"Workshop on voice-KVK and KVK-Net" 20th January, 2012

Knowledge Sharing and Innovation unit of ICRISAT in collaboration with IIT-Kanpur organized a one day workshop on January 20th, 2012.The workshop was conducted for the sensitization and capacity building of KVK scientists of ZPD-V on virtual extension activity using voice message broadcasting platform 'vKVK'. More than 30 scientists from Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra participated in the workshop.

Dr N T Yaduraju, coordinator of this workshop briefed about the workshop to the KVK scientists. Dr T V Prabhakar, Dr Sharwan Shukla and Mr Suneel Pandey of Indian Institute of Kanpur were the resource persons of the workshop. They presented and demonstrated Agropedia portal, vKVK and KVK-Net to the participants. Agropedia is a one stop shop for agricultural information for theacademia, and extension workers etc.  During second phase of the project "Engaging Farmers, Enriching Knowledge: Agropedia Phase II" two new platforms called vKVK (voice Krishi Vigyan Kendra) and KVK-Net (Krishi Vigyan Knowledge Network) were developed for information dissemination among the farmers and scientific fraternity respectively.  vKVK is a Simple  Messaging System based platform that allows agro-advisories to be sent to the farmers' cell phone using text and voice messages. It is a platform that connects KVKs with farmers through internet and mobile technology. A recorded message can be transmitted via vKVK platform to all farmers under the guidance of KVK experts. The platform is currently being tested in selected districts of Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka.

Workshop on Voice-KVK and vKVK-Net

The participants were also explained about KVK-Net.  KVK-Net is an agricultural knowledge sharing platform meant for KVK scientists for information sharing and interaction among them. It has seven agriculture and allied communities to facilitate and share knowledge among the agricultural experts and extension functionaries.

The workshop was followed by hands on session on vKVK and KVK-Net and the participants were asked to record their message and interact among themselves by using vKVK and KVK-Net. The scientists participated with great ardor and appreciated the Agropedia portal. Dr Kiran Yadav, Mr G Sreedhar of ICRISAT and Ms Koyel Khan and Ms Amrita Pramanik of IIM-Calcutta facilitated the hands on session. Workshop ended with feedbacks from the participants.