eTourism for Development (eT4D): The Missing Piece in the ICT4D Research Agenda

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Intergenerational Digital Storytelling: four racconti for a new approach

Digital storytelling has been slowly penetrating the world of education and social development since a while. Intergenerational learning seems a promising and somehow natural domain for digital storytelling, as it offers a perfect venue to bring together memory and wisdom with digital media skills AND VIBRANT COMMUNICATION. This paper presents the efforts made by Associazione seed to transfer digital storytelling to intergenerational learning, based on its previous work with the Digital Storytelling for Development model in many fields

Digital Storytelling intergenerazionale: Quattro racconti per un nuovo approccio

Digital storytelling has been slowly penetrating the world of education and social development since a while. Intergenerational learning seems a promising and somehow natural domain for digital storytelling, as it offers a perfect venue to bring together memory and wisdom with digital media skills and vibrant communication. This paper presents the efforts made by Associazione seed to transfer digital storytelling to intergenerational learning, based on its previous work with the Digital Storytelling for Development model in many fields.Negli ultimi anni, il “Digital Storytelling” ha penetrato lentamente il mondo della formazione e dello sviluppo sociale. L’apprendimento intergenerazionale sembra un ambito promettente e in qualche modo naturale per lo sviluppo di esperienze di Digital Storytelling, in quanto offre il luogo ideale per riunire la memoria e la saggezza con abilità per l’uso dei media digitali e la capacità comunicativa. Questo documento presenta i risultati di lavoro dell’Associazione SEED per il trasferimento del Digital Storytelling nel campo dell’apprendimento intergenerazionale, sulla base di un precedente modello creato dallo stesso gruppo di lavoro SEED e testato in diversi campi, ovvero il Digital Storytelling per lo sviluppo

Liberal Studies and Servant Leadership: Inspiring Ignatian values at the margins

This paper aims to unpack how the concept of servant leadership is perceived from Liberal Studies graduates living at the margins of society. Anchoring this research in the work of Jesuit Worldwide Learning (JWL), a faith-based organization providing higher education to displaced and poor communities, this paper seeks to deconstruct the assumption present in the literature of an ‘already-in-power’ servant leader by inviting looking for servant leaders in vulnerable and marginalized places, where they would be most needed. By synthesizing the voices of more than 100 graduates from the Diploma in Liberal Studies program, this research looks at how graduates define servant leadership from the unprivileged perspective and how these graduates could develop and apply this approach in their daily life. Through this analysis, certain values and skills emerge, which permits a contribution to mapping a servant leader’s attributes. This paper concludes on the effect of democratizing the definition of servant leadership with the aims of serving a wider population and having a stronger impact on communities

Integrating mobile technologies to achieve community development goals: the case of telecenters in Brazil

Telecenters and mobile technologies are two of the main interventions for reducing the digital divide and are primary tools for information access. The rapid and pervasive adoption of mobile technologies had called into question the necessity of continued investment in telecenters; however, telecenters have been credited for serving different needs than private mobile technologies. Users and stakeholders are shaping new ways of access, and telecenters and mobile technologies can benefit from each other to address the issue of underserved communities’ access to information. The literature has not yet extensively addressed this topic. The study presented in this paper has the twofold goal to understand (i) how mobile technologies are used by telecenters to enhance their services to the public, and (ii) whether telecenter operators perceive mobile technologies as viable instruments to innovate telecenters and pursue community development goals. Informed by the Theory of Social Representations (SR), the study presents responses to a questionnaire to Brazilian telecenter operators. Results show that telecenter operators have a positive attitude towards adopting mobile technologies to extend their telecenters’ services and meet their development goals, especially in the areas of education, knowledge, information and communication

Digital tourism gaze and mega events

Tourism and photography have been always strongly interlinked. With the rise of smartphones and social network travellers’ photography exit the boundaries of friends and family and is now available to a wider audience. This is challenging the tourism gaze theory, which postulate that tourists photography is industry-driven and socially constructed. This exploratory research studied a visual social network to understand travellers digital mediated gaze during a mega event. Particularly the study shades lights on iconic places/attractions portrayed and on the ideal self represented by the event goers highlighting the presence of iconic places and staged personal pictures

Using photo-elicitation to explore social representations of community multimedia centers in Mozambique.

Ten Mozambican Community Multimedia Centers (CMCs) were investigated by analyzing Social Representations of users and staff members. Photo-elicitation, an underexplored methodological approach in the domain of Information and Communication Technologies for Development (ICT4D), was employed to conduct the study, and a three-step qualitative content analysis was performed on both visual and textual data. Results tend to confirm and build upon outcomes from the existing literature on Public Access Venues (PAVs). Local communities value these centers because they bring social recognition to people working or learning there. The venues are associated with a symbolism that extends from the social recognition of the individual to the development and social inclusion of the whole community, which, because of the presence of the venue, does not feel left behind. In this vein, the study also shows that the importance of CMCs is often not related to the newest technology available, but to the technology that reaches the most of the community. The study also highlights neglected dimensions of CMCs, such as the importance of the exterior appearance of the venue, and the perception of a switch in their nature from static centers funded by third parties towards more entrepreneurial-driven ones. The presented research also contributes to the ICT4D field by proposing a promising research protocol, which is able to elicit representations otherwise difficult to obtain

Motivations of non-use of telecentres: a qualitative study from Mozambique

On the cutting-edge scene for several years, and recently overtaken by the diffusion of more personal and pervasive technologies, telecentres have attracted and are still luring the interests of Governments in developing regions. To individuate improvement strategies and give food for thoughts to researchers and practitioners in the area, this study presents an in-depth qualitative analysis of the reasons why local people in Mozambique do not access the telecentre component of their local Community Multimedia Centers (CMCs). Based on 229 semi-structured interviews, the analysis allows to depict four main clusters of reasons for non-use, to finally suggest how they can be overcome

Intergenerational digital storytelling: four racconti of a new approach

Digital storytelling has been slowly penetrating the world of education and social development since a while. Intergenerational learning seems a promising and somehow natural domain for digital storytelling, as it offers a perfect venue to bring together memory and wisdom with digital media skills and vibrant communication. This paper presents the efforts made by Associazione seed to transfer digital storytelling to intergenerational learning, based on its previous work with the Digital Storytelling for Development model in many fields