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Dead argument for critical project

Students need the Internet so they know showers can't cure Aids.

Farzana Rasool
By Farzana Rasool, ITWeb IT in Government Editor.
Johannesburg, 21 Jul 2011

Every few years, kids have new necessities. First there was the obvious need for diapers, and then came the necessity of education and schooling. Still further on there were vaccinations, and now computers and the Internet.

Yes, I put technology way up there.

The truth is that in today's society, not having computer skills basically means resigning oneself to menial labour. Everyone from secretaries and CEOs, to factory managers and waitresses need to have basic computer literacy.

Most job profiles list at least basic computer skills as a requirement for a potential candidate. Basically, you have to at least know how to play Angry Birds to stand a chance.

Authentic vs crazy

The bigger beast is the Internet.

Students need to experience the Internet so they don't believe crazy ideas like thinking showers and beetroot prevent and cure Aids. Not that anyone would ever seriously say such things.

Yes, not everything on the Internet is reliable but these are the kinds of things that children need to learn from their young years, especially in today's information age. They need to develop a filter.

It takes time to be able to separate the authentic information from the crazy. I got onto the Internet very late in life and am not proud of the amount of times a huge dumb grin broke out over my face, because I though I'd won the lottery.

These kinds of filtering skills need to start from foundational years so that when learners end up in their workplaces, they don't talk about all the UK lotteries or green cards for the US they won.

Global players

Essentially, kids need to be able to access the Internet so they can become part of the global community.

Farzana Rasool, journalist, ITWeb

Essentially, kids need to be able to access the Internet so they can become part of the global community.

This is important because of the wealth of information that lies just beyond that browser icon and because we only truly understand ourselves in relation to others.

Without computers and the Internet, these others are only those that go to the same school as us, grow up in the same neighbourhood as us and have already become a part of us.

Imperative parenting

The world is moving on and we have to move with it.

I can't imagine opening an encyclopaedia now to look up something or calling a friend to verify worldly information (unless I'm on “Who wants to be a Millionaire?”).

Internet access is more necessary at school than it is at home because by having it at school it is associated with a learning environment and children start to see its value in that light.

Also, if you have it freely available at home, there will definitely be arrogant little creeps that will e-mail their mothers from their bedrooms to say what they'd like for breakfast. But I guess it all comes down to parenting.

Priority project

So, we all know that I don't have to argue for the Internet. It's been done to death and doesn't require an argument or any justification anymore.

However, I wasn't just making an argument for the Internet, but more specifically for the Gauteng Online Schools Project (GOSP).

It's a joint initiative between the Gauteng departments of finance and education, and was expected to connect 2 042 schools in the province by May last year, but this did not materialise.

There are about 1 700 schools that have been given computers through the project, with roughly 500 more still waiting to be covered, but only 40% of the schools already given the hardware are actually connected to the Internet.

Criminal minds

It's obviously an extremely important project, but - apart from painfully slow implementation - GOSP has been challenged by a large amount of theft.

The security challenge has seen the project lose more than R18 million in stolen resources from the schools.

It has been happening since the inception of the project and by now there should be some effective plan to prevent this, instead of just moving ahead and ignoring the problem.

Government has allocated another R400 million to the project that has cost R3 billion to date, but with no plan to tackle the security issue.

ISP obligation

GOSP needs to be made a nationwide project. Its importance is obvious. Don't make me go into my “importance of the Internet” argument again.

Although, if it's taken government more than 10 years to cover one province, it's difficult to think just how long it would take to connect all the public schools in the country. Let's just say if the Internet could become obsolete, it would be by then.

My thinking is that it should be made part of some kind of universal access fund agreement that Internet service providers (ISPs) should have to sign, in a similar fashion to the ones the telecoms operators have.

ISPs should have some kind of social commitment to cover under-serviced areas and public schools should top that list.

I don't understand why the Universal Service and Access Agency of SA isn't part of this project. I don't understand why it's been dragged out for so long. I don't understand why the theft issue has not been dealt with.

So many clarifications required, but, unfortunately, when it comes to government logic and planning, there are no easy explanations. I guess the Internet can't have the answers to everything.

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