Hello Chris,
We use old computers in our project 'Pygmalion,' a project to enhance
spoken English skills of 5th standard students studying in Government
schools in villages. Presently, the endeavour is on in 19 schools, of
them 15 are Government-run higher primary schools in and around Mysore
and Bangalore. Thanks to the computer and the multi-media lessons (both
curriculum and non-curriculum) the children are showing tremendous
enthusiasm to learn. The teachers (most of them never had a chance to
use a computer) have shown lot of interest in this methodology, and some
of them are giving a hand to help enhance the content. These old
computers have been donated by software companies and a couple of
individuals. Inspired by the response we have now sought 300 old
computers from donors. On the lessons front a voluntary group of 30-40
IT professionals in Bangalore and beyond are donating time and effort to
develop multi-media based lessons for standards beyond the 5th. The
content of these lessons would help children not only learn English
skills, but other subjects as well.
Soundar Rajan
Mysore, India
--
Chris Wilson wrote:
Hi Alfred,
But new or old, computers will not be useful without software designed for
applications relevant to the users. If they are illiterate, at any age, the
first software they will need is that for developing literacy, in all its
forms. Since each learner is unique, it should adapt to the individual
person. It is currently useless to connect an illiterate person to the
Internet, or to provide them with any existing computer tools.
Are you sure that computers will "not be useful" without training
software, to people who aren't literate? Would a library "not be useful"
to them even if it didn't contain children's books? Do you have
evidence?
My feeling is that people are not idiots, if you give them something
interesting they will learn how to use it. The "Hole in the wall"
project has shown this happening in practice
[http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/click_online/4365350.stm].
I would be extremely interested to hear more examples, positive or
negative, relating to literacy and computer literacy, as my organisation
is proposing a project for the ITU's Connect the World initiative which
relies on people being able to learn literacy from computers.
Cheers, Chris.
--
**********************************
N.S. Soundar Rajan
Columnist
Eutilities, CyberStop, Enews, WebWatch
www.deccanherald.com
Project Leader
'Pygmalion' / 'Akshara Siri'
an ILID Project to bridge the 'English Divide'
www.ilid.org
Internet Resource Discussion Group
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/net-gold
Freelance IT journalist, Knowledge net worker
...connecting people to people and people to knowledge
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