Apologies for cross posting.*** * *Can the importance of literacy be compensated for by technology?*** *Bhashaka Kura (7th March 2008)* *4:30pm-6:00pm* *Yalamaya Kendra, PatanDhoka, Lalitpur, Nepal.* Presenters: Prof. Pat Hall, Ganesh Ghimire, Abhishek Shrestha, Prabin Gautam Madan Puraskar Pustakalaya, Nepal. Summary: Literacy is frequently seen as a prerequisite in helping very poor people enhance their quality of life through improved livelihoods, leading to the achievement of the millennium development goals. Often literacy is taught independently as a life skill, outside of any context of its use, but increasingly the practice is to teach other practical subjects like agriculture or health care and in that context teach sufficient literacy for that particular purpose. An important part of this use of literacy would be to access communal knowledge, but equally important would be the contribution of traditional knowledge to the shared pool of knowledge. But just how critical is literacy to all this? We can view writing as a means of recording speech, and when writing was invented many thousands of years ago, making marks on stone or clay or bark was the only technology available. However today we can directly record speech using electronic devices, and with computers can manipulate and edit that speech. We can also generate speech from written materials, so that previously written materials can be read to the person who cannot read. Writing may no longer be as important as it was previously. In this seminar we will discuss these issues and demonstrate speech based technologies that could enable illiterate people to immediately gain benefits previously denied them due to the barrier of literacy. Interested people are kindly welcome. http://sambad.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=section&id=1&Itemid=2 Further information: Phone: 977 1 5521393 Email: info@sambad.org regards, Ganesh