News: Announcements

June 9, 2014

In this informal get together, 2013 Library Journal Mover & Shaker Lauren Britton will lead a discussion on the concepts, theory, and ideology behind the maker movement, and examine if the public library creates a unique platform for community and civic engagement, through making. Lauren is a visiting researcher working with TASCHA this summer (in Seattle just this one week) to advance research on innovation spaces. Students interested in this topic and the possibility of contributing to this next academic year are especially encouraged to attend.

May 21, 2014

TASCHA is excited to release a new infographic based on findings from the Global Impact Study of Public Access ICTs! Many thanks go to the team at JumpStart Georgia for helping us design what we think is a pretty cool visualization of why public access is so important and why it matters to development. Please feel free to share, promote, and use widely.

May 9, 2014

We are familiar with the typical library computer space— rows of computers, each one occupied by a single person. The underlying notion driving this configuration is that people need access to information, and that this access is optimized when each person is provided with individualized use of a computer and internet (with assistance from a librarian when the need arises). There is another model that is experiencing tremendous growth and attention: innovation spaces—physical places that foster community, collaboration, and creation. The notion behind these spaces is that creativity and innovation are stimulated when people and ideas come into contact with one another, not when they are isolated. There are many types of innovation spaces — hackerspaces, makerspaces, tech hubs, coworking spaces — and a common feature is the intense interaction among people with computers.

May 6, 2014

TASCHA is excited to announce that we’ll be participating in an upcoming event on public access ICTs, hosted by the Center for Collaborative Technologies at IREX in partnership with Kurante. Below is a description of the event (originally posted on ICTworks by Wayan Vota); space is limited, so if you’d like to join us in DC for this event, please RSVP now.

April 30, 2014

It’s finally spring here in the Northern Hemisphere, and we decided to celebrate by highlighting some of our new research at TASCHA. From crunching big data on mobile money and developing new resources based on research findings to travelling around the world and working with new partners in the field, we’ve accomplished quite a bit in 2014 so far! Here’s a snapshot of a few new TASCHA research projects.

TASCHA’s Global Impact Study of Public Access ICTs wrapped up last year with the publication of the final research report, Connecting people for development: Why public access ICTs matter. In addition to the final report, we have also released research reports and summaries of the Global Impact Study’s in-depth studies, which were designed to answer more specific questions about the public access phenomenon, such as whether we even need public access ICTs anymore since everyone has a mobile phone (spoiler alert: yes, we do!).

April 24, 2014

TASCHA Research Assistant Professor Maria Garrido has a chapter in a new book, Cyberactivism on the Participatory Web, edited by Martha McCaughey. Maria co-authored the chapter, “Twitter as the People’s Microphone: Emergence of Authorities during Protest Tweeting,” with Alexander Halavais of Arizona State University’s School of Social and Behavioral Sciences. The chapter covers Maria and Alex’s research on over 30,000 Tweets using the #g20 hashtag, largely protest Tweets before, during, and after the 2009 G20 Meeting in Pittsburgh.

April 23, 2014

TASCHA Research Assistant Professor Araba Sey spent winter quarter 2014 (January-March) in Grahamstown, South Africa as a Visiting Mellon Scholar at Rhodes University. Made possible through both the Mellon Scholarship program and the University of Washington’s Vice Provost International Faculty Exchange (IFEX) program, Araba spent three months with the Journalism and Media Studies department at Rhodes, mostly working with Dr. Lorenzo Dalvit and his graduate students in their New Media and Society class.

April 17, 2014

We recently launched a project that is looking at public internet access and use in Vietnam. One of the main objectives of the study is to understand the role library-like institutions, such as cultural post offices in Vietnam, play in providing public access to information and communication technologies (ICTs). Surveying public access venues, users, and non-users to gather data about public access in Vietnam is a critical component of the study. While critical to answering our research questions, collecting data on a large scale like in this project can be challenging. As such, we are excited to employ a different method of data collection in this study, using the Open Data Kit (ODK), developed here at the University of Washington’s Department of Computer Science and Engineering. Using Android-based tablets, researchers in the field will implement the surveys and collect data through ODK.

February 13, 2014

Myanmar (Burma) has spent decades under authoritarian rule. It was isolated politically and economically from the rest of the world and home to one of the world’s longest civil wars. In the last few years, Myanmar has begun a transformation from authoritarian to democratic rule, from economic isolation and underdevelopment to an integrated market economy, and from war to peace. Come hear Myanmar expert and Jackson School of International Studies Professor Mary Callahan speak about her experiences living, researching, and working in Myanmar as this process has unfolded. She will also discuss a new USAID/Microsoft-supported information literacy project, housed in the Jackson School and initiated in collaboration with Burmese civil society groups and the Information School’s Technology & Social Change Group (more details on the project coming soon!).