Podcasting on the move
Writing by admin on Thursday, 19 of June , 2008 at 9:08 pm
The following is an excerpt from an article prepared by Katherine Nightingale for SciDev.net. To read the entire article click here.
The Kothmale Community Radio project in Sri Lanka is another example of communication evolving to suit the environment, bringing the benefits of ICTs to isolated rural communities in hilly central Sri Lanka.
The following is an excerpt from an article prepared by Katherine Nightingale for SciDev.net. To read the entire article click here.
The Kothmale Community Radio project in Sri Lanka is another example of communication evolving to suit the environment, bringing the benefits of ICTs to isolated rural communities in hilly central Sri Lanka.
The project doesn’t just use radio. Members of the team use a tuk tuk — a motorised three-wheeled vehicle — loaded with a laptop computer, wireless Internet, generator, printer, camera, telephone and scanner.
This mobile broadcasting unit, dubbed an ‘e-tuk tuk’, allows the team to transmit audio information in two ways — using loudspeakers mounted on the vehicle’s roof and broadcasting over the radio via the telephone line.
Historically, news in Sri Lanka was distributed by people who would beat out messages and news as they moved from village to village. Ben Grubb, coordinator of the project, describes the e-tuk tuk as a “modern day, internet-connected drum, beating out news and information as it travels”.
And local people are encouraged to develop their ICT skills. “We encourage skill development in communities, so that they are able to plan, record and edit their own programmes,” says Grubb.
In doing so, he says, the e-tuk tuk, “encourages participation from those who would otherwise be unwilling or unable to access the [radio] studio, due to caste, gender, time or other cultural and logistical factors”.
Leave a comment
Category: press
- Add this post to
- Del.icio.us -
- Meneame -
- Digg
