Despite its wonders, Internet cannot replace traditional modes of teaching

By George NyabugaThe growth and explosion in use of the Internet and other modern technologies, particularly mobile telephony, are often considered to be answers to information deficiencies. And nowhere is this more critical than in developing countries where access to basic things like books for school children is increasingly difficult. No wonder then that people and organisations are now turning to the Internet for answers for maladies that afflict our educational system. In the World Summit on the Information Society held in Geneva, Switzerland, from December 10 to 12, 2003, the International Communication Union (ITU) pointed out the Internet could free marginalised societies from the yokes of illiteracy and lack of education. The organisation argued the Internet presents a "unique opportunity to cost effectively and efficiently deliver educational training to marginalised societies" throughout the world, from the most developed countries of the West to the least developed Third World nations.In the report developed for the summit, ITU documented numerous cases, ranging from the Sunrin Internet High School in Seoul, Korea, to the wired Radin Mas primary school in Singapore and the World Bank’s World Links for Development (WorLD) project in Uganda where the Internet has had positive effects on education.Thus a few years ago, Internet guru Nicholas Negroponte wanted children in developing countries equipped with 100-dollar computers, which he thought, would equalise access to the Internet and the knowledge banks therein. The One Laptop Per Child Association mission is "To create educational opportunities for the world’s poorest children by providing each child with a rugged, low-cost, low-power, connected laptop with content and software designed for collaborative, joyful, self-empowered learning. When children have access to this type of tool they get engaged in their own education. They learn, share, create, and collaborate. They become connected to each other, to the world and to a brighter future." And Negroponte, also the co-founder of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Media Lab, thought the initiative would help alleviate poverty. Since the initiative was launched in 2005, millions of children in developing countries, in places like Nigeria, have joined the information superhighway and presumably derived numerous benefits engendered by Negroponte’s vision. The organisation also says on its website: "The laptop not only delivers the world to children, but also brings the best practices of children and their teachers to the world. Each school represent a learning hub; a node in a globally shared resource for learning."Negroponte’s initiative may have spurred Intel Corporation, Mustek, Sovaya and local banks into action. This week, they announced that they intend to rope in at least a quarter of Kenya’s learning institutions by the end of this year to share learning material online."In the new set up," said Albert Kigada, a manager at Mustek, "a student would attend lessons conducted in any school locally or across the world and interact with professionals through their laptops in real time."Living in what is widely referred as information society, the One Laptop Per Child initiative undoubtedly helped children actualise their desire for international knowledge, for facilities like electronic-books or e-books, and access to a ‘limitless’ amount of literature and other materials many would only dream of a few years ago. Yet despite such initiative, many children and indeed people around the world remain not only ignorant of the Internet but also its benefits. Besides, due to the digital divide, Africans as indeed citizens of the Third World, remain disconnected because of poverty, insufficient infrastructure including lack of telephones, electricity, and even political decisions that limit access to such facilities. In essence, while such technologies as the Internet and the seemingly ubiquitous mobile telephony are global, they are not yet universal. In short, many people still do not have access, and when they do, they may not have sufficient knowledge and the capacity due to computer or Internet illiteracy, for example, to make sense of or navigate the web to derive the benefits inherent in this worldwide knowledge depository. What’s more, despite the Internet containing huge information resources, people might suffer a glut meaning access will not be beneficial without sufficient knowledge to sieve out important information from the trivial that the Internet contains.Although we may consider computer-mediated communication, and Internet and such facilities like e-books they engender, a panacea to problems of lack of access to education, they are yet to achieve the effects of face-to-face interactions in physical locations like classrooms. Besides, academic knowledge is only part of a holistic learning process. Face to face interactions are important to the development of children. They help children acquire social skills that are important in their lives. The inference from above observations is that the Internet will take time before it replaces the traditional modes of interaction, and, if and when it does, it would be important to make it supplementary rather than a replacement. —Dr Nyabuga is the Managing Editor, Weekend Editions and Media Convergence. gnyabuga@standardmedia.co.ke&#12288;&#12288;

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