Sharing the Knowledge- Community-Authored Literacy

This project sets the idea of pervasive computing in the context of literacy education in a rural community of India. The system we designed harnesses the rural environment and people's oral anecdotes as teaching resource and allows them to learn interdependently how to read, write and spell. The biggest challenge of the project is how to maximize the gain of knowledge within the limit of the infrastructure and the cost, through creative use of common technology.

The compelling part I withdrew from the project is the social effect this new mode of learning creates, which results in active conversations between the participants as the technology itself starts to recede behind human activities, an outcome greatly differed from getting people isolated, as smart/personal devices do to urban culture.

Another outcome of the community based literacy education is that the learning process also changed the living space of the village. The environment sustaining the learning experience becomes an 'enriched' one in terms of it being a representative of the collective memory of its inhabitants.

Collaborated with Dustin York. See project website for full documentation.

Setting

This project finds an ideal setting in rural India, by seeking to highlight two existing circumstances. Our research uncovered that of all the world’s illiterate population, 35% are Indian. However, India can also claim to be the world’s fastest-growing telecom market. It is estimated that by 2012, half of the Indian population will own a cell phone.

Part 1: Tagging the Village

One of the key components to the system is that all the learning material is self-generated. Participants in a local community network have the ability to tag their own picture messages with labels describing them, and then the ability to share them with everybody else. The materials generated are seamlessly reflective of and finds relevance with their everyday lives, and constitutes recurrent prompting from friends and family as means of supportive encouragement.

Part 2: Making a Game of Community Learning

The resources compiled through Tagging the Village are utilized effectively in the context of community-supported learning. The same tagged picture messages are compiled into a database and turned into a game that encourages participation among every member in the room. Authors of the original tagged image act as mentor to every other learner, and the opportunity is given for supportive participation to lift the confidence and abilities of everyone involved.

Prototype

This prototype demonstrates the essential community function that the game provides. Everyone’s cell phone is sent a picture message of a letter, and it is up to the group to correctly spell out the label given to the image on the screen. A webcam directed at the mobile phone is able to recognize a correct or incorrect answer.

Part 3: Family Anecdotes as Teaching Material

Going beyond reciting simple one-word descriptions is the advanced feature that records an orated story and converts that into written text upon which the community can attempt to study and parse out the recognizable parts. Direct connections to other community members are provided when a word in the story matches the label given to a tagged picture already present in the database. In this way, social and cultural resources turn into a learning resource upon which many community members have familiarity with and are connected to.

Broader Implications

The natural result of learning resources culled from the everyday lives of the community members is that it becomes an invaluable living archive of the culture and interests of everyone involved. That is in addition to a more learned, more participatory, and more connected local population. The broader result can be that by lifting the veil of ignorance an individual can now consider starting their own business for example, or initiating trade between other neighboring communities. They can then take steps to broaden their own boundaries and realize the possibilities. A positive outcome can ripple outward to help families prosper and help successive generations reach a higher standard.

Possible Next Steps

The further iteration to this project can be in directing the best way for self-learning to find its way in the hands of under-educated women. Research has plainly shown that when women achieve a higher level of education, the entire society benefits. This is because women tend to take what they learn and invest those benefits in family and community, resulting in a better-educated and healthier next generation. However, it is commonly true that women have significantly less access to education than men, making the possibility for m-learning to initiate a movement for self-directed learning among women especially beneficial. We believe the opportunity for social progress has been provided by the information that can pass through cheap and readily accessible technology, it is up to the ingenuity of designers to engineer a system that can take advantage of that opportunity rather than letting it pass by unrealized.