Rurality Apps for Community expression and Utilization ofKnowledge: Venkatrampuram Initiative

Harsh Sat ya Pravin PatilCENTER FOR EXACT HUMANITIES, IIIT-HYDERABAD

pravin.patil@research.iiit.ac.in, satya.harsh@iiit.ac.in

ABSTRACT

Enabling rural community re-formation with the imagination of new media creation apt forcommunity living is experimented with. Results are presented. Impediments are analysed.Successes are discussed. Education reform with new local media, with local server and threebasic applications, is tried. Imagination is put into action. Impact studied and discussed.

We outline many apps written on top of three basic applications. These apps are to enhanceentrepreneurship, to do resource mapping, cultural mapping, oral social networking etc. Wediscuss how they can lead to enhancing community formation functionalities. We take mobileas a kinship device. Ontology of kinship is analysed by looking at directory structure of teacher’smobile. Mobiles accessible to students of five schools were networked with teachers. Oralweb is created with these mobiles. Project assignments are handled for knowledge sourcing.Communities now will have their memory externalised so that it can be reused. Functionalitiesare in reuse of externalised memory for desired function.

Given the discrepancy between urban and rural connectivity levels and challenges associated withreducing this gap, our work seeks to understand the impact of currently available connectivity onrural individuals’ use and perceptions of mobile and mobile web. We focus our investigation onthe use of mobile in work practices critical to such communities, This criticality lies in knowledgesourcing and utilization from neighbourhood. Educational reform can be construed in thatdirection.

There is an urgent need to understand the role of physical community with respect to the Internet,and how to strengthen it through right applications. We seek to empower such communitiesthrough technology and create local content through the involvement of students and otherusers.

KEYWORDS: Rural, New media, Educational reforms, Mobile, empowerment.

1 Introduction

India has alleged many historic changes in the field of Elementary education in the last 10years. The authorization of the Right of Child to Free and Compulsory Education Act in 2009[1] changed the policy scenario and opened up channels for different associates to have anarray of contingencies to bolster the quality ambit of primary education in India.The currenteducation scenario of India, evaluation is based on skills rather than innovation and creativity.Even in primary education students are required to take a few predefined courses and basedupon their performance evaluation is carried out [2]. This might be a standardized way ofeducation in many countries but hinders the creative abilities of students. Classrooms havebecome production units for future engineers, doctors, managers on one hand and destroyingcuriosity and imagination on other hand [3].Students no longer are permitted to make mistakesas everything is graded. Education has become materialistic than pedestal of wisdom andinnovation. Our education system rarely rewards what deserves highest academic distinctions.Aberrancy is beaten down. Risk taking is derided. Our testing and marking systems need to bebuilt to recognize original contributions, in form of creativity, problem solving, valuable originalresearch and innovation.

Textbook is the only apparatus of education, but the regulated, formal language it uses is farremoved from the local indigenous. Its practice accords with subjects with which the child hasno cultural acquaintanceship. The alleged co-curricular exercises are also set as guide from a’national’ and ’international’ perspective about which the community,parents and children knownext to nothing. Local festivals and celebrations receive a small place in the annual list of stateholidays, but the school does not see in them as a cultural participant. The peers are not awareof the curriculum resolves do nor what the textbook teaches. As a consequence,this educationcan receive hardly any backing at home. The results of school learning fail to correspond withthe parents’ expectations of schooling and they withdraw their children from school.

We seek to restore this degradation by introduction of Project based approach in primaryeducation [4]. Fundamental aim of such an approach is evaluation based upon projects madeby students than contemporary ways of examinations and class tests. "Project" stand for doingmeaningful work, not simply all non-traditional work — work that tackles (but not necessarilysolves) issues or problems facing our communities: local, national, and global. Student createdprojects are fed to our application called Education templates.Education templates is form basedapplication built using Drupal-CMS [5]. Education templates are discussed briefly further inthe paper. We even introduce a new crowdsourcing mechanism for collection of rural heritageinformation which is rarely available in India.

India has the 3rd largest set of internet users in the world but ranks 164th in the penetrationstatistics.[6]With the boom of android, windows smartphones in the Indian market at cheapand affordable prices, there is a rise in mobile Internet users even in rural areas. Aakash tabletswere introduced targeting the 'billions that were cut off 'to bridge the digital divide.[7][8]

2 Approach

Villages are often asked by educational functionary to construct classrooms or give equipmentto the schools. But the critical users of primary education, i.e., the parents and the community,are never asked whether the curriculum,pedagogy, or economic aims of schooling correspondwith their expectations and whether they could help make education culturally germane. Toget started with our idea it was necessary to come up with subjects that would be helpful

which facilitated voluntary student involvement. A pilot area was selected for implementationof our purpose. Venkatrampuram, a small village in Chittoor district of Andhra Pradesh wasselected,which consisted of more than 4 local or government supported primary schools.Manybrainstorming sessions were carried out with pilot personnel discussing the spirit behind sharingof content and community empowerment through local information generation and utilization.Several issues arose in discussions addressing fundamental crisis faced by our society today.Theseinclude breakdown of communities, loss of sense of pride towards "what is their own"- theirculture and heritage, loss of mutuality and cooperation among members of community anddecline of local/indigenous professional opportunities. Many concepts for application wereproposed though our main focus here will be on education reforms. We chose to involve schoolstudents of class VI, VII and VIII along with their respective teachers for History, Geography,Biology and Computer lab.

