Dear Sarah,
Yes I do agree that the community approach in school, church, community center,
etc is a good way. This approach is similar to the telecentres that are
currently extensively implemented and is about the only way to reach to the
rural areas with satellite connections etc. This is one approach but is one of
many.
The main shortcoming lacking however, is how do you make CONTENTS available to
those OUTSIDE the community centers which as you know may have far more
computers than you have in the telecenters. These computers ,in homes, etc more
often than not are idle and even if connected to Internet are used for games.
For courseware and contents that are relevant to the students' everyday needs
rarely one can find from the Internet ...and more often than not one has to
spend far more time search than is worth the effort.
I believe you do face this inhibitions too. Your users have to come to your
center to make use of the contents and this would limit the effectiveness of
reaching out to the masses.
Not all have modern computers and broadband.
What if, I say, you can just copy and paste in seconds, whatever contents that
are required to learn for that day to a diskette(for old computers) or pen
drives for those with Win XP etc and your users can just take them home to use
them without crowding the few computers you have in your center? Isn't that
would be more effective each child can take his/her time to understand the
subject without even the need for Internet connections?
Students without computers can use the center's computer at their own time,
when teachers are not around or use their friend's computers.
The trouble with the entire world's perception today I do always encounter is
they think children would only be interested in rich multimedia contents
otherwise they would not be interested. This statement I believe is one of
the major reasons why the entire world develop contents are are expensive and
rich in animations etc with the result that each module is so bloated in size
that it must either be in CDs or be broadland required online. Such systems
can never solve the digital divide and will fail to reach the in real needs of
such contents - unless one has unlimited funds.
That is why , in the entire world ICT in mass Education has failed. Not a
singel country in the world ...including DEVELOPED countries are not able to
implement ICT in Mass Education....much less the underdeveloped countries to
which the OLPC is addressed. The concept of not solving this minimal factor and
going on to think that giving every child a cheap laptop would solve the
digital divide is again going the path of failure.
It is already happening as we know the case of Nigeria giving up such projects.
Regards
Alan
www.paperlesshomework.com
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--- On Sat, 9/20/08, Sarah Blackmun-Eskow <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
From: Sarah Blackmun-Eskow <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: [DDN] PhD research on OLPC
To: "'The Digital Divide Network discussion group'"
<digitaldivide@digitaldivide.net>
Date: Saturday, September 20, 2008, 5:06 AM
A more practical approach is "community computers" (in contrast to
"personal
computers") available in a school, church, community center, etc., where
everyone in the village can have access. It is much more reasonable to
provide internet connection for one such community computing center than for
personal laptops.
A good model is a thin client/server model, in which one powerful server
would serve programs and internet access to many thin clients with limited
computing and storage capacity. (Community users would have their own pen
drives for storing their own files.)
We (Pangaea Network) are testing this idea in Ghana in Asante Akim district.
Sarah Blackmun-Eskow
President, The Pangaea Network
290 North Fairview Avenue
Goleta CA 93117
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