START WITH A PILOT BEFORE AIMING FOR THE SKY

Dec 04, 2010 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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Does Guyana have sufficient trained computer-trained and qualified personnel willing to teach computer in fifty of our secondary schools? It may not seem like a lot but it may be difficult given what is paid to teachers to find persons willing to teach computer studies in schools.
Secondly, are our existing teachers sufficiently competent and trained to begin to use computers, to teach other subjects in schools. No doubt computer labs are being created not just to familiarize students not just with computers and computer studies, but also as medium for teaching other subjects as well. So are our teachers sufficiently seized of the knowledge to make an immediate transition to these media within the next twelve months.
Thirdly, does the government have the resources and the administrative mechanism to maintain computer laboratories in secondary schools?
The answer to the above questions should indicate the pace at which the government should proceed in establishing computer labs within the school system. The government, last month, announced an ambitious plan to build computer laboratories in fifty secondary schools.
Even to have these labs in place  within the next 12 months should take some doing. But what happens after the labs are created? Is there the software to ensure that these labs are used for “learning” and not simply for “browsing?” What happens when, as will happen, there is need to maintain the equipment, acquire replacement parts and provide updated accessories and other materials needed to use the systems within the fifty schools?
It is one thing to establish a laboratory; it is another to find the resources to maintain these labs. Even if the money is there, because of bureaucratic processes, which are often necessary for accountability purposes, often delay these resources being disbursed. At other times, because of either communication or some other administrative problem, the relevant agency or region is not able to get things in place quickly, resulting in downtime.
We saw an example of this a few weeks ago when there was a  huge uproar at the school on the East Coast of Demerara. The school was “shut down” because there was no water.
This was no small school. More than five hundred students attend that institution. It took days for this problem to be resolved and despite the large school population, the monies for a water pump could not have been raised by donations.
How much would it have cost for a suitable water pump? Divide that by the number of students attending the school and determine whether this was an unreasonable sum to ask the parents to pay to help ensure that the kids had water for sanitation purposes.
Now imagine we are not dealing with a water pump but with a few computers which may need replacement parts quickly so as not to affect the functioning of laboratories. Do you believe that parents are going to dig into their pockets for this?
This is why there is a need for this computer laboratory project to be scaled-down to a level that is manageable through a secretariat. There is no way that the government should place this project under the umbrella of the regions because the same problems that were encountered with water is going to recur with these labs.
By attempting to go big, the government may end up looking small and the kids will suffer.
It is important that our kids be exposed to more modern tools of learning. The days of   a teacher with a stick of chalk in front of class room are slowly coming to an end. Nursery and primary class settings in the developed world are so arranged as to provide greater individual attention to students.
In secondary schools, the kids all have laptops by the time they are Grade 8 and teachers are in serious problems if they say something that is not accurate. These kids can now use their Blackberries and get the information online even before the teacher can finish  saying “Columbus set sail in 1492.”
A variety of computer software is now available to enhance the teaching and learning processes in almost every conceivable subject area. Nobody asks their child now to go and buy a huge foreign language dictionary.
These are now coming in slim cases, on discs and can the information stored on these discs can accessed or downloaded within minutes.
Computer laboratories are not just for the teaching of computer science. They should be used for all subjects and aid in research and even in paperless examinations whereby the students answer the questions online in an exam setting and the computer marks the paper automatically.
Computers can revolutionize the classroom. But moving too fast can also create chaos.
This is why it’s always best for computer projects to have pilots before being expanded universally. It helps identify problems at an early and manageable stage.
Consideration should therefore be given towards running about ten pilot labs, one in each region preferably, so that the specific problems of each region as regards this innovation can be identified over a one-year period. In the second year, the number of schools can be doubled and within ten years, there can be functioning labs in all schools.
This is how development works, through progressive improvements, not huge leaps near election time.

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