3 Initial Problems with Implementation of Idea

There was a concern among pilot personnel on how to make effective use of technology can beuseful in solving problems related to village. Concern was also on how to make effective use oftechnology to improve the state of intangibles like feeling of mutuality, helpfulness, culturalheritage, quality of teaching in schools. They warned against possible misuse of technologywhich youngsters tend to indulge in.

They(villagers) were worried about corporate control over village creeping in through IT. Presentbio-diversity and gene pool are slowly coming under corporate control. There were suggestionsabout use of regional languages than English. Concerns regarding children getting deskilledby over engagement with computers was prime. There was a need for life skill educationthrough do-it-yourself manual, for which proper mentoring and guidance was required. The riftbetween the economic notions gained by the children in the community and those endorsedby the state in a bureaucratized school structure being seriously at discrepancy, the culturalbewilderment of the learning process gets aggravated. The aim of Westernized basic educationbeing employment, and that of the cultural education of the children being collective affinity forthe day-to-day business of living and growing, a collision between the two becomes imminent.

4 Methodology

4.1 Project based Approach

Originating from human synergy with nature and time-honored value scheme which outshinesthe everyday livelihood concerns of the rural people, the cultural pledge of the family and societyconfigures the child’s charisma almost from the moment of birth. However, the local primaryschool uprooted by the state in this cultural ambiance remains negligent of the educationreceived by the child through participation in various rites, festivals, celebrations, conduct andallotted tasks. It is this education that shapes the child’s identity and makes it feel shieldedwithin its cultural framework. It knows who it is,what it is expected to do, in what way, and howto relate itself to the kinship structure and the neighborhood. It learns an astounding amountabout nature and develops emotional bonds with its different periodic manifestations. All thisknowledge, gathered at beginning, imparts self-confidence in the child and forms its culturalidentity. It was necessary for project based learning to incorporate theme related to culturalbelonging and local information gathering. Although subject books were taken were taken forreference it was made sure that students engaged with surrounding of village to complete theprojects.Projects were given to individual or group of 2 students which needed to be completed

within a specific time framework. Topics varied from History, Geography, biology etc. The topicswere modified in a way that students required to gather local information.Some of the topicsare listed below [9].

• Recording local health tradition and knowledge

• Local history, festivals, rituals

• Local food, fauna, market, fruits

• Local folk dance, songs, sayings

• Temples, stories

• Health consultation and education, medicine

• Local soils, staple food, diet

• Family special events, ethics and virtues

• Community gatherings, beliefs

• Local athletes, sport personality, civil servants

Students were required to seek the help of their peers, parents, other village adults to knowabout their heritage. For work related to local fauna, trees, flowers students were taken to fieldvisit guided by their respective school teachers. Project not only included textual content butalso images taken during field visit.

To ensure that a good amount of initial content gets created, the effort is linked to the students inschools. The goal would be to link content preparation to school curriculum wherever possible.It would also strengthen the efforts in the direction of learning from local content. In the currentschool system learning is accepted in three modes - (1) Classroom mode; (2) Laboratory mode,and (3) Project mode. Educational reform can ride on project mode in the sphere of rurality.

The main objective of our application building for community based education reform focuseson the following points -

• Education templates - form based crowdsourcing application

• Formation of local community of school teachers and students for collection of knowledge.

• Use of mobile and tablets for this purpose

• Social study of relationships with communities.

4.2 Education Templates

Education templates [7] is a Drupal-CMS. Drupal has many inbuilt functionality such as regis-tration, login, creation of content pages, user permissions. If functionality is not inbuilt thenhundreds of modules are available that can be freely downloaded or new custom modules canbe created for specific purposes. Education templates can be viewed on Tablet, Mobile phones,and Web browser of personal computer.

Education templates within itself has 2 main functionality-

• Creation of custom forms.

• Use of thus created forms for collection of information.

There are two users roles defined for this system-

• Teachers

• Students

Each roles has some specific permissions-

• Teachers - Can create forms, edit already created forms, fill in the forms, delete the forms,edit content of form.

• Students - Can only fill the forms, view forms filled by other users.

Templates consisted of regular forms fields such as text field,textarea, radio buttons, checkboxes,date field, time field, file upload options, select lists. Education templates is available in followinglanguages English,Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Telugu, Tamil, Kannada. There is a facility to enterdata in above languages with the help of Drupal module for Google keyboard that incorporateswithin itself several languages.

