rt vol. 2, no. 1 organized free for all

7/31/2019 RT Vol. 2, No. 1 Organized free for all

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22 Rice TodayApril 2003

The new Rice Know ledge Bank laysthe benefits of more than four decadesof research at your fingertips

The new Rice Know ledge Bank laysthe benefits of more than four decadesof research at your fingertips

Organized freefor allOrganized freefor allI

t was one of those magic momentswhen Rajat M. Nag wished he hada camera. Bubbling with enthus-

iasm, two youngsters were takingdelight in demonstrating the basicsof computer use to their parents.But for Mr. Nag, who is directorgeneral of the Mekong Departmentof the Asian Development Bank, thisheart-warming scene went waybeyond cute.

The room was not a comfortable,well-appointed den, but one of thecramped, spartan Internet cafs thatdot the roadside in the impoverishedrice-growing expanses of northeasternThailand. What intrigued Mr. Nagmost was what the kids had up. Notfor them the digital mayhem of thelatest computer game. On their screenwere pages fromRice Doctor, adiagnostic program developed by

IRRI scientists to help rice farmersmanage the pests and diseases thatattack their crops. The kids weretranslating the relevant pages ofRice

Doct or into Thai for their parents.

Farmers will benefitI loved hearing this story, says MarkBell, the head of the Training Centerat IRRI. It demonstrates that,although very few poor rice farmers


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23Rice Today April 2003

(NARES) and other partners that runextension services. In other words,IRRI trains trainers, who then adaptinstitute research methods andrecommendations to local conditionsand relay them to farmers. That said,one of the hardest challenges inagricultural development remains, asalways, the timely and effectivetransfer of technologies from theresearch laboratory to farmers fields.

All too often, new technologiesare successfully developed only to failto reach those who need them most the farmers because of poorcommunication. Even worse,potentially valuable technologies thatlanguish unused can becomeforgotten and permanently lost.Meanwhile, NGOs have begun to playan important role in extension, butfew have the resources or expertise to

can use a computer or have access toone, if you make information availableon the Internet, chances are manyfarmers will benefit in some way.

To be sure, rice knowledge rarelyflows this directly from IRRI tofarmers. The institute focuses itstraining and other knowledge-dissemination efforts on the staffmembers of national agriculturalresearch and extension systems

Easy access: training and courseware specialist Albert Atkinson demonstrates how to

use the Rice Knowledge Bank to Mark Bell, head of the IRRI Training Center. Content

created by IRRI scientists and others is structured so that material residing within one

of the banks six major categories can be cross-referenced and combined with items

from other areas.

ARIEL JAVELLANA/JUAN LAZARO


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develop their owntechnologies. Only withaccess to technologiesdeveloped by scientists ininstitutes like IRRI canthey hope to achieveimpact.

Into the yawning gap

between research andimpact has stepped theRice Knowledge Bank.This is the worlds firstcomprehensive, digitallibrary of trainingmaterials on rice farmingand one of the first digitalextension services forthose who work with poorfarmers. What is more, the wealth ofinformation on rice production andtraining in the Rice Knowledge Bank

which, of course, includesRiceDoct or continues to grow with newcontributions made by scientists andeducators from IRRI and elsewhere.

Scientists participationIRRI training materials have alwaysbeen notable for their quality andfocus, thanks to a tradition ofscientists actively participating intraining. What is new about the RiceKnowledge Bank is that it provides allthis in a breakthrough format that

sets a new standard in organizingmaterial for easy retrieval. Borrowingthe latest and best ideas from private-

sector work in this area, the RiceKnowledge Bank offers governmentextension officers and NGO staffers

and anyone else who logs on unprecedented access to riceknowledge and training information.

IRRI aims to make this dynamicInternet portal the worlds centralrepository of rice knowledge andtraining materials. The knowledgebank has made a good start bycapturing much of IRRIs 42 years ofrice research in digital form, whichallows it to be shared, searched andused in any part of the world withInternet connectivity. For areas where

the Internet is inaccessible, the RiceKnowledge Bank is built to run onCD-ROM. From either source, users

can easily call up thematerial in a form ready-formatted for printing,using a concept known assingle-source publishing.

Content in the RiceKnowledge Bank falls intosix categories or areas:

1) e-Learning Courses,2) Field Diagnosis andPractices, 3) Fact Sheets,4) Reference Materials,5) Rice Biological Data-bases, and 6) TrainingMaterials. Within eacharea, content is structuredas reusable, or shared,learning and information

objects, meaning that objects residingwithin one area can be cross-referenced and combined with items

from other areas. For example, theRice Grain Quality course, which islocated within e-Learning Courses,uses any number of objects from otherareas, such as various referencematerials and the decision-supporttool TropRice, which resides in FieldDiagnosis and Practices.

At the institute level, scientistsare now using the Rice KnowledgeBank to prepare materials fortraditional classroom courses. Ratherthan reinvent the wheel, they search

the bank for their topic, see what hasalready been written and then makenecessary adjustments. When their

ALBERT

ATKINSON

The reach of cyberspace: Internet storefronts (above) in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu,

India; the IRRI Training Centers e-Learning for Development course created a far-flung

learning community for two weeks in August and September 2002, in which 27

students from 14 countries (map below) completed the course at home.


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course is complete, they upload therevised materials into the TrainingMaterials area, where it is stored foruse during the next training. This cansave hours of preparation time andensure that training messages aredelivered consistently.

New dimensionThe Training Materials site isreceiving materials developed bymany IRRI scientists and theirpartners, says Albert Dean Atkinson,the IRRI training and coursewarespecialist who leads the ongoingdevelopment of the Rice KnowledgeBank. These include people fromCAB International, the University ofQueensland and the Royal Agricul-tural College of Cirencester. We alsocapture and store input from students

and instructors where it can besearched and accessed.

With regard to the systematicmanagement and delivery of

Twenty-five years ago last December, theInternational Rice Genebank at IRRI openedcold-storage facilities that now hold in trustmore than 108,000 samples of ricebiodiversity donated by more than 100countries (see page 8). Last year, IRRIlaunched the Rice Knowledge Bank, the

dynamic Internet portal that aims tobecome the worlds central repository ofrice knowledge and training materials.

This year, the new IRRI Image Bank isoffering online the worlds most com-prehensive library of photography relatedto rice research and farming. Visit the IRRIImage Bank at http://rice-photos.irri.organd read about it in the next issue ofRiceToday.

Banking on IRRIknowledge, this adds an exciting newdimension to IRRI and to theCGIAR in general, adds Dr. Atkin-son, referring to the ConsultativeGroup on International AgriculturalResearch, IRRIs parent organization.

The possibilities made evident bythe Rice Knowledge Bank have spurred

the development of digital extension asa discipline of its own. IRRI is nowoffering digital extension workshopsfor NARES, NGOs and farmersthemselves. The workshops focus onhow to use the Rice Knowledge Bankto build capacity that allowsparticipants to make better-informedrice-production decisions forthemselves or their constituents.

The Rice Knowledge Bank will bea big help to our organization becauseit is very informative, comments

Anita V. Antonio, a workshopparticipant from the Philippine RiceResearch Institute. It will readilyassist our extension workers in the

field who are attending to the differentproblems of rice farmers, especially in

the area of principles and practices offarm management.

Visit the Rice Knowledge Bank atwww.knowledgebank.irri.org.

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