Assignment 4

1. Can ICTs be used in the absence of minimum literacy levels among the poor?

Yes, ICTs play a major role in a nation’s politics, economy, social and cultural development. ICTs therefore should empower communities to access information and knowledge, should assist to reduce the socio-economic divide that exists in many countries across the globe, help in poverty alleviation efforts and be accessible to the poor of the poorest. Looking at the case study regarding the information lady in Bangladesh; she was able to visit households in the villagers with a set of ICT’s like: small portable laptops, digital cameras, mobile phones, GPRS internet connectivity, headphones, webcam and other light equipment’s such as weighing measurement machines, blood pressure machines, pregnancy tests and sugar tests kits etc. She listens to the villager’s livelihood problems and helps them with preloaded offline Bangla language livelihood, audio -visual content and online information from the web.

2. How can the same ICTs be used for multiple purposes? What steps are needed to use, say the Internet for meeting the educational and health needs of poor female farmers in an isolated rural community?

ICTs can be used for multiple purposes for example, a computer lab in a school should not only be reserved for learning ICT skills but also be at the disposal of the math and science classes for enriching their work, and/or available to teachers for their own professional development, or opened for use after school hours by the community for informal education, or for other such uses.