A distributed coalition consisting of a Head Start program, its youth activities program development director, rural youth, an art gallery and its curators, a graphic designer, and a university department are collaborating to design, build, and populate a user controlled content management system to bring the youthsâ work to a global audience, enable computer mediated interaction, provide a venue for exploring artistic expression, and introduce information and communications technologies (ICTs) to the youth and other project participants. Using a project-based approach combined with implicitly constructed scenarios and the iterative and informal processes associated with free / libre / open source software development, the geographically and organizationally distributed project team created the first release of the Growing Tennessee Web site to coincide with a photo exhibition held at a not-for-profit art gallery. The project will build upon its previous accomplishments and introduce additional media and their supporting technologies to rural youth.

A distributed coalition consisting of a Head Start program, its youth activities program development director, rural youth, an art gallery and its curators, a graphic designer, and a university department are collaborating to design, build, and populate a user controlled content management system to bring the youthsâ work to a global audience, enable computer mediated interaction, provide a venue for exploring artistic expression, and introduce information and communications technologies (ICTs) to the youth and other project participants. Using a project-based approach combined with implicitly constructed scenarios and the iterative and informal processes associated with free / libre / open source software development, the geographically and organizationally distributed project team created the first release of the Growing Tennessee Web site to coincide with a photo exhibition held at a not-for-profit art gallery. The project will build upon its previous accomplishments and introduce additional media and their supporting technologies to rural youth.

The study presents the findings of a sample survey carried out using two sub-sample populations (Rural Communities and Information providers). The main objective of the study is to explore the Community Information Needs of rural communities in Sri Lanka and their information behaviour. Fifteen categories of basic information needs of two types (â survivalâ and â strategicâ ) were identified. The nature of community information is recognized as non-bibliographic and service-oriented. The information supply position was identified as stagnated at service points, and the dynamism of the information has deteriorated within the delivery mechanisms limited to system structure. It was possible to calculate a Channel Dependency Rate (CDR) which showed that channels appropriate to provide certain categories of information were not strong and or operating as they should be. Rural citizens were also found to encounter a range of difficulties in accessing information, and it was found that these were related to geographical, structural (socio-economic and cultural) factors and personal reasons. The study proposes Community Information Centres using e-governance strategy with One Stop Shop (OSS) model, to be established at the village level using prevailing infrastructure to bridge the information gap existing in the rural areas of Sri Lanka.

During the last twenty years rapid developments in technology have led to changes in the way we work, play and learn. Technology has become an integral part of societyâ s everyday information environment. Children growing up during what has been called the technological or digital revolution have never known a world without instantaneous communication and easy access to vast quantities of information using multiple formats, text types, graphics and multimedia. For the â Net Generationâ (born after 1985) of users and consumers who are surrounded by information, technology is transparent and a part of their social, economic and educational landscape. The terms tech-savvy, web-savvy, Internet-savvy and com-puter-savvy are being used to describe young people in major educational policy documents and population studies worldwide. While educators recognise that their students have a different culture of use when using and seeking information delivered electronically, they struggle to come to terms with the changes the integration of technology brings to the teaching-learning environment. The implications for educators, teacher librarians and librarians being raised in current research on the information seeking of the Net Generation, is whether students have an intuitive/instinctive grasp of how to access and use elec-tronic information or is this just an illusion borne of familiarity with the technology? This paper presents a brief summary of the research and popular literature about the information seeking behavior of the Net Generation and outlines future research to be conducted as part of this thesis. It also proposes a leader-ship role for libraries and their personnel in designing programs to ensure that young people have ade-quate information skills that will enable them to use evolving technologies effectively and efficiently when searching for information.

This is a submission to the "Interrogating the social realities of information and communications systems pre-conference workshop, ASIST AM 2006".

