Social Informatics Research Group- Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta

SIRG in association with Panasonic India, offers digital empowerment in Rural WB

http://www.mydigitalfc.com/news/panasonic-iimc-offer-digital-empowerment-rural-wb-423

Panasonic India, IIMC to offer digital empowerment in rural WB | mydigitalfc.com Indian Institute of Management Calcutta (IIMC), one of the oldest and most premier B-Schools in the country, through its Social Informatics Research Group (SIRG) has now teamed up with Panasonic India to offer digital empowerment in rural West Bengal.

Kandi, Murshidabad, WestBengal

An online tailoring workshop was organised for the Self help group women of Kandi Federation, Murshidabad

SHG women were shown pre-recorded videos of experienced trainers demonstrating stitching, different types of textiles, threads, stitches and fabric painting. The selected SHG women through hands-on activities learned new stitches in groups. The three day
long video based training portrayed potential peer learning among these women.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VTsMeKkYsI

Kandi-Owlish Internet School

"DiSARM: Post-Disaster Situation Analysis and Resource Management Using Delay-Tolerant Peer to-Peer Wireless Networks""

Today Internet-based communication systems have been instrumental in providing day-to-day services in our life, but
history has shown that natural disasters like Ayla in India, Katrina in USA, and the recent earthquake and tsunami in Japan can severely impair all forms of communication, thus jeopardizing people’s lives.

This project aims at systematizing such chaotic situation through a series of technical innovations in the area of hybrid wireless network technologies and its applications.

Field Intervention in Kandi, Murshidabad, WestBengal

A cluster of women self-help groups located in Kandi, Murshidabad,have been studied closely for a month to observe and evaluate influence of digital technology on social capital activation.

We distributed 50 smart mobile phones with Internet facility to 50 women in the Self-help group Federation in collaboration with
Panasonic India and Airtel. These women were rigorously trained with the use of smart phones and Whatsapp in Bengali language by our field workers.

You can see glimpses of their Whatsapp usage in these pictures.Whatapp helps them share their work of art with each other and exchange information related to it.

In this digitally-connected global society, each individual in a community of people is not only a consumer of information but also a producer of information: a potential contributor in many ways to build a better community.

With this view in mind Social Informatics Research Group at IIMCalcutta decided to come up with a project to build the Next generation Collaborative and Responsive Rural Community.

http://www.business-standard.com/article/pti-stories/iim-calcutta-project-to-create-collaborative-rural-community-116110800406_1.html

IIM Calcutta project to create collaborative rural community The Social Informatics Research Group of IIM Calcutta has taken up a project to build next-generation of collaborative and responsive rural community by digitally empowering them. The objective of the project, NCoRe, is to analyse and measure the

Engagement is the key!!!

Fun, thrill, delight, excitement – call it what you will, the essential ingredient in any learning is 'Engagement'. If you don’t spend the time to make the learning experience a compelling and enjoyable one, how can you expect your learners to spend any time on it?

A small preview on how children learn in OwlishOracle

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PaA8DmBuRw

Overview-OwlishOracle OwlishOracle is an online learning platform where senior experienced teachers disseminate formal and nonformal subjects to students from all backgrounds.

There is a huge rural-urban divide with regard to poor learning achievement at the school level in remote rural areas, in India, which are engulfed with problems such as the unavailability of good teachers and effective teaching learning materials.
In this context, our project seeks to utilize a social knowledge management platform OwlishOracle to impart universal education online to the rural children using structured course materials and experience teachers from the urban area.

Social Informatics Research Group is currently working on an internet-enabled social media based online teaching-learning platform OwlishOracle to educate underprivileged children from remote parts of the country by educated senior citizens.