The pictures above are from my work with Panchayats – rural local governments – in the Indian states of Gujarat and Rajasthan, to technology enhance conventional classroom training programs.
The programme supported by the Local Governance Initiative South Asia (LoGIn) of the Swiss Cooperation Office India (SDC) was conducted in the Kutch region and Udaipur District (India). It targeted Elected Representatives to Rural Local Government (Panchayats), grassroots level activists and NGO workers. The classroom training modules of the whole program were titled Prajatantra (Democracy), Adhikar (Rights), Bhavishya (The future). It built an understanding of core concepts and practices in decentralization, through a novel technology enabled pedagogical approach. The pedagogy extended the benefits of the classroom training to further build an experiential peer learning community, outside the classroom, between modules and beyond. It virtualised through social networking, remote conferencing and user created e-publishing. This revolutionised the training program as it turned collaborative, networked and experiential. Importantly it harnessed learner generated content.
Fundamental to achieving this was the design of a mentored pedagogical approach through Technology Enhanced Learning Process Enabler (TELPE) modules. These focused on creating a cadre of NGO activists to scale up to rural government representatives. It enabled the programme to reach out and vigorously engage with larger numbers than the classroom could accommodate.
Perhaps for the first time in India, websites for knowledge sharing and advocacy were created by grassroots learners themselves, whose capacities to do so were built during the program. These knowledge products from the learning program are listed below:
- http://setupanchayat.wordpress.com/
- http://anjarpanchayat.wordpress.com
- http://raparpanchayat.wordpress.com
- http://bannipachchham.wordpress.com
- http://kutchmahilamanch.wordpress.com
- http://kherotpanchayatrajasthan.wordpress.com
- http://kanthariyapanchayat.wordpress.com
- http://kerwaspanchayat.wordpress.com
- http://meriyakhedipanchayat.wordpress.com/
- http://achalpurpanchayat.wordpress.com
The experience of building a complex pedagogical integration of technology into learning process is described in the paper below.
FULL PAPER CAN BE DOWNLOADED HERE 2013FULE18
The TELPE: Technology enabling rural governance training in India