On 21/11/2005, at 2:40 PM, Herrod, Lisa wrote:
...
I worked in indonesia for a short time teaching basic internet skills
to a
very poor school for deaf children. if they can pick up HTML, (which,
remember is in english) taught by someone with basic indonesian and
little
Indo sign language, imagine what they can do with propper support! our
main
issue was that of the 6 or 7 computers they had, each had completely
different o/s, browser, software etc. they could not afford to access
the
internet or visit an internet cafe (though we did find the funds for 2
visits). They picked it up so quickly and in a couple of weeks were
creating
small web sites. the kids were aged between 11 and 18. They were
clearly
amazed at what they were doing. Education and knowledge is very
empowering,
particularly for people considered 'disabled' and in a third world
country.
In the mid-nineties, Charles McCathieNevile did some great stuff with
the 'CD with a hole' concept.
The idea was to put tutorials, free software and examples onto a CD.
The CD was accompanied by a floppy per person. People used the CDs to
build stand alone Web pages, which were then saved to their floppy.
At semi-regular gatherings, the contents of the floppys could be
uploaded to a Web server. The contents of the server were then burnt
to a new version of the CD, which each person took away with them.
This allowed people in remote aboriginal communities (for example) to
build Web sites, even though they had little or no access to the
regular Web.
People can do a great deal with very little access.
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