ICT for Socioeconomic Development (ICT4SD)

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ICT for Socioeconomic Development (ICT4SD)

• IT 625 / M Th 630 to 800 pm
• http//www.it.iitb.ac.in/it625
• Course Coordinators
• U. B. Desai and Krithi Ramamritham

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Objectives

• Provide exposure to the already existing benefits
  of ICT for the masses
• ICT for social development is indeed an exciting
  area of research
• A forum for generating ideas in this new and
  important domain --- we believe that no one has
  really cracked this domain
• Motivate the younger lot to do R and D in ICT4D
• Contribute to the cause through
• The creation of portals
• Studies
• Projects

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Course Structure

• Two 1.5 hrs lectures per week
• 7 to 8 weeks lectures by 7 to 8 faculty from IITB
• 5 to 6 weeks (10 to 12) invited lectures from
  people working in the area of ICT for development
• 3 weeks (9 to 10 hrs) of student presentation
• At least one site visit (possibly Pabal in
  Maharashtra)

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Faculty contributing to the Course

• U B Desai and Krithi Ramamritham Introduction
  to the course, motivation, expectations
• Krithi R. ongoing projects in KReSIT and
  elsewhere in IIT on ICT4D
• Anirudha Joshi --- Interactive and contextual
  design, language interfaces
• Anand Patwardhan Policy and business models,
  profits at the bottom of the pyramid
• Krithi R. --- Data Bases, Content Creation
• U. B. Desai --- Access Technologies, rural kiosk,
  sustainable ICT in rural areas
• Pushpak B. --- Languages technologies
• Karandikar --- Networking
• Ananthakrishnan -- Literacy
• Dinesh Sharma --- Affordable Devices Affordable
  Computing
• A Q Contractor --- Bio-X
• D. B. Phatak Open Source
• Invite A. W. Date (Mech.) to share experience in
  rural technology
• Sivakumar --- Localization efforts

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Tentative list Invited Speakers

• People from ICICI bank (Nachiket) on Microfinance
• Arun Mehta on Telecom Policy in India
• Ashok Jhunjhunwala
• SEWA Ahmedabad
• ITC e-Choupal
• M. S. Swaminathan foundation (Pondichery)
• Hindustan Lever on how they have approached the
  rural market
• Anil Gupta from IIM-Ahmedabad
• Anupam Basu IIT KGP
• Ananthakrishnan -- Literacy
• Kadarbhai KVK Baramati
• Yogesh Kulkarni Vigyan Ashram
• Rekha Jain from IIM-Ahm. (heads the center on
  telecom policy studies)
• Bhoomi project in Karnataka (Maybe Mr. Rajeev
  Chawala)
• Secretary IT Mr. K. K. Jaswal
• Group in Hyderabad Project COW Computers on
  Wheel
• Some grass root workers people who have been
  working in the field on ICT
• Rajesh Jain (Net-core Tech.)
• Zero Tech (Hiranandani Sudershan SOM)

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Course Output

• By the end of the semester the course would have
• a)Created several portals, each in a specific
  domain, say health, education, agriculture,
  listing all projects going on around the world
  for improving the reach of ICT based solutions in
  those domains
• b)Paper and pencil exercises evaluating specific
  ongoing projects - both research and commercial
  - assessing their potential and impact
• c)Several practical field-oriented projects
  starting from requirements identification,
  definition of scope of project, deliverables and
  finally ending with a prototype deployment and
  preliminary evaluation.
• d)Conduct a workshop on "use of ICT for
  development" bringing representatives from
  different stockholder groups to get first-hand
  views.

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Course requirements

• 1)Contribution to one of the domain portals, as
  per (a)
• 2)Contribution as a member of 1-2 person team
  doing a paper and pencil exercise as per (b)
• 3)Be a part of a 2-3 person team, as per (c),
  doing a field project.

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Several byproducts of the course

• Documentation of grassroot level innovations in
  the use of ICT
• -Creating ontologies, say in the agriculture
  domain
• -Appraisals of ICT projects worldwide, from
  commercialization / sustainability angles.
• -New applications / opportunities for using ICT
  for development

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• Aim to make a difference!