Step 1
Step 2
Step 3
Step 4 -
Gender and Technology Training Guidelines
Ask participants to invent a piece of technology that they feel will be really
important to their lives or the lives of the people they work with. It can be as
fanciful or as practical as they like (for example, a rainmaking machine, or a
continuously cropping seed). Ask them to pick up any object in the room that
will depict this invention and to try and sell this invention to another
participant. Once the invention has been ‘sold’ - then the person who has
bought it remembers the story and sells it to another participant.
Stop the process after about 20 minutes and ask each participant to introduce
the inventions they have acquired to the group. The stories will probably have
changed or been embellished.
Discuss the nature of these inventions. What sort of problems were they
solving? Ask the participants to talk about how they felt about ‘inventing’
technology. Can anyone invent technology? Why not?
Discuss the activity
* How did you feel about the activity?
* Was it a challenge?
* What did you learn?
Explain the Sub-theme-
* What gets done
* Designed for whom? who designs?
* Whose needs are least recognised?
Facilitator’s notes:
It may be difficult here to get people to 'invent' a crazy idea: the tendency is to
explain something that is known. Try a demonstration run through with one person,
perhaps asking what is the biggest problem s/he faces in everyday life (e.g. lack of
water) and then coming up with a crazy solution (stapler = rainmaker)
ACTIVITY 2
HOW TOOLS LOOK
STEP 1
Divide into groups of four or five participants. Give each group a card showing a
tool being used. Ask the groups to look at the way the tool looks and the way the
tool is being used
STEP 2 Ask each group to write two lists, one on the things they like about the tool and
one on the things they do not like about the tool.
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