Digital Didi Changing Mindsets, Practices and Narratives
The education sector in India has been highly competitive and exam oriented with little focus on fostering creativity. There are very few institutions that provide high quality, experiential and practical education and so it remains a luxury that only the elite can afford. The Digital Empowerment has been working to bridge this divide with its training modules and makerspace labs.
START is a digital learning and MIL toolkit, which has been developed after years of experience in imparting functional digital literacy through hands-on training and workshops in rural and tribal communities. It has been designed exclusively for first-generation technology users to promote digital inclusion and fight information poverty.
It is a 45-hour digital learning curriculum that covers 30 topics ranging from basics of computers, use of applications, media & information literacy and online security and safety, among others. The pedagogy for START focuses on hands-on training and workshops in rural and tribal communities through activities and gamification of topics.
Efforts are now underway to include a Media & Information Literacy (MIL) module into the START curriculum so that the first-generation users are also able to access, analyse and understand information to become conscious consumers and producers of online content. Next on the agenda would be to transform the entire START curriculum into an audio-visual curriculum to comprehensively and holistically include those who cannot read or write a script.
The way DEF has looked at education is through the lens of the learner. This learner-centric approach has made DEF’s education programs a success around the country. Starting from basic digital literacy to misinformation and even cyber security. Similarly, DEF also follows this philosophy in its other pillars; when working with weavers and artisans we focus on the way they would see the intervention instead of what we want them to get out of it.
Where in education it is a learner-based approach, in governance, finance, health and livelihood it is a community-based approach. In this newsletter the reader will see the way this approach creates an impact not only at scale but also in improving the quality of life of the community.
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