend some time next year in some developing country.

I managed to order the book yesterday via the link that Andres gave.

I’m looking forward to next week and first lecture!

As a matter of fact I will be acting as an ICT4D expert in a visit to Kenia. As I am still in the process of becoming one, I am trying to gather some resources useful to know more. Apart from Tim’s book, I have collected some useful links in delicious. http://delicious.com/tag/ict4djns I will be adding more as I come across them.

I’d like to propose the tag ict4djns in delicious to identify those web resources you think can be of interest in this course. Please add new links to delicious!

For those who are having difficulties receiving Tim’s book - there are two chapters that you can read for free online while you are waiting for the book to arrive.

Here is the link for that (you’ll find the chapter links in the right panel): http://www.gg.rhul.ac.uk/ict4d/ict4dbook.html

Chapter 1: http://www.gg.rhul.ac.uk/ict4d/Chapter1.pdf
Chapter 3: http://www.gg.rhul.ac.uk/ict4d/Chapter3.pdf

I’m Jani Kontkanen from Joensuu. I study here computer science and applied education in teacher training. I thought I’d check this course out as it’s suitable as a selective course for my Master’s. Also Jarkko Suhonen told me that this is a course to take this semester (bonus point for him =D ) and of course I trust him blindly.

I’m not much into coding, and I noticed there’s the horrible word in the course description.. but I guess I’ll manage, and if I don’t, I’ll just try to neglect the coding excercises if possible. =P

My main goal in educating myself, is to find ways to make my education (as a thing that I do in the future) better for the people ( = children) so that they understand the main ideas of topics at hand easy enough and get a concrete basis to build the skyscraper on.

As for the books, the other one is quite cheap on Amazon, and if someone has an account and is ordering one here to Joensuu, I could take one more as the price stands around $10 at the moment. The other book seems quite hard to come by, but I’d guess life won’t end there.

See/hear/read you guys on monday. My Skype account is firstname.surname (my name, obviously..) in case someone needs/wants to add me.

cheers,
-J

I’m a sociology student in Turku, Finland, with interests in urban studies and development studies. I have also studied Computer Science, and work on making web portals.

I’m honored to be able to participate in this course with you all in here, and look forward to getting to know more about all! Like kasinavrao and Wakabi and others above I look forward to the interaction and getting to know the debates and practices. Some interests/questions:

A case can be made that rich countries haven’t been good at managing technological development in terms of its impact on society so far, or - of course - the depletion of natural resources. If one looks closer at the issue of ICT4D it seems that one gets to confront this issue of what the “proper” usage and management of technology is.

ICT4D is two complex matters, as described by Johan above - and then there’s the “4″, as Tim Unwin writes in the first chapter of the course book. ICT for what development, and how does one get there? Development (like ICT) is definitely a matter of economic aspects and of power. But I think it also needs to make reference to a decent life - it can’t be only a technical definition.

As pointed out by Andrès above in reference to Easterly’s work, there is no neutral development, and any path taken will clearly to some extent benefit some and harm someone else more or less. If we can be explicit about our values and experiences throughout this course I think much can be gained.

Easterly is correct to a high degree about that development hasn’t “worked” (and maybe often also about “The Rich Have Markets, the Poor Have Bureaucrats”?). Maybe, the closer one gets to the actual needs in the intersections between all different interests in specific cases, and understanding how the formulation of these needs comes about (”who decides what the poor need?”), the more we will understand of all the related issues in the contexts we encounter. I hope and believe that we can get a bit closer to that here.

And then, how does one go about to organize and implement an ICT4D strategy so that it actually works, once we have an idea about what to do? I look forward to all of this!

I hope this course will be very interesting as ICT is now a catalyst for every development endeavours.

I am an architect and urban development planner, having recently finished my MSc in Development Planning from University College London as a Commonwealth Scholar. I am originally from India, and I am back in India currently, teaching part-time at two national universities of Architecture and Planning.

I am very interested in this course as it gives me a unique opportunity to learn about technology appropriated for Development. I am personally a man of varied interests and I love to experiment with technology and different streams of learning. Eventually, I wish to be able to use my experiences and knowledge for the betterment of all.

best wishes from the sunny and warm India. May the spring blossoms bring colors and fragrance in all our lives.

Allah’u'Abha

Raj

We are Vera and Yuliya. At the present time we are IMPIT-2008 students at University of Joensuu.

We come from Kazakhstan. It is a developing country. Activities in the ICT field in Kazakhstan began in the mid-nineties. And during the course we want to know about the use of ICT in developing countries. This course will have a great influence on our understanding of the concepts ICT.

Vera Fetyukova

We are Vera and Yuliya. At the present time we are IMPIT-2008 students at University of Joensuu.

We come from Kazakhstan. It is a developing country. Activities in the ICT field in Kazakhstan began in the mid-nineties. And during the course we want to know about the use of ICT in developing countries. This course will have a great influence on our understanding of the concepts ICT.

Vera Fetyukova and Yuliya Shiyan

My belief is that most of the problems which South Africa is faced with could be solved through the wise usage of ICTs, in particular the mobile phone which the majority of the people do have access to. I also believe that the amounts of money spend in acquiring new computers are not in vain but because access to these is not that easy there is, therefore, a need to leverage mobile phone as the most ubiquitous tool available.
My research interests are therefore, generally in ICT for education and development in general. This entails how people can use mobile to access information on health, education, business etc. in order to enhance themselves and to participate in their economic development. For those who are able to use the computer and have access to it there is plenty of information they can access from the internet but for the majority of South Africans who do not their options for access to information are limited.

Therefore, I intend to learn about usage of mobile technologies in addressing the social, cultural and development issues. This will help me in my R&D job when I come back as I shall be able to develop packages and software which can assist the poor majority of South Africans who do not, under normal circumstances, have access to information but do have mobile phones. The knowledge acquired shall be used in our attempt to bridge the digital divide while increasing the number of citizens in the information society.

I am Imtiaj Ahmed, IMPIT-08 major in Computer Science student of University of Joensuu. I am from Bangladesh, which is a rapidly developing country in ICT. I am very much interested to participate in this course. I hope through this ICT4D course I could learn about ICT, and I myself including Bangladesh would be benefitted.

I liked the concept of using youtube to broadcast the feature of this course, its a great idea.

One important point, since we are student, and as you know its difficult to collect the referred books, so I think it would be better for us (specially for me) if you upload the required chapters or pages in the course site or you can email us, then we can get it easily.

Sincerely,
Imtiaj Ahmed

i’ve been looking forward for this course, with your work and experience in the field of ICT4D, i have no doubt that this would be an interesting and productive course.

coming from a developing country (maldives) i’m sure there will be a lot to relate to the issues and challenges for the developing countries and how ICT maybe utilized.

cheers.

The content of the course appeals to me as a student coming from a developing country. I am originally from Rwanda and have been living in Namibia for more than 10 years.

I am an IMPIT student and through this time i have come to know Clint and his works. Thus i look forward to the course and learning from everyone.