Snapshots from Bangladesh trip, March 2012
Shipbreaking is a big industry in Bangladesh. This was my first chance to visit one of the many socalled shipbreaking yards in the Chittagong area and see for myself how the work is done. Like many other industries in Bangladesh, this work is heavily dependent on the hard labour of people.
Lower picture is from the Gulshan area in Dhaka, where we went to visit an IT company owned by two Danes. Taking a short walk in the local neighbourhood, the contrasts of Bangladesh become apparent once again.
Study trip to Bangladesh with students from Human Centered Informatics
Went to Bangladesh with 13 students from 6th Semester, Human Centered Informatics. The topic of the trip was ICT for Development, and the students were busy visiting IT-companies; telecentres; traning facilities for learning ICT-use; Dhaka University; Asian University for Women, etc.
Also meeting with people in Bangladesh was a very important part of the trip, and thanks to our good friends at Dhaka University, there was quite a lot of interaction between Danish and Bangladeshi students.
During a trip to YPSA (Young People in Social Action), Pär-Ola and myself were interviewed for the local community radio, and the students sang our national anthemn and gave an interview as well. Great fun, and brilliant work by our friend, Vashkar, who despite his visual handicap (he is totally blind) makes some very impressive in YPSA.
Also, see Pär-Ola’s post on the eLL website about the trip here…
Locally produced laptops a vehicle for change in Bangladesh?
The Daily Star newspaper of Bangladesh has published the news that a low cost laptop is now being assembled in Bangladesh, thus paving the road for boosting the Digital Bangladesh 2021 strategy. The IB Times article below mentions that laptops will be distributed to administrative workers first, which could also cause interesting developments, cf our current project at Dhaka University, ePolicyInPractice
http://www.thedailystar.net/newDesign/news-details.php?nid=206111
http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/229737/20111012/bangladesh-laptop-computer-doel-130.htm
The ePolicy in Practice project has been conducting workshops and fieldstudies at Dhaka University, Bangladesh. Two workshops were carried out with both teachers from various departments, and with admin staff from various offices around the university. Of particular interest to us was to see how participatory methods would work in these settings. We had three very good days, and found that the participants in all workshops came up with very good ideas for further development of their workpractices. We have brought back a lot of data (field notes, photos, products from the workshops, interviews), and I am looking forward to analysing it together with my colleague, Pär-Ola Zander.
Tomorrow I leave for Dhaka University, Bangladesh, where I will join with former Erasmus scholar and eLL-colleague, Sikder Murshed from Dhaka University, and Pär-Ola Zander and Lone Dirckinck-Holmfeld from Aalborg University. We will all participate in the official inauguration of the collaborative reserach project ePolicy in Practice, aiming at exploring the scope for digitalising administration and teaching and Dhaka University (DU).
Pär-Ola and I will conduct some workshops with administrators, teachers and management from DU, where we will use a variety of participatory methods. We are very excited to see how it will all work out :-)
