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Digital Divide: Three Examples By Mark Warschauer (Excerpts taken from Reconceptualizing the Digital Divide and retitled for web testing purpose only. First Monday, a peer-reviewed journal on the Internet.) A Slum "Hole in the Wall" In 2000, the Government of New Delhi, in collaboration with an information technology corporation, established a project, known as the "Hole-in-the-Wall" experiment, to provide computer access to the city's street children [1]. An outdoor five-station computer kiosk was set up in one of the poorest slums of New Delhi. Though the computers themselves were inside a booth, the monitors protruded through holes in the walls, as did specially designed joysticks and buttons that substituted for the computer mouse. Keyboards were not provided. The computers were connected to the Internet through dial-up access. A volunteer inside the booth helped keep the computers and Internet connections running. No teachers or instructors were provided, in line with the concept called minimally invasive education. The idea was to allow the children unfettered 24-hour access, and to learn at their own pace and speed, rather than tie them to the directives of adult organizers or instructors. According to reports, children who flocked to the site taught themselves basic computer operations. They worked out how to click and drag objects; select different menus; cut, copy, and paste; launch and use programs such as Microsoft Word and Paint; get on the Internet; and change the background "wallpaper". The program was hailed by researchers (e.g., Mitra, 1999) and government officials alike [2] as a ground-breaking project that offered a model for how to bring India's and the world's urban poor into the computer age. However, visits to the computer kiosk indicated a somewhat different reality. The Internet access was of little use since it seldom functioned. No special educational programs had been made available, and no special content was provided in Hindi, the only language the children knew. Children did learn to manipulate the joystick and buttons, but almost all their time was spent drawing with paint programs or playing computer games. There was no organized involvement of any community organizations in helping to run the kiosk, since such involvement was neither solicited nor welcomed [3]. And, indeed, the very architecture of the kiosk - based on a wall rather than a room - made supervision, instruction, and collaboration difficult. Parents in the neighborhood had ambivalent feelings about the kiosk. Some saw it as a welcome initiative, but most expressed concern that the lack of organized instruction took away from its value. Some parents even complained that the kiosk was harmful to their children. As one parent stated, "My son used to be doing very well in school, he used to concentrate on his homework, but now he spends all his free time playing computer games at the kiosk and his schoolwork is suffering." In short, parents and the community came to realize that "minimally invasive education" was, in practice, minimally effective education. An Information Age Town In 1997, Ireland's national telecommunications company held a national competition to select and fund an "Information Age Town" [4]. A rationale of the effort was to help overcome the gap between Ireland's emerging status as a multinational business center of information and communication technology (ICT) production and the rather limited use of ICT among Ireland's own people and indigenous small businesses. Towns of 5,000 people and more across Ireland were invited to compete by submitting proposals detailing their vision of what an Information Age Town should be and how they could become one. The winning town was to receive 15 million Irish pounds (at that time roughly $22 million U.S. dollars) to implement its vision. The sponsor of the competition, Telecom Eirann (later renamed Eircom), was getting ready to be privatized. The company naturally had an interest in selecting the boldest, most ambitious proposal so as to showcase the winning town as an innovative example of what advanced telecommunications could accomplish for the country under the company's leadership. Four towns were chosen as finalists, and then Ennis, a small, remote town of 15,000 people in Western Ireland, was selected among them as the winner. The prize money that Ennis received represented over $1,200 U.S. dollars per resident, a huge sum for a struggling Irish town. At the heart of Ennis's winning proposal was a plan to give an Internet-ready personal computer to every family in the town. Other initiatives included an ISDN line to every business, a Web site for every business that wanted one, smart card readers for every business (for a cashless society), and smart cards for every family. Ennis was strongly encouraged by Telecom Ireland to implement these plans as quickly as possible. Meanwhile, the three runners up - the towns of Castlebar, Kilkenny, and Kilarney - each received consolation prizes of 1 million Irish pounds (about $1.5 million U.S. dollars). These towns were given us much time as they needed to make use of the money. How did the project turn out? A visit to Ennis three years later by a university researcher indicated that the town had little to show for its money. Advanced technology had been thrust into people's hands with little preparation. Training programs had been run, but they were not sufficiently accompanied by awareness programs as to why people should use the new technology in the first place. And in some instances, well-functioning social systems were disrupted in order to make way for the showcase technology. For example, as is the case in the rest of Ireland, the unemployed of Ennis had been reporting to the social welfare office three times a week to sign in and receive payments. Following their visits, the people usually stayed around the office to chat with other unemployed workers. The sign-in system thus facilitated an important social function to overcome the isolation of the unemployed. As part of the "Information Age Town" plan, though, the unemployed received computers and Internet connections at home. They were instructed to sign in and receive electronic payments via the Internet rather than come to the office to sign in. But many of the unemployed couldn't figure out how to operate the equipment, and most others saw no reason to do so when it deprived them of an important opportunity for socializing. A good number of those computers were reportedly sold on the black market, and the unemployed simply returned of their own accord to coming to the social welfare office to sign in. Meanwhile, what happened in the other three towns? With far fewer resources, they were forced to carefully plan how to make use of their funds, rather than splurging for massive amounts of equipment. Community groups, small businesses, and labor unions were involved in the planning process. Much greater effort and money were spent on developing awareness, planning and implementing effective training, and setting up processes for sustainable change, rather than merely on purchase of equipment. The towns built on already existing networks among workers, educators, and businesspeople to support grassroots uses of technology for social and economic development. Information about social services and job opportunities was put online. Small businesses and craft workers learned how to pool their resources to promote their products through e-commerce. Technology coordinators were appointed at schools and worked with other teachers to develop plans for better integration of ICT in classrooms. In the end, according to a researcher from University College Dublin [5], the three runners-up‹which each received only 1/15 of the money that Ennis received - actually had more to show for their efforts to promote social inclusion through technology than did the winner. A Model Computer Lab An international donor project funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) decided to donate a computer laboratory to the college of education at a major Egyptian university [6]. The purpose of the donation was to establish a model teacher-training program in computer-assisted learning in one of the departments of the college. State-of-the-art equipment was selected, including more than 40 Pentium III computers, an expensive video projection system, several printers and scanners, and tens of thousands of U.S. dollars worth of educational software. This was to be a model project that both the U.S. and Egyptian governments would view with pride. To guarantee that the project would be sustainable, the Egyptian university would be required to manage all the ongoing expenses and operations, including paying for Internet access, maintaining the local area network (LAN), and operating the computer laboratory. Under a paid contract from USAID, a committee from the college of education within the Egyptian university put together a detailed proposal on how the laboratory would be used, run, and maintained. Based on this proposal, USAID purchased all the hardware and software. However, well before the equipment was installed, it became clear that the college would have difficulty absorbing such a huge and expensive donation. Other departments within the college - which, together, had access to only a handful of computers - became envious that a single department would have such modern and expensive equipment, and they attempted to block the university's support for the lab. The college and university could not easily justify spending the money to house and maintain such an expensive laboratory for a single program when other programs were poorly funded. No money was available to hire an outside LAN manager or provide Internet access at the level agreed upon in the proposal. Faculty relations problems also arose, as a key department chair resented the involvement and initiative of less-senior faculty members who were taking computer training and working together to plan new curricula. Due to all these difficulties, the expensive state-of-the-art computers sat in boxes in a locked room for more than a year before they were even installed, thus losing about one-third of their economic value. Source: For full version of the article, please see the following reference:
http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue7_7/warschauer/#w4 Post comments on this article |
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