Mamelodi school goes online

Johannesburg, 18 Mar 2002

Modiri Technical High School in the Pretoria township of Mamelodi this weekend celebrated a gift it is pinning a lot of hope on. The school was selected as one of 25 pilot sites for the ambitious GautengOnline project, and boasts a brand new computer centre.

The 25 thin client terminals, housed behind a door that would not be out of place in a safe, was donated by the NCD consortium as part of its commitment to outfit five schools with such sites.

The NCD terminals are run off a single HP E800 NetServer and feature a full software suite and permanent Internet connection.

The centre is to serve a student population of around 800, but even with more than 30 users to a machine, the school has undertaken to share its new resource with the other 15 schools in the area and with the community as a whole.

The GautengOnline project aims to have 25 computers with Internet access available in every school in the province within five years. The pilot phase currently underway is sponsored by six consortiums of private sector companies that hope to play a part in the final roll-out.

The NCD consortium estimates that it has spent in the region of R400 000 in hard cash at Modiri, but GautengOnline puts the total sponsorship at up to R1.5 million per school. R500 million has been set aside to get the project off the ground, but Gauteng education MEC Ignatius Jacobs on Saturday said closer to R2.8 billion would be spent over a 10-year period.

While some may resent the delay imposed by the pilot, the NCD consortium at least believes it has learnt important lessons because of it, among them managing expectation.

"It is easy to look at it and say 'the computer will give us everything`," says NCD project manager Laurie Burns of Nibuse Business Solutions. "Well, the computer is just like an empty classroom with no students and no teachers."

But the biggest problems remain the theft of expensive equipment put in the middle of impoverished communities. Burns tells of one school where the memory and hard drives of PCs had been stolen even before they were set up for the first time. It may have been to prevent such an incident that another school principal took delivery of six computers and promptly locked them in a strong room, where they are still in their boxes after 18 months.

Modiri seems an unlikely candidate for such non-use, with students already involved in computer-aided design and PC repair training. But Jacobs felt it necessary to emphasis the responsibility that came with the donation.

"This is a major investment. We won`t do it twice at this school," he cautioned.