ICTD - Having Global Impact as a Technical Woman

Engaging Students in the Free Open Source Movement Through Civic Engagement

I sort of punted on note-taking in this panel (sorry!), so I only got the questions. I think the long and short of it is that they started this really great program for undergrads to get involved in humanitarian open source projects. They worked on a number of projects - OpenMRS, and Sahana to name two. It was crazy intense, they started out with no experience, and in three weeks they went from knowing nothing to knowing everything! But the larger takeaway was that it was really encouraging for them to be working on software "for good," to be doing development for a higher cause. It was satisfying to be challenged. And it was satisfying to develop something that helped people!

www.hfoss.org

Experiences with OLPC Technology in Ghana, West Africa
Presenter: Suzanne Buchele (Southwestern University)

This presentation reminded me of my early experiences in Tijuana looking at computers in schools, crossed with my time(s) in Ghana, and my brief stints looking through computer labs in various schools in Jinja, Uganda. Now, I'm not the biggest fan of OLPC in general - Negroponte's attitude drives me nuts, even if I've loved most of the other OLPC people I've met. The relationship between computers and educational outcomes is unclear (ref: Larry Cuban), and most countries simply don't have the resources to plan computer based curriculum beyond the level of "this is a floppy disk, ram is memory, and this is how you create and save a document in microsoft word". From there, they don't have the teachers to teach the curriculum, the computers to test them on it, and the power to actually administer the tests. One school I visited complained about a timed test which was aborted because the power went out, and they didn't have a generator. They even had to test everyone in shifts - because the computer class was normally taught with 8 students to a computer, and the test had to be administered with only one person to a computer. (ref Patra, ICTD). Anyways. Off the OLPC soapbox. I still thought the work and the presentation was cool, and the fact that the the school had laptops was great. Somehow no matter what my development ideology may be I still get warm fuzzies inside when I see all these kids with computers and I know that they are learning new things in new ways. I hope they prove me wrong!

Resources:
http://www.laptop.org
http://wiki.laptop.org

Paper:
http://www.southwestern.edu/~bucheles/ICAST_OLPC_Paper.pdf

For those of you at Grace Hopper reading this, our panel is today! Come check us out at 1:30pm in Torreys Peak I-II. If you would like to do a little pre-panel reading, check out the following papers:

1. Brewer, E. et al., “The Case for Technology in Developing Regions,” Computer, vol. 38, no. 6, 2005, pp. 25-38.
http://tier.cs.berkeley.edu/docs/CFT-ieee.pdf

2. Brewer, E. et al., “The Challenges of Technology Research for Developing Regions,” IEEE Pervasive Computing, vol. 5, no. 2, April-June 2006, pp. 15-23.
http://tier.cs.berkeley.edu/docs/challenges-ieee.pdf

3. Basha E., and Rus, D. “Design of Early Warning Flood Detection Systems for Developing Countries.” IEEE/ACM International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development (ICTD2007), Bangalore, India, 2007
http://groups.csail.mit.edu/drl/wiki/images/e/e0/BashaICTD07SAT.pdf

Social Impact of Advanced Technologies and Telemedicine in the Developing World
Panelists: Mateja de Leonni Stanonik (International Virtual e-Hospital), Rifat Latifi (International Virtual e-Hospital)

This panel was a must-attend for me - telemedicine in the developing world is exactly up my alley of research, between my research in Ghana (teleconsultation for doctors) and various WiLDnet deployments in India for Aravind Eye Hospitals. Anyways, the panelists here run a network of International Virtual e-Hospitals (both virtual and physical) all over the world. What stood out to me was that they don't just do traditional (expensive) video-conferencing telemedicine, but that they are also engaged in public health education, and in more rudimentary projects bringing medicine to the village level... They just don't talk about it as much. If you peruse the notes below, check out especially the last two questions.

What makes me really think, though, is that I don't think this type of work is really covered within the (at least my) ICTD research community, in particular because their technology delivery model is not sustainable. It's extremely costly, dependent on ongoing capital investments, VSAT connectivity, etc. There's a call for technology research (see the last question). But clearly this falls within our realm, I think. It's just not "acceptable"? Or maybe it doesn't constitute research - it's an implementation, but doesn't use novel technology? What makes this type of telemedicine ICTD or not ICTD?

Key Links from the speakers:
www.iveh.org
www.surgery.arizona.edu
www.telemedks.org
www.amazonswim.com

Looking for a way to use your technical skills in Africa this summer? Volunteer for Powering Potential as a teacher this summer! Janice Lathen is looking for people with linux experience to help teach in the school where she's holding "Technology Tent", a computer camp in which she's going to bring video cameras and cameras and let kids learn how to tell stories with digital media. Fun, huh? Anyways, I met her and others at the nonprofit panel this morning - my notes in the rest of this post. :)

Welcome to our website for women in information, communications technology, and development (ICTD). This page is meant to answer some questions you might have about the site and about us. Please add your comments and feedback, sign up, and post your own content! It's meant to be a community resource, so it's your site as much as ours!

So included in the swag is a "squeezable" flashlight - I'm going to start a collection. If you don't want yours, Revi or I would be happy to take it to Africa!

I’ve just been going over the sessions, and it’s totally action packed. I've listed in this post the panels and talks I'm hoping to attend.

Thanks for the clear definition of ICTD, Revi! I like the widening pie imagery and agree with the two separate definition areas. If we take it one step further and add in the notion of research, I think the definition narrows somewhat.

Let's get some talking up here! Does ICTD = computer science/computer engineering for societal benefit? What really IS ICTD?

So, our panel at GHC is called "Having Global Impact as a Technical Woman: Information Technology Applied to the Developing World" --
Three women will present first hand accounts of how they are building and deploying technologies ranging from mobile devices to sensor networks to address issues in disaster mitigation, healthcare, and improving the status of women in developing countries. All four speakers will provide advice and give examples of ways attendees can get involved in the area of Information and Communication Technologies for Development (ICTD), through curriculum examples and projects.

Realistically, we'll have about 15 minutes a piece to talk about what each of us could easily spend several hours discussing, so we'd like to offer a little background.