October 13, 2010
I’m finally sharing this workshop report. It’s a personal account for those who were not able to attend. I’ve tried to give a sense of the flavor of the meeting and the range of topics and issues that came up. This is a large and complex project, presenting many challenges — from the methodological to the administrative. I did my best not to air dirty laundry, but also not to sanitize what I heard.
October 8, 2010
Joe and I are overhauling the Technology & Social Change Group website. I took a step back this week to think about what’s most important for this first version, and how we’re going to transfer over our existing content. I’ve dubbed TASCHA website 1.0 the “does-not-suck version” in order to keep us focused on the basics, pull together all of our content, and push discussions about feature requests to the point in time where we have something up that works and something concrete to react to.
October 7, 2010
This past summer, Mike Best, the Principal Investigator of the Collaborative Knowledge Sharing in-depth study, presented a paper at the 19th annual Asia Media Information and Communication Centre (AMIC) conference in Singapore. The paper, written on preliminary findings from Mike’s in-depth study, Connecting in Real Space: How People Share Knowledge and Technologies in Cybercafés, was very well-received and prompted vigorous discussion with conference attendees, earning “best paper of the session” accolades.
September 29, 2010
Research teams in Bangladesh, Brazil, Chile, and the Philippines have recently begun implementation of the user and venue surveys. A total of approximately 1000 public users and 250 operators of public access ICTs will be surveyed across approximately 250 randomly selected public access locations throughout each country.
September 23, 2010
The research team for the Non-Instrumental Use study began pilot testing of survey instruments in Brazil on September 16. Throughout the trip so far, the researchers have had the opportunity to explore different public access venues and identify possible challenges they may encounter in the study’s implementation.
September 21, 2010
Public access venues provide an arena for people to connect with their friends and family. Given that more than 9% of the population in the Philippines (over 8 million Filipinos) are working abroad, this in-depth study will explore how public access venues in the Philippines are used by families left behind by Filipinos working overseas.
September 16, 2010
I’ve been thinking about this for a while now, gathering resources, printing out stuff to read. Waiting for the right time to pull it all together into a tidy package. Well forget it. Instead I’m going to dribble it out bit by bit.
September 10, 2010
The Global Impact Study is excited to announce the release of our public access ICT venue database. Utilizing the inventory data collected in Bangladesh, Brazil, Chile, Lithuania, and the Philippines, the web database offers multiple search options, three different visualizations of the data, and is part of the Global Impact Study’s commitment to open research.
August 23, 2010
The Global Impact Study presented a poster, Open data and open tools: The Global Impact Study inventory and web application, at the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) annual conference in Sweden. The theme of the conference — open access to knowledge — offered the perfect opportunity to highlight the project’s achievements.
April 1, 2010
The Technology & Social Change Group kicks off the European Union’s e-Skills week with the launch of a new report: Immigrant women, e-skills & employability in Europe: The case of Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Romania, and Spain. This study examines how improving digital competences and access to computers and the Internet can advance employability and social inclusion.
