e-Literacy Training in Deep Rural Areas: The Siyakhula Living Lab Experience
Sibukele Gumbo, Alfredo Terzoli · 2014
Within the discourse of broadband deployment in poor areas (particularly rural), very little attention is generally put on the critical enabler represented by e-literacy training that empowers people to use ICT systems, especially in the form of full-fledged machines such as fixed, tower and laptop computers (These machines are still more preferable for growing a generation of ‘producers’ as opposed to ‘consumers’ in the ICT space.) This paper reports on the experience in running e-literacy in a deep rural area, as part of the Siyakhula Living Lab (SLL), whose end goal is to diffuse production oriented ICTs in poor areas of South Africa and Africa. In particular it will expand on the feedback given by the participants to the last edition of the e-literacy course, run in the first semester of 2014. The lessons learned from this experience include: the need for linguistic localization of the learning material or at least part of its presentation; the importance of teaching and learning that facilitates (easy) transfer of knowledge gained to other ICT settings (such as mobiles; or uses to support business); and the importance of face-to-face courses to allow real interaction with the people living in the targeted areas, partly as a strategic means to forging relations towards the realization of the Living Lab vision (co-creation of solutions with empowered users). Altogether, e-literacy courses have proved to be critical to the broad aim of SLL of ‘activating’ the segment of society living in poor areas towards self-determination. A small but telling indicator is the transformation in the view people have of themselves once certified as e-literate.