Report on agropedia Workshop at ZPD, Zone-IV, Kanpur

Introduction

The agropedia team from IIT-Kanpur was invited by the Zonal Project Directorate, Zone-IV, Kanpur to demonstrate the three portals agropedia, KVK-Net and vKVK. Organized at ZPD, Kanpur, Mid Term Review Workshop of KVK's was going on from December 22-24, 2011. On 24th December 2011 agropedia team was asked to present agropedia, KVK-Net and vKVK. 36 KVK's participated in this review workshop, which covered KVK's of almost all of the Uttar Pradesh region.

The Director of ZPD, Zone IV, Dr. A.K Singh gave a welcome speech and the overview of agropedia and its objectives. He introduced the agropedia team with the participants of the workshop. He said that he presented agropedia when the same kind of review meeting was held at Goa and Jabalpur. People appreciated and are even using the website for any agricultural related information and content. The agropedia IITK team included Mr. Jeetendra Singh from the technical front, Dr. Sharwan Shukla and Krishna Kant Dubey from the agricultural team, Mr. Avinash Karnick and Sugatha Chaturvedi from the admin group. The IIM Calcutta team also joined us and participated in the workshop. The IIM Calcutta team included Koyel Khan and Mr. Nirbhay Kumar.

 

Presentation and Demonstration on agropedia

This was followed by the introductory speech and presentation on agropedia by our technical expert Mr Jeetendra Singh. In this session he explained in detail about agropedia and its various features and functions. He discussed on points like Gyan dhara (certified content) and Jana gyan (contributed content), the two kinds of searches Semantic search and Syntactic search available only in agropedia portal, Knowledge Models, and how this site is different from other agricultural sites. He briefed agropedia as a stop shop for all agricultural related information and it also enables the sharing and creation of agricultural knowledge by bridging the gap between explicit knowledge holders like researchers, scientists, experts and tacit knowledge holders like farmers and other field workers.  In the presentation he demonstrated the methods of creating own account and become a registered user of the site, Add content in the Extension Material which consists of Library, Crop Calendar and Dos and Don'ts. Then comes the Interactions space were one can create or write their own wikipage in agrowiki, write a blog entry in agroblog, post a forum topic in agroforum and share any information related to agriculture.

The most interactive of all is agrochat were any registered user can do online chatting with the online agricultural scientist and do online discussion on any topic related to agriculture. The crop Knowledge Models (wheat, chickpea, pigeon pea, vegetable pea, sorghum, groundnut, sugarcane, litchi and safflower) were also demonstrated and their usefulness as a tagging model was also explained.

 

Demonstration on vKVK and KVK-Net

Further down the session he gave a brief introduction about the two platforms vKVK and KVK-Net. vKVK(Virtual Krishi Vigyan Kendra) now stands for voice-KVK as well not just virtual KVK. These two platforms are especially designed for the KVK scientists sitting at different KVK's. In here, we have E2F, F2E, E2E (E for expert, F for farmer) voice channels which work entirely through any phone. No need for internet connectivity at all and these services are available over a browser as well. It is also simple to use platform that provides facilities like sms and Voice for services like advisory, alert, private messages.

KVK-Net - (Krishi Vigyan Knowledge Network) a new platform developed for the KVK Scientists. It is a common platform where the experts at one KVK can interact with experts at other KVKs distributed throughout the country. KVK-Net is for KVK scientists to share, discuss, exchange among them.

Later on, our agri expert Dr. Sharwan Shukla gave a live demonstrated on vKVK. More than 10,000 farmers are registerd with vKVK. He showed the method of creating and sending voice messages. During the demo session the participants looked quiet interested and some of them got registered with the website, some raised questions like how to update the farmer's list, how to edit the profile, can photos be send to the farmers with sms or not and is there any facility if the farmers want to ask any question as he receive the voice message . The participants described the message sending process as "KRANTI" in itself. The experts found the M2M, mobile to mobile system of sending messages to the farmers easier than the W2M, web to mobile service.