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Full-Text Articles in Communication Technology and New Media
Leisure Divide: Can The Third World Come Out To Play?, Payal Arora
Leisure Divide: Can The Third World Come Out To Play?, Payal Arora
Payal Arora
As billions of dollars are invested in mitigating the digital divide, stakes are raised to gain validity for these cost-intensive endeavors, focusing more on online activities that have clear socio-economic outcomes. Hence, farmers in rural India are watched closely to see how they access crop prices online, while their Orkuting gets sidelined as anecdotal. This paper argues that this is a fundamental problem as it treats users in emerging markets as somehow inherently different from those in the West. After all, it is now commonly accepted that much of what users do online in developed nations is leisure-oriented. This perspective …
Hope-In-The-Wall? A Promise Of Free Learning, Payal Arora
Hope-In-The-Wall? A Promise Of Free Learning, Payal Arora
Payal Arora
Hole-in-the-Wall as a concept has attracted worldwide attention. It involves providing unconditional access to computer-equipped kiosks in playgrounds and out-of-school settings, children taking ownership of their learning and learning driven by the children's natural curiosity. It is posited that this approach, which is being used in India, Cambodia and several countries in Africa, can pave the way for a new education paradigm and be the key to providing literacy and basic education and bridging the digital divide in remote and disadvantaged regions. This paper seeks to establish why two such open access, self-directed and collaborative learning systems failed to take …