MANAGE – UAS (B)
Training programme on
Navigating ICTs for Agricultural Extension
August 8-12, 2016
Venue: UAS, GKVK, Bangalore
Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), over the past three decades, have been an important part of agricultural extension and have given needed impetus and opportunities to agricultural and rural development. Dialogues in development don’t anymore concern about the importance of ICTs but about the ways to best use them to tap into their potential. Telecommunication and internet have supported a large number of ICT based agriculture and rural development projects in India and considerable number of farmers are taking up communication technology to access the needed information on a daily basis. But in spite of these increased realization and acceptance, ICT projects are still struggling to show large scale impact among the farmers and other stakeholders.
The greatest advantages of ICTs are the high number of applications and devices and the flexibility they provide in information sharing. Radio and TV have been in rural setting for a very long time and digital videos, web portals, expert systems, farmers call centres, mobile phones and social media have the ability to cater to a very diverse group of agricultural stakeholders. ICTs do not target only farmers but the whole spectrum of actors in agricultural innovation systems (AIS), bringing them on the same platform and making dialogue for development efficient and fruitful. Moreover, the functions of ICTs go beyond information sharing to capacity development of extensionists, farmers, entrepreneurs and other stakeholders.
Objectives
- To create awareness on ICTs for agricultural extension
- To deliberate types and functions of ICTs
- To conduct practical sessions on ICTs
- To share the good practices on ICTs for agricultural extension
- To share the experiences of the training participants
Content
This training program will deliberate and also have hands on- training on:
ICTs for:
- Offering localized and customized information, advisory and other services: Farmers call centres (FCCs), mobile apps, radio, and TV.
- Helping to create, document, store, retrieve, share and manage the information: Web portals, crop specific portals, knowledge banks, expert systems and agricultural information management systems.
- Enabling collaboration, sharing and partnerships for innovation among extension actors: Social media, Dgroups, and others.
- Enabling farmers and others to “gain a voice”: Community radio, tele-centres, videos, communities of practice (COPs).
- Facilitating capacity development of farmers, extension professionals and other AIS actors: e-learning mechanisms (Open Distance Learning (ODL), Learning Object Repositories (LOR), Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) and other e-learning mechanisms), training using ICTs, survey and monitoring tools and applications.
Methodology:
- Presentation resource persons
- Familiarising important ICT initiatives and applications
- Experience sharing participants
- Plug and play day and hands on training on ICTs
Participants and nomination
- The participants in the program would include senior and middle level officials of Agriculture, Horticulture, Animal husbandry, Sericulture, Fisheries, agricultural extension faculty, scientists and extension professionals from the agricultural Universities, Research Institutes, Farm Science Centres, Private and NGOs.
- Boarding and lodging and other tuition expenses of the training participants will be arranged MANAGE. However, TA and DA of the participants have to be borne the sponsoring agency/ participant.
- e-mail the nomination forms to Dr. Saravanan Raj, Director (Agricultural Extension), MANAGE, Rajendranagar, Hyderabad (e-mail: raj@manage.gov.in/ saravananraj@hotmail.com).
Participants and nomination
- The participants in the program would include senior and middle level officials of Agriculture, Horticulture, Animal husbandry, Sericulture, Fisheries, agricultural extension faculty, scientists and extension professionals from the agricultural Universities, Research Institutes, Farm Science Centres, Private and NGOs.
- Boarding and lodging and other tuition expenses of the training participants from the public sector are to be arranged MANAGE. However, TA and DA of the participants have to be borne the sponsoring agency/ participant. The tuition fee for the participants from the private sector is Rs. 10,000 and for foreign participants is INR 25, 000 (USD ………..) (Training fee or private sector and foreign participants include tuition fees, boarding and lodging during the training days).
- e-mail the nomination forms to Dr. Saravanan Raj, Director (Agricultural Extension), MANAGE, Rajendranagar, Hyderabad, India (e-mail: raj@manage.gov.in/ saravananraj@hotmail.com).
