Digitally Lit: An Essay in Pictures

Spoorthi, Part IV: Stewards undergo a digital literacy session to harness the power of digital citizenship and participatory technology

This blog is part of a series mapping the journey of IT for Change’s community intervention project in G. Baiyappanahalli called ‘Spoorthi’. Spoorthi aims to build a spatial data platform, train community youth to engage with it, and strengthen their and the community’s claims-making capabilities.

In June 2018, the stewards of Spoorthi began their journey into the world of digital citizenship and participatory technology. The stewards attended the first digital literacy session held by the team at IT for Change. The objective of the session was to enable the stewards to use technology in safe and empowering ways that would benefit their employment, educational and civic aspirations while contributing towards the attainment of the project goals.

Taking into account, gender and socio-economic and location specific disparities in access to technology and connectivity, providing each steward with a tablet and Internet connectivity is an integral part of realizing the project’s aims.

Designing the digital literacy session was challenging. Traditional digital literacy sessions tend to focus on the issues of cyber bullying, safety, surveillance and Internet etiquette. In addition, the team wanted the stewards to be able to harness the empowering potential of technology without feeling intimidated by it. Keeping this in mind, the team attempted to provide a pragmatic and balanced view of technology use.

The lesson plan aimed to develop basic competency in operating a Lenovo Yoga 3 tablet and android based applications such as Gmail, Telegram, Recorder, Web Browser, Camera, Play Store and Google Maps.

The session started with Glory Rani from Association for Voluntary Action and Service handing over the tablets to the stewards. The stewards of Spoorthi came from all kinds of digital literacy backgrounds. Some were highly proficient with digital technologies and expressed confidence regarding using them, while some had never previously owned or had access to a digital device before. Our digital training session under Spoorthi, was hence designed to create a level playing field for all our stewards.

Deepti Bharthur and Anita Gurumurthy from IT for Change gave a brief introduction and explained the aim, objectives and the lesson plan. The stewards were divided into three groups and were asked to discuss their personal expectations from the training.

In the next session, Rakesh familiarised the stewards with the tablet and demonstrated how to set up a Gmail account in the tablet. While some stewards had existing Gmail accounts, some others were new to using email. The stewards wanted project mails to be separated from their personal mails and decided to create new email accounts for the project. They also named their group ‘Spoorthi’ (meaning ‘inspiration’ /‘enthusiasm’ in Kannada).

While some participants were able to set up the mail account quickly, some others struggled with setting up safe and secure passwords. On the whole, girls lagged behind boys in their familiarity with digital applications. However, the collective learning pace picked up as stewards helped each other to learn.

The team discussed the safety, security and privacy aspects of the messaging applications with the stewards and explained the reasons for choosing Telegram over the more popular Whatsapp application. A telegram group called ‘Spoorthi’ was also created with all the stewards and the project management team. It was decided to use this space for uploading virtual digital literacy sessions and assignments.

The facilitators then discussed messaging etiquette, penalties for cyber stalking and spread of fake news through messaging applications. In the next session, facilitators gave a brief introduction to spatial data and also discussed navigation using GPS.

While planning the session, the team gave a lot of thought to formulating and transacting a set of digital responsibility guidelines. These guidelines were aimed at ensuring that the stewards are able to use the community devices and Internet in a legally compliant, safe and productive manner that can contribute to the project goals and complement their personal goals and expectations from the project. The first digital literacy session saw healthy participation, with stewards contemplating and discussing the various types of usage and how to exercise judgement.