Wednesday 25 October: Participants Panel and Peer Assist

• Participants panel - live session on Adobe Connect
• Peer assist - written discussion on this page of the platform

Participants panel

Today the floor is yours!  Before and at the beginning of our learning activity we launched a call to all participants asking if they wanted to present their experience in a participant's panel. And this is the result. Take a look at the subject of the presentations of today's live session and join us to learn more from other participants. Would you like to share something on the spot? If time allows we will give you the floor too! This is a live webinar on Adobe Connect, similar to the other webinars, but now the presenters are participants. 

Topics and presenters on the Participants Panel

Subi Thomas is the Director and Founder of iDrones Services Limited, a  company that was set up in 2006 a small agricultural town in the Southern Province of Zambia, Choma. The company focusses on improving agriculture using drones and hope to help farmers with efficient data farm management and prepare them to transit to precision agriculture.

Abdelaziz Lawani is an Ag-economist and researcher at the University of Kentucky. He is also the founder of Global Partners, a Benin- based drone services provider. His research lies at the intersection of development, environmental economics and data science. He is currently working on the use of drones and satellite data for agriculture. He will present two projects: a biodiversity conservation program with low-range drones and the project UAV4Ag and his experience of providing farmers with drone services and the research on farmers’ willingness to pay for drone services.

Hamza Rkha Chaham is the Head of International Strategy at AIRINOV. AIRINOV is one of the pioneers and leaders of drone based farming applications. AIRINOV has trained many agripreneurs in Africa to enable them to start delivering drone services in the different countries of the continent. 

Peer assist - written discussion at the bottom of this page

Today we also organize a peer assist. What does this mean?

"The Peer Assist is a tool which supports a ‘learning before doing’ processes in which advice is sought from someone else, or a group that has/have done something similar. This tool encourages participatory learning, by asking those with experience in certain activities to assist those wishing to benefit from their knowledge, through a systematic process, towards strengthened mutual learning. (Definition FAO http://www.fao.org/elearning/course/FK/en/pdf/trainerresources/PG_PeerAssist.pdf)"

So, what does this mean in practice? There are over 700 participants that subscribed for this activity from all over the world. On this page you can post a particular challenge or problem you are facing or a technical question you might have. The idea is that one of your peers will help you to find a solution by sharing his or hers knowledge on the topic and that you help the others find solutions to their questions or problems. 

In order to get the most out of this activity please follow this simple guidelines:

1. Try to be as specific as possible when you are sharing a challenge, problem or question (give brief context so others can understand)
2. Consider this a brainstorm - finding solutions to a problem goes with trial and error - so do not overthink your replies
3. Use one thread of comments for one specific problem (by this I mean practically that if you reply to someone's challenge or question you comment to the comment of that person so the messages are linked) - When you are sharing a new problem, start a new thread.

The e-Agriculture Team will facilitate this exercise by trying to encourage all registered participants to engage in this activity and to contribute based on their knowledge. The results of the discussions will be summarized so they can be shared and used also after the activity. If you have any questions on this activity let us know at [email protected]