Computer labs need states’ backing

[rpm]

Computer labs need states’ backing

EFFORTS by private companies to set up computer labs in rural schools throughout Africa will fail unless governments play their part by investing to make the projects sustainable.

 

[MidnightWizard]

Computer Labs

Hi Mr Moderator ,

Who is this guy from AMD ?

I would like to contact them -- I have some ideas.


MidnightWizard

 

[Turtle]

It's about time people started learning how to make their own project self-sustaining and not require constant milking of taxpayer or charity money 'forever'. You're given a computer lab, for pete's sake, learn something useful or do something useful with it that can be used to generate income. Sure education is an investment but then you need to make sure that you're getting ROI somewhere down the line, i.e. that funders are actually getting value for money in the end (i.e. if the point is education, measure if it's effective). Too many of these projects are hit and run government efforts where - often - kickbacks/corruption are involved, that's why nobody follows up, it's never part of the plan to 'make it work', funds are moved primarily to personally enrich a few government officials, then projects are abandoned and forgotten as they move on to the next kickback-laden 'project'. I would love to believe their 'hearts are in the right place' but that runs counter to most evidence.

 

[Tns]

the technologies might literally be switched off unless the authorities made a financial commitment to keep them running, warned Craig Dawson of AMD SA.

no you can't do that!? well actually he could. then again the dear old gov expects everything for free just because of the under privileged , sorry it doesn't work like that in the real world

 

[JET@WORK]

The Department of Education is not doing its part

We ran a Couple of these projects in Soweto and it did not turn out to be nice at all.

Firstly, Getting into an agreement with the school took 1 year. Although we said we will train the Community members at a very low fee to sustain the lab, the school still needed a cut from the money we made. The school also did not want to allocate time in their daily time tables to allow for at least 1 hour of computer lessons per week for the students.

We taught computers in this school for about 2 years untill Gauteng online came in and Stopped the training with the promise of training the kids. It was an improvement from 12 P1 Computer lab to 24 P4 plus Big screen Projector and all but the difference is that the labs have been locked since.

We managed to secure a deal with another school in soweto to train using the computer lab and the deal was to train the kids for free and make money from the Community members. This was the only school where the project went well. The aim was to train the kids while giving the instructors The required IT Industry experience. This went well Until some technician from G-Online Decided to Reimage the Machines and keep the passwords to himself.

We have not taught at that school in over 2 years because we do not have access to the machines.

The other schools that had computers from either G-Online or Telkom have their labs either locked or Computers have long been stolen.

The only way to make this happen is for the Department of Education or the Schools to form some partnership with local IT Guys or Graduates to use the training opportunity as a form of improving their Skills and to also assist the community.

I have won several IT Awards for my work with schools but the Government has made it impossible for me to continue and I had to find Alternative ways of having an income.

There are great people out there willing to make such innitiatives work but the Government is not ready to listen.

 

[Tns]

sadly most of there projects fail, if someone is given something for free they will tend not to look after it,but make them work for it and things tend to go better.