Advances have been made in ‘eLearning/2nd Life’ education processes where scripts relevant to the real-world can be applied to construct discussion environments which can be relayed anywhere in the world to users using internet technology. This technology has been developed together with background research on the exact environment in which the farmers in India are making decisions and in which specific climate scenarios are in keeping with national climate forecasts. This project investigated the potential for use of this technology involving Andhra Pradesh farmers with substantial assistance from colleagues from ANGRAU and Tamil Nadu Agricultural Universities. Following workshops held in Hyderabad, Biranpalli, and Ragunathpalli, three ‘2nd Life’ videos have been created which captured farmer decisions plus actual climate forecasts relevant for the needs of the farmers. The project demonstrated that it is possible to provide video productions of discussion environments that contain real-world decisions and climate forecasts in real time. the farmers revealed that while the science content regarding climate forecasts and implications for farming were very useful, they asked for even more realistic depiction of the characters in the video (dress, age, numbers of farmers participating) in order to convey a ‘real-world’ setting for them.
Project • CBA2010-07NSY