Mobile learning for development (Ken) May 16, 2010

Dear Mads and All,

Thanks mads for your prompt response to my mail that intends to connect you with Yishay Mor of London Knowledge Lab
 (http://www.lkl.ac.uk/people/mor.html)
 Yishay is thinking of possibilties of finding an host for an M-learning workshop here in Denmark.
See part of our correspondence in the forwaded mail below.
I have also c.c'd people who may also have interest in the convesation generated here.

I will first start by introducing myself as a response to your inquiry- "with whom do i do my work"
I am a Kenyan currently residing in Denmark and married to a Dane.
I am an Artist by profession. I am a performing Artist with Nafsi Africa Acrobats (www.nafsiafrica.org) but now more involved in correspondence and organising of the groups' perfomance and tour calender.
Beyond  perfomances, Nafsi Africa Acrobats have used acrobatics as a tool to Respond to particular social problems, challenges, and circumstances.
The groups' major objective is to tap and exploit talent resource in order to earn a living, social empowerment, and sustainable livelihoods.
The members are drawn from different tribal backgrounds , born and raised in families of humble and poor backgrounds.
Most of us have limited educational background or never went through formal education at all.
As a response to the challenge of not having enough education we enlisted as members of an online forum called M.S.lab (www.ms.lt).
M.S.lab is a forum of independent thinkers who contribute, share ideas and collectively work on Projects and initiatives openly, practically and virtually.
The Global team of self directed workers are organised around working groups guided by a deepest value that members share.
Nafsi Africa Acrobats moderates a working group in the forum called "Nafsi Africa Saana"
Through the working groups, "learning from each other" , "Nafsi Afrika Saana" and "Holistic Helpings", we have increased our knowledge base and also attended many workshops that has helped as with practical and ideology skills for initiatives that empower our communities.
The forum for us has been a movement for open source knowledge and has proved  to us how ICT is an essential tool for learning and development.
M.S.Lab has demonstrated to us that ICT  is in some respects a reaction to the limitations of 'static' learning.
During the post election violence in Kenya, our group through the forum participated in an initiative coined Pyramid of Peace .
To get some idea of role played by phones in Pyramid of Peace please see brief introduction at phone4peace http://phone4peace. blogspot. com/
You can read full story of PoP - Pyramid of Peace here http://www.pyramido fpeace.net/ .
We used mobile technologies to reach out to the Proscribed violent gangs, and the victims of the violence
Usahidi's engine, initially used to track violent acts in the wake Kenya’s 2007 elections, and Pyramid of Peace were some exemplary and leading examples of grassroots-based crowdsourcing.
Through M.S.Lab, i am  currently  involved in another ICT4dev initiative known as the sneakernet project- A network of people, who transport and exhange files from place to place. carrying files on physical media, such as USB Flash Memory Drive, memory card or Re-writeable CD/DVD-ROM.
Briefly that is who i am in connection to ICT4 Dev, and my focuss which is ICT as an empowering vehicle and for social development..

I am attending the language school in Vejle commune, i am a beneficiary of your profound Mobile learning project "Mobil Efterruddannelse"
I have been overly impressed by the idea and thought to contact my teacher Elise to get more ideas about it, compare and learn the approaches you are employing.
My group will be participating in the Participatory Design Workshop in Mobile Learning for Development in Kenya at the end of this month.
The workshop has been organised by Yishay  who apparently will also be participating in the 5th International Conference on ICT for Development, Education and Training in Zambia
At some point in our correspondence i pointed out to him the profound project "Mobil Efteruddannelse"
I think it would be a great idea of a collaboration work between London Knowledge lab and the project "Mobil Efteruddannelse"

To answer your question about my interests.
I am now living in a new environment and understand well how Migrants are at most times faced by challenges of loneliness and isolations-without networks and connections to the local community.
Living far from my home country i have evidence of the impact of mobile use, i consider communications itself  a social good. The ability to communicate easily and cheaply with my loved ones improves my quality of life, in my defination this is "development" even in economic terms?
To me communication and information technologies are as much (or more!) about social interaction as they are about economic interaction.
Immigration has led to a world of families and friends broken apart by distance; electronic communication media help to shorten that distance, reinforcing social ties and helping to reduce the anomalie of a life alone in a crowd.
My mum-a villager in a mud hut  may not need a phone or a computer to live her day-to-day life, but if it allows ongoing contact with her son in a city and country  thousands of miles away, the phone or computer would be something she would treasure.

While ICT for ‘education’ is mostly the focuss, i think the area of inquiry on Mobile phones role is not  limited to the formal education sector itself. Lifelong learning and educational outreach activities utilizing the mobile phone to benefit the social sectors also fall within the scope

I believe that M-Learning initiatives in an organised system and good approaches can also enhance social good within the Immigrant communities.

 

I am teaching acrobatics and conducting workshops in irregular basis to Youth centers and efter skoles (Flying super kids, Gøgler skole and Frontløberne in Århus)
I am learning new ways, meeting new people and finding ways to adapt to my new environment and talk with others.
My desire is to organise events that respond to social benefits but i have to learn the best approaches and practices.

I am interested now in understanding how immigrants can leverage emerging ICTs as a business and information sourcing tool.

How are they being used now and what is the positive and negative impact on the process. How do these tools facilitate the transfer of data and information and how can we further support the development of these critical knowledge streams.

Some of the unique challenges and needs of immigrant populations include information to aid with coping skills and social inclusion, as well as culturally specific information resources.

I am envisioning a diasporic information source and space for learning from each others through the ICT tools.

Where provision of mobile related information comes first, followed by on advice that helps make sense of it and finally providing tools to act on the information once it is understood.

I would therefore like to learn more on using mobile technologies to foster social development, different ways of deploying content, and applications on mphones, best practices and guidelines technologies, entrepreneurship cultural relevance, adoption and needs identification, making illitrate accesible content, and capacity building.

 

I hope through this, we will learm more from each other.

 

Ken Owino

Nafsi Africa Acrobats

www.nafsiafrica.org