The projects were full-fledged long essays which consisted of both text content as well as images.The use of Education templates is to crowd-source the data of villages wherein contributions aredone by students via their projects. Most of information about villages of India exists in registryform or in written documents which are either lost or outdated. For our cultural heritage toflourish, it is necessary for the rural community to take part in restoring its lost gleam. For thisto happen, the rural community must be made familiar to such tools for knowledge sourcingand self-utilization.

Figures-1, 2, 3, 4 and5 below showcase education templates.

5 Issues in Technology Development

5.1 Low or nonexistent Internet connectivity in remote areas.

Broadband technology is still in the making which is a drawback for rural areas who stilldon’t have a constant source of Internet. Even if it is available there is slow and uncertain 2Gconnection which is an impediment to tools of new media [12].

Figure 1: Given are some of the forms present within Education Templates

Figure 2: Example of form for "FOOD"

Figure 3: Example Hindi form for Tree

Figure 4: Example of filled form for "FOOD"

Figure 5: Example Hindi filled form for Tree

5.2 Frequent power cuts during school working hours

In most rural parts of India there is power cut for nearly 8 hour during day time. This is ahindrance is we were to deploy tools which are web based applications. An alternative to this isuse of mobile based application as use of mobile Internet is on the rise.

5.3 Lack of motivation shown by rural school teachers towards IT educa-tion

Teachers’ fear that students might get too involved in computer related work than focus oncurriculum. Such fear is backed by constant use of social networking sites by youth.

5.4 Lack of government initiative

Schemes and programs can be quickly carried out only if administration is willing to supportrural schools to carry out alternative schemes for education reforms. Even though there areseveral such schemes but they have ceased to function owing to lack of coordination amongdepartments.

6 Data Collected

More than 150 forms are present within Education Template and still more are being addedevery day. These forms are currently available in English,Hindi,Telugu.

Some data is listed below for forms -

• Tree - Casuarina, Neem, Eucalyptus, Apple, Peepal, Datura stramonium, Mango, CustardApple.

• Flowers - Viola,Sun Flower, Jasmine, Hibiscus, Rose, Marigold.

• Food of Village - Eggs, Rice, Chapati, Dal, Chicken curry,Dosa.

• Folk music - Uttarkhandi music, Padharo maro des, Bauls, Bihugeet, Odissi.

• Schools - Kullur, Venkatrampuram, Chittoor, Renigunta

7 Impact on Education

The reformation facets of our idea are -

• Understanding of surrounding through exploration,analytical discussions

• Exploration with help of family members and community elders in local history andgeography for discovering their relevance to local conditions and to the needs of localdevelopment.

• Collaborative learning through verbal and nonverbal communication means

• Group work through involvement of various students and teachers while doing projects

• Regeneration of the individualized but noncompetitive,stress free way of teaching.

8 Conclusion

Primary education in India needs a makeover so as to improve student knowledge of conceptsrather than just memorizing. For this to take effect teaching methods at primary level must berevamped. Primary education in India is broken and attempts to fix it are fragile. Alternatemethods of learning along with appropriate use of technology can bring about reforms only ifthere is right direction and motivation. Tools such as Education templates have tremendouscapabilities if technical problems are taken care of.

Acknowledgments

Socionity Project [9], Grant-in-aid Project from DoiT (Ministry of Communication and Informa-tion) to Center of Exact Humanities, IIIT-H.

References

1. Provisions of the Constitution of India having a bearing on Education -http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_of_Children_to_Free_and_Compulsory_Education_ActDepartment of Higher Education. Retrieved 1 April 2010.

2. Rote system of learning still rules the roost. http://archive.indianexpress.com/news/-rote-system-of-learning-still-rules-the-roost-/375996/

3. Indian Education: creating Zombies focussed on pass-ing exam. http://www.newindianexpress.com/nation/Indian-education-Creating-zombies-focussed-on-passing-exams/2013/07/31/article1711375.ece

4. Project based learning – Edutopia. http://www.edutopia.org/blog/pbl-vs-pbl-vs-xbl-john-larmer

5. Drupal CMS. https://www.drupal.org/

6. List of countries by internet users http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_Internet_users

7. We want to target billions of Indians who are cut off. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/stoi/deep-focus/We-want-to-target-the-billion-Indians-who-are-cut-off/articleshow/10284832.cms

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9. Socionity Application Idea. https://goo.gl/Z0QbE8

10. Socionity Education Templates. http://socionity.iiit.ac.in/formMaker/drupal/

11. India’s average connection speeds remains slowest in Asia-Pacific region. http://gadgets.ndtv.com/internet/news/india-has-lowest-average-internet-speed-in-asia-pacific-akamai-513785

12. Socionity Project. http://socionity.iiit.ac.in/site/