Community ICT training
The community ICT training is an exciting but challenging endeavor. Training contents need to address the local learners’ immediate information needs to keep the learners engaged, while the training structure and approach have to take many factors into consideration, including the human resources to be drawn as trainers, the schedule of the locals, and the learning style of the locals. It is now clear to us that the community ICT training is not just about technology, but a paradigm shift. We need and welcome community informatics researchers and experts to help develop strategies for how ICTs can enable and empower rural communities for the ICT training to sustain and become an integral part of self-conscious community development.
Pilot Project: TianZhu ICT Training ( May 2009 - May 2012)
This project is a 3-year project starting from May 2009. Tianzhu No. 1 High School Evergreen Central Library collaborated with 6 school libraries on 5 agricultural sites to provide training on information self-aid to the local farmers, i.e. how to acquire information needed by daily life and livelihood from the Internet, e.g. on agricultural technology, marketing, policy and regulations, healthcare. As an extended project of EEF, this project is meant to explore an effective model of performing ICT education in the rural areas, in order to be replicated to other service areas of EEF or beyond.
The project service team includes: computer teachers of Tianzhu No. 1 High School as seed trainers, who trained other trainers, and went to the extension sites for extensive training; computer teachers of the 6 schools and core members of the farmer students as local trainers, who provided training to the farmers whenever the latter have spare time; the volunteer group from the Department of Information Management, Lanzhou University who helped manage the online forum which served as a vehicle to reflect the training status, facilitate exchange between the students, and assess the outcome; the volunteer group consisting of library professionals in Shanxi, who designed assessment scheme for the project; EEF project management staff responsible for coordinating the efforts of training group, assessment group and online forum group.
The project team produced the teaching materials and adjusted the training model based on the needs of the students and constraints of the reality. By June 2010, through the exploration of Phase I of this project, the project team has formed a training model featured with 1) train the local trainers, and use trainings provided by local trainers as important component; 2) teach students according to their aptitude, encourage students to help and learn from each other. As a result, part of the students now can search information of interest such as plastic shed farming, the cultivation of hongti grape, disease prevention for pig farming, etc., and can share the information at the online forum. Moving forward, the project will focus on expanding the trainee base and/or extending the training depth, also the systematic assessment of the project impact.
Here is the list of the 6 school libraries and their corresponding agricultural sites:
|
Extension school library |
Corresponding Agricultural Site |
|
Tiantang Nine-year School, Kela Elementary School |
Tiantang Village Government Loan Biogas Project Park |
|
Shimen Elementary School |
Shimen Village Green Vegetable Model Project Park |
|
Huazangsi Middle School |
Huazangsi Chakouyi Village Highland Agricultural Technology Park |
|
Hongda Elementary School |
Hongda Village Land-exchange Poverty-alleviation Project Park |
|
Songshan Middle School |
Songshan Town Highland Shelter-feeding Breed Improvement Project Park |
