Designing an Interactive Application to support the preservation of Indigenous Knowledge(IK) through storytelling interest stimulation

Description

There had always been IK holders in the Namibian rural communities. In the Ovambo community and many other communities, IK is always possessed by the village elders as the source of this knowledge that they can later be passed to the next generation during storytelling sessions. IK is vanishing and this IK erosion is a threat in the Namibian rural communities as it becomes not only difficult to conserve what we do not know. Conserving the community without conserving associated IK is just a waste of our community values, as future generations will not benefit from centuries of experimentation and knowledge accumulation by indigenous peoples. Indigenous knowledge is at its edges therefore the main focus for this research is to stimulate the interest of everyone in storytelling by designing an interactive application.

(continued…) This application will allow the community members to have live or real time communication by live streaming. The application will be a mobile application as we find it viable for the listener and the storyteller to keep in sync. We believe that by paying careful attention to the characteristics of our target audience we can design an interactive mobile application that can bring about a change in IK storytelling interest, one that will help foster an increase in the attendance to this storytelling sessions. Designing the interactive mobile application with live streaming capabilities will greatly benefit the young people and those who live in cities as it creates a platform for them to tell and listen to stories and learn from them. Listening and watching the story teller from anywhere around Namibia will educate, entertain and stress the importance of our cultural diversity. Designing an interactive application will encourage the community members to be engaged in indigenous knowledge preservation. This interactive application will motivate the community members to attend storytelling sessions. Stimulated interest in storytelling will prevent the extinction of indigenous knowledge by passing it on to the young people during these sessions. Therefore designing this interactive application will raise the interest of the community members in storytelling.