Saturday, June 23, 2012

Relative Advantage: Mobile Phones Vs Earlier ICT platforms for enabling information transfers from lab to land


Mobile phone is the new communication technology that I am familiar with and would like to discuss its adoption in agricultural extension systems for disseminating information from lab to land.
From the ages, agricultural extension has been recognized as an essential mechanism for enabling information and knowledge transfers from agricultural research labs to farmer fields. The research-farmer linkages mediated by the extension system played a crucial role in the advancement of food security during green revolution. Today, extension systems are in a state of decline in many countries. Many of the extension agents have come to believe extension has to escape from the narrow mindset of transferring technology packages while moving toward a constantly innovating knowledge transfer mode that supports decisions, innovation and personal growth among farmers and seed entrepreneurs.

Advances in Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) provided enormous opportunities to explore web based knowledge sharing and extension functionaries in transferring technology packages from laboratory to farm to the broadest number of farmers, for example Agropedia, AgMark, Market Maker, eXtension etc. However many of these web based extension portals have limitations to establish the last mile connectivity.
The advent of mobile technology has addressed a greater array of earlier ICT platform last mile connectivity issues – infrastructure, connectivity, training needs, literacy issues etc.  It also further reduces the investments on capacity building activities.  As the farmer’s started owning mobile phones it is relatively advantageous to use mobile as a communication medium than the array of earlier ICT platforms (information kiosks, web, fixed phones etc.) for transferring information from lab to land. 

Based on its relative advantage, I believe the speed of adoption of the mobile phone technology in the future is higher than the array of earlier ICT platforms.  For example, in the year 2003 in Africa there were 6.1 mobile subscribers for every 100 persons as compared to 3.0 fixed line subscribers per 100 persons. In 2005, there were 52 million mobile subscribers compared to 25 million for fixed lines.  The commission for Africa estimates that the number of mobile subscribers in Africa will continue to expand at the rate of 35 per cent over the next few years.  

Monday, June 18, 2012


Hello,

My name is Colter.  I am a graduate student in the Interdisciplinary Graduate Studies program at ISU.  I have a Bachelor's of Science from the University of Minnesota.

My long term goal of mine is to earn my Phd in Human Computer Interaction from ISU and I hope to do well in this course so I will be admitted to that program. 

Sunday, June 17, 2012

Introduction - Dileepkumar Guntuku

I am Dileepkumar Guntuku, graduate certificate student of Human Computer Interaction at Iowa State University.  I am an off-campus student. 

I have joined HCI program, when I was working at Iowa State University as a program specialist, to understand the finer nuances of Human Computer Interaction theories. I have resigned my job at ISU in December 2011 and accepted a position at an International Organization in India.  At present I live in India, but I continue my association with Iowa State University as a student and also a collaborator on few International development projects.
 
I have a PhD in Information and Communication Technologies.  I am interested in studying the applications of contemporary Information and Communication Technologies for promoting food security and socio-economic change in developing countries, especially in remote rural regions .  My research interests are development communication, Information and Communication Technologies for Development, Rural Resource Information Systems, Elearning, EGovernance etc.  I look forward to learn diffusion innovation theories and communication technologies for social change from this course. 

Introduction

Hello Everyone,
My name is Anand Tripathi and I was born in India, came to US for my undergrad. For my undergrad I went to Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago. Currently I live in Chicago and have been working with many Chicagoland organizations as a Lead Quality Assurance Analyst in capacity of a consultant. The good part of being a consultant is that I move from client to client within the 2-3 years hence I get to learn new applications, meet new people and there is never a dull moment.
In my spare time I love to run, play tennis and cook. I have done a few half marathons and now contemplating on running a full one although the time and dedication that it will require deters me.
Currently I am a first year Off Campus student pursuing a degree in Human Computer Interaction from ISU. With a degree in HCI I want to transition more into UX and UI field as I think applications get utilized more if they are user friendly and easy to operate.