Headline: Ten lessons from a Goan classroom By Frederick Noronha Source Express Computers, 1 March 2004 at http://www.expresscomputeronline.com/20040301/indiacomputes02.shtml
Full text: Frederick Noronha takes a close look at the computers-in-school project in Goa. It sounds easy. But in reality this is as difficult a task as they come. Some of us, qualified in the subject or just sharing in the enthusiasm, have been dreaming about it for the past few years. But real-life dreams take time to sprout wings. There was a time when Goa schools didn't have computer labs, the government had no plans for giving PCs to students, and there were still doubts whether IT had any role to play in education. Much water has flowed down the Mandovi since then. The computers-in-school project started more or less simultaneously in some fertile imaginations sometime in the mid-nineties. It got its impetus from global expat Goan networks in cyberspace. Then more people got involved in the dream. British tourist Dave Futers and teacher Jude Miranda went about supporting SFX Girls at Mapusa. Emmanuel D'Silva of the World Bank helped the Bal Bharati in Ribandar and worked on a sponsored study to understand the issues involved. Alumni of St Britto's managed to get a lone computer for that school. Ashley Delaney, Tom Fernandes of Germany, Anit Saxena, Sangeeta Naik, Shruti Parathasarthy and several others worked or volunteered on the project. In Chorao, Alwyn and Lisa Dias-Noronha took up the initiative. Some educationists like Antonetta Noronha did it their own way. (The Noronhas mentioned are no relatives of this writer.) On a parallel track, groups like Lok Chetna and schools like Sharada Mandir, Red Rosary, and Lourdes Convent propelled their own initiatives. Recently, those behind the project found that many others were already doing interesting work, like the islanders at Divar, or had similar plans, like a handful of parents at the Kendriya Vidyalaya in Verem. So after all these years, what are the lessons learnt? Lesson One: Successful models are needed Most educationists are yet to find out exactly what a computer can do in their institutions. Till they do that, there are going to be all kind of hurdles, problems and difficulties in the way. Journalists have gone through a similar process. Till recently, few of them understood how computers could help their work. Today, when they realise the power of e-mail (for sending stories, or even conducting long-distance interviews), the Net (for researching subjects), digital cameras (to reduce the cost of illustrating their photographs), mailing lists (to network the profession and discuss issues of interest) and other such tools, they take computers very seriously. You don't have to beg and plead with a journalist any more to convince him/her why (s)he needs computers. But in schools we are yet to touch this point. One expert believes that to start the process school principals need to discover the utility of a PC in their own work - it would then drastically change their views on the potential of this tool. As of now, most schools appear reluctant to get the most out of their PCs. Probably many don't understand the computer yet. Besides, there are limited tools of a sharable nature that allow us to unleash the power of computing in schools. The few good tools that are there cost a bomb. Free software largely lies undiscovered. Lesson Two: Lethargy is a major killer Fighting lethargy is a major energy-sapper. Like in other fields in Goa, innovation in computing also calls for the investment of repeated attempts. Schools, like many other institutions in our society, face the risk of becoming bureaucratic, with little scope for innovation. This happens despite the best of intentions on the part of educationists. Pressures of doing well in exams, completing the syllabus, and just keeping the huge machine working all add up to make innovation and experimentation difficult. We need to accept this reality and find work-arounds. Lesson Three: Hardware is not all Today, Goa is at a stage where increasingly hardware is not the main issue any more. Computers are reaching the school; the big question is: How effectively are they being used? Even if rural schools still have only a handful of computers for a few hundred children, the situation is fast changing. Not long ago, volunteers like expat Daryl Martyris of the US had to struggle to bring in 400 once-used computers by container. Now the government itself is promising PCs to students for a few hundred rupees. Even if these won't reach the school- and we could debate whether XI standard students could make optimum use of computers- the fact remains that hardware is proliferating. We therefore need to look to a situation two years down the line and decide what would be the most important tasks at that point of time. Lesson Four: Volunteers have a role Some of those involved in the Goa School Computers Project - a loose network of like-minded enthusiasts- feel they have been