This is a submission to the 3rd Annual Social Informatics SIG Research Symposium: The Social Web, Social Computing and the Social Analysis of Computing " Peer-to-peer systems allow the seamless sharing of digital materials between strangers who may live in different countries or different continents. As networks such as Kazaa and Gnutella shuffle files effortlessly over the Internet, national boundaries are visible only to those who bother to look up the IP addresses of the machines involved. In the eight years since the debut of Napster, a huge volume of legal, popular and scholarly attention has been paid to peer-to-peer file sharing. But despite the inherently global nature of these networks, very little of this attention has been devoted to use of these networks outside North America and Western Europe. I explore the cultural meanings of file sharing in Ukraine. Ukraine, the second most populous of the former Soviet republics, had been named as one of the ten â priority countriesâ with â unacceptable piracy rates.â IFPI and other industry and governmental bodies present piracy in straightforward terms as a crime, and emphasize links between music piracy and violent organized crime. The international struggle against piracy is seen as a matter of building a strong legal framework in developing countries and then making sure that local authorities enforce these laws. They assume that national development follows a linear path from the lawless frontier of unchecked piracy to the well policed copyright regime evidenced in the United States. In contrast, I argue that file-sharing practices in Ukraine reflect distinctive features of its cultural heritage. They are not simply the result of a primitive stage of legal development. Until 1991, Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union. The USSR did not recognize the concept of intellectual property, particularly as it related to foreign and scientific works. For example, generations of Soviet children grew up reading a popular story by Russian writer Aleksander Volkov. It told of a little girl from Kansas who was transported by a tornado with her dog Totoshka on a trip to visit a wizard. Even today, few realize that the work is a translation. Internally, however, Xerox machines were banned, and as dissident culture developed from the 1960s onward the illicit reproduction of unsanctioned material was seen as an heroic act of resistance. Manuscripts were photographed, retyped or copied long hand and passed from person to person in a practice known as samizdat. This was punishable by long terms in prison labor camps. As I pursued my own research on the use of file sharing technology in Ukraine, I started to wonder what the experience of seventy years of Soviet rule done to shape Ukrainian thinking on the issue of file sharing and music downloading. I began to realize that Ukrainian users had a quite different sense than their American comrades of the copyright issues involved, the relevance of communism to file sharing, and indeed the cultural meaning of file sharing technology within Ukrainian society. These, I argue, can only be understood through reference to their diverging historical experiences. Analysis of the discussion of copyright, piracy and Internet file sharing in the Ukrainian press and within the Ukrainian community website Muzon.com demonstrates that local attitudes and practices have been profoundly shaped by the Soviet experience. Todayâ s intellectual property environment reflects both Soviet cultureâ s lack of concern for the rights of individuals, businesses, and foreign government and the struggle of opposition and nationalist groups to freely distribute material outside the control of Soviet authorities. These two factors, while in many ways opposed, both influence Ukrainians to reject constraints on the free distribution of copyrighted materials. In addition, the efforts of Western businesses and governments to enforce their own copyright regimes on Ukraine trigger resentment in a nation that long suffered under the dictates of the Kremlin. File sharing enthusiasts often present themselves as members of an underground movement fighting â the rulers of the world corporationsâ and even a way to realize aspects of the communist utopia once promised to them. I show a number of technical and cultural similarities between the practices of Internet file sharing and those of Soviet samizdat, which I argue lead some Ukrainians to interpret the struggle against Western copyright as expression of political freedom and national identity. My findings suggest that scholars concerned with the use and social meaning of internet file sharing should not assume that a given technology or network will have the same meaning for users in all countries, but should be prepared to integrate their studies of information sharing behavior within a broader analysis of the social and national milieus in which they take place.

There are many approaches to fostering authentic inquiry in educational settings and communities, but many suffer from the inconsistency inherent in top-down approaches. What happens when users are not merely recipients of a design for inquiry, but take an active role in creating that design? This presentation examines three examples: (1) Chickscope, a K-12 science education project, (2) Paseo Boricua, a community in Chicago, and (3) Ethnography of the University, a project in which undergraduates research the lived experiences within the university.

This study examines the dynamics of critical Internet culture after the medium opened to a broader audience in the mid 1990s. The core of the research consists of four case studies of non-profit networks: the Amsterdam community provider, The Digital City (DDS); the early years of the nettime mailinglist community; a history of the European new media arts network Syndicate; and an analysis of the streaming media network Xchange. The research describes the search for sustainable community network models in a climate of hyper growth and increased tensions and conflict concerning moderation and ownership of online communities.

Thesis (M.M. (ICT Policy and Regulation))--University of the Witwatersrand, Faculty of Commerce, Law and Management, Graduate School of Public and Development Management, 2014. / The research aimed to investigate the supply and demand side factors that enables or hinders the effectiveness of rural connectivity provided through public access points such as the Thusong Service Centres (TSCs). The lack of broadband and terrestrial infrastructure is often cited as the main reason why rural people are not able to participate in the information society. The status of the Mopani District rural connectivity indicates that the digital divide is not always due to the lack of infrastructure, but due to the etic approach towards the deployment of connectivity and the failure to locate rural connectivity within the broader community development goals. The failure to understand the user requirements contributes to the misconception that Very Small Apparatus Terminals (VSAT) satellite technology is an inadequate solution which must be replaced by fixed broadband. On the other hand, the failure of the Department of Public Service and Administration (DPSA) blueprint indicates the poor level of e-government readiness within the public service sector. The status of the Mopani TSCs also shows that there is a lack of accountability, cooperation and collaboration across the three spheres of government and that there is a misuse of public funds in cases where connectivity resources are duplicated and not optimally used. The separation of the public service connectivity from the public connectivity creates the digital inequality in the targeted communities. The separation has resulted in connectivity being available to some and not to all, because accessibility is based on personal relationships. In other cases there is constructed denied access due to local politics. 16 years later since the establishment of the Universal Service and Access Agency of South Africa (USAASA), the South African Community Informatics (CI) sector is struggling to achieve outputs that produce the desired impact in the targeted communities.

I would like to publish this original research work for public domain / INTRODUCTION : The study was conducted at Pramukhswami Medical College in Karamsad from November-August 2007 to assess the Computer and Internet usage amongst health care professionals. OBJECTIVE: To identify the knowledge of Computer and Internet of health care professionals of Pramukhswami Medical College and to understand the information-seeking behavior. We have observed the search habits of Internet users at PSMC. Efforts are on to find the search requirements related to the use of the Internet information. METHODS: They were given a questionnaire to collect the data. RESULTS: Results show that all the respondents are using the Internet frequently because. They use the Internet in different ways, such as accessing to online journals, downloading text, chatting, discussion, E-mail services and for finding related references. It is revealed that the professionals of PSMC are getting quality information through the Internet. It is observed that the Google and Yahoo search engines are more widely use compared to other search engines. CONCLUSION: The study revealed that high computer usage among health care professionals in an institution with good computer facilities. The majority expressed their willingness to undergo further training.