largely unsuccessful in tapping the energies of volunteers. Of course, everyone being busy in their own work or study and life, there is a limited amount of bandwidth they can devote to a project that needs time, energy and enthusiasm to sustain. Still, we need to accept that a huge project of this size, one which cannot be dumped entirely on educationists, needs the involvement of a wider section of society to make it successful. Unless we are able to build enough realistic enthusiasm and vision about the desirability of such a dream, nobody's going to buy into it. It is worth noting that educationists, parents, IT professionals and others from across the state do accept the importance of our kids getting a headstart using computers. Not just as a tool to do office-related work, but as an extremely powerful gateway to a world of knowledge and information that can help them in whichever profession or endeavour they choose. Look at what uses this new technology can do. One engineer in the merchant navy who returned to settle in Goa early in life now runs his own catering micro-business from home; he says the other day he was checking the Net for recipes for pastries. Lesson Five: The need for networks Beyond sporadic volunteers, there is also a need for networking between different networks that see this as an important task. Lok Chetna held a programme in Panaji some time back. The Knowledge Initiative Trust, a local group of concerned persons, is also working in this area. Likewise, there would be many more which we are probably not even aware of, or who would like to take similar initiative. Lesson Six: Plant the idea, sow the seed More than the hardware, software or courseware, what seems to be lacking is the vision for going ahead. Inter-disciplinary skills could help in taking this dream forward, whether those involved are teacher-training colleges, computer professionals, IT users or any other entity. There are a lot of latent energies waiting to be tapped. We can't wait for governments alone to take up such plans, fraught as they are with their own limitations in execution. Lesson Seven: Build national, international links Much is happening in the outside world. Can we link up with some such networks? Some are active, others less so. But unless we try we won't know the potential. Schoolforge (schoolforge.net) is one such global network with a lot happening. LIFE is a Linux In Education network which used to be active earlier, and is located on a server at the Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education at Mumbai's Tata Institute of Fundamental Research. (Mailing list address: [EMAIL PROTECTED]) There are other projects for taking free software to schools, like the Demo-School network on nongnu.org and another at linux-delhi.org Lesson Eight: Sharable solutions offer much potential Proprietary software, unless it is very inexpensively priced, can often be beyond the reach of most schools. In this context, free software offers much hope. (Here "free" refers to freedom, not necessarily zero-price. But since you have the freedom to copy such software, you won't get trapped into problems like restrictive copyrights. This makes solutions affordable.) See ofset.org for some ideas. The FreEDUC CD has tonnes of educational software. It costs just Rs 30 plus postage (actuals), and is available from Aniket Navelkar at Assolna ([EMAIL PROTECTED]). The best thing is that you can copy this CD on as many PCs as you wish. Lesson Nine: Look beyond the syllabus Some people complain that educational software, including solutions like FreEDUC, offer little of value that is directly related to the school syllabus. But are we looking merely at the syllabus here? We thought that computing was meant to help school students in Goa discover the wide outside world, to communicate and soak in more useful knowledge in a way that would help them take on the challenges of the 21st century. Lesson Ten: There is never enough However much you do on this front, there will never be enough - so vast and bottomless is the field and the potential it offers. The tragedy is that in Goa, as of now, we are still doing only little. Very little. ==================================== From: The Daily Star (Bangladesh), 25 Feb. 2004: "In Goa, anyone who have passed higher secondary exams can get a PC from the government by just showing his certificate along with Rs 1000." For the link to the full text of this other recent references to Goa in the World Press, check out the latest issue of Goan Voice UK at http://www.goanvoice.org.uk/newsletter/2004/issue8/ ########################################################################## # Send submissions for Goanet to [EMAIL PROTECTED] # # PLEASE remember to stay on-topic (related to Goa), and avoid top-posts # # More details on Goanet at http://joingoanet.shorturl.com/ # # Please keep your discussion/tone polite, to reflect respect to others # ##########################################################################
