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COMMUNICATIONS-ARGENTINA: Computers Alone Can't Bridge Digital Gap
By Marcela Valente
BUENOS AIRES, Oct 17 (IPS) - "With these three computers and Internet
access, it's as if we could reach up and touch the sky," exclaimed Analía
Bonesso, the principal and teacher of all eight grades in a rural primary
school in Argentina with no telephone, no radio, and only 14 students.
Tomás Espora primary school is in Campo Durango in the province of Santa Fe,
some 400 km northwest of Buenos Aires. This former dairy farming region has
now been taken over by soybean plantations, and the school's students are
the children of migrant farmers who travel from one source of work to
another, Bonesso explained to IPS.
Since 2002, the school has formed part of a network of 17 rural schools
located throughout Argentina that have been provided with computer equipment
and a broadband or satellite Internet hook-up though the Ministry of
Education's Educ.ar Programme.
The programme is also meant to encompass training and technical support,
although certain shortcomings come to light during the interview with
Bonesso.
She said that she had learned to use the computers "partly on my own and
partly with the help of friends." And while everyone at the school uses the
equipment "to read the news and search for information," e-mail is used only
by the staff, not the students, because "they don't have any relatives to
write to," said Bonesso.
"Don't they connect with children in other schools?" asked IPS. "Yes,
sometimes, and I try to get them to write e-mails to the relatives that some
of them have in other parts of the country," she responded.
The unbridged distance between the provision of equipment and genuine
assimilation of these new technologies on the part of the programme's
beneficiaries is regularly stressed by non-governmental organisations (NGOs)
working to close the digital gap by familiarising the poor, excluded sectors
of society with the latest information and communications tools.
The problem is not limited to isolated rural schools. In the city of Buenos
Aires, there are primary schools that are well equipped with computers, but
the teachers do not know how to use them.
"The parents decided to put up the money to hire a computer teacher who goes
to the school twice a week," Silvina Márquez, the mother of a student at one
of these schools, told IPS.
This is what happens when the equipment "comes as manna", without the needed
preliminary groundwork.
"The state and private sector work hard to provide computers and Internet
access, but the challenge that remains unfulfilled is for the community to
feel a sense of 'ownership' of the equipment and to use it to meet their
needs," Angélica Abdallah, director of the Argentine Telework Association,
commented to IPS.
A survey conducted by the software giant Microsoft found that almost eight
million people in Argentina, a country of 37 million, regularly surf the
Internet and use e-mail, a higher proportion than the majority of Latin
American countries.
However, the use of this technology is overwhelmingly concentrated in the
country's cities. In Buenos Aires and its outskirts alone there are roughly
9,000 cybercafes with more than 52,000 computers connected to the Internet,
according to the same survey, carried out in 2004.
While some are privately owned and others are run by telephone companies,
the affordable rates they charge have made Internet use a widespread
phenomenon in urban areas.
Another survey, conducted this year by the Argentine newspaper Clarín and
the market research firm D'Alessio IROL, revealed that 60 percent of
Internet users go online in cybercafes, 41 percent in their own homes, 14
percent at work, and a mere three percent in educational facilities at every
level, including public and private universities.
It is this last category that is key to expanding access in impoverished
sectors of society.
As part of the process leading up to the second phase of the World Summit on
the Information Society (WSIS), taking place Nov. 16-18 in Tunisia, the
governments of Latin America have pledged to double the current number of
schools, libraries and community centres hooked up to the Internet by the
year 2007.
The Argentine government of centre-left President Néstor Kirchner, who took
office in May 2003, has placed heavy emphasis on the provision of the needed
equipment.
In addition to ensuring that schools in slum neighbourhoods are connected to
the Internet, the Ministry of Education launched a National Digital Literacy
Campaign this year, which will distribute 100,000 computers to 12,000
schools.
Laura Serra, director of projects for the Educ.ar programme, admitted to IPS
that difficulties have been detected in the schools that make up the
network, and that efforts are being made to resolve them.
The main focus now, she added, is on the digital literacy campaign, which
will include curriculum content and training for the teachers involved.
"What is needed to reduce the digital gap is to work on all aspects at the
same time," stressed Serra. "It's not enough to simply hand out computers
and Internet connection, without training or course content."
So far, half of the computers to be provided through the programme have
arrived in the schools, while the remainder will be distributed by the end
of next year.
To ensure the necessary training, the ministry has signed an agreement with
the country's public universities, which will offer courses on classroom use
of new information technologies to some 15,000 primary and secondary school
teachers.
The Kirchner administration also continues to sponsor another project that
was enthusiastically launched in the late 1990s but has only partially
survived, namely the Community Technological Centres (CTCs), which are
funded by the Communications Secretariat of the Ministry of Federal
Planning, Public Investment and Services.
There are 1,350 CTCs throughout the country, which the state has supplied
with both computer equipment and training for technical and teaching staff.
The host institutions include schools, churches, libraries, fire halls,
municipal authorities and NGOs.
In the case of the CTCs, the state pays for Internet access with a monthly
limit on connection time. But once again, the success or failure of this
initiative does not depend solely on the technology implemented or the
bandwidth used.
"In order for the CTCs to have an impact on the community, people have to be
trained to properly manage them, to ensure that they remain sustainable in
the long term," said Abdallah.
Serra, for her part, commented, "What is a centre good for if it can no
longer acquire paper or printer cartridges?"
Similar concerns are voiced by Nodo Tau, an NGO founded to train social
organisations, including trade unions and schools, in the use of new
information technologies like the Internet.
"In order for this technology to be used, it is essential to provide
training, create networks among organisations, and promote access for the
most marginalised sectors as well," Nodo Tau training coordinator Carolina
Fernández commented to IPS.
Nodo Tau and other civil society groups have promoted the establishment of
community computer facilities or "telecentres" in social organisations, and
some of these have joined with the UNESCO (United Nations Educational,
Social and Cultural Organisation) network of free telecentres, which promote
the recycling of computer equipment and work with free or open-source
software.
"We reach out to entrepreneurs and professionals to try to get them to use
the telecentre as a tool for marketing their products and services," noted
Abdallah.
"We also want to generate demand in the private sector for the services that
could be offered by the telecentre, in order to make it sustainable," she
added.
But in order for this to be viable, there is a need to "train people to
manage." Abdallah stressed that instead of waiting for technology to "come
from above," work should be done at the grassroots level, listening to the
needs of the community and providing training for the appropriate use of
technology.
Nodo Tau has supported the creation of seven telecentres that offer services
at an extremely low cost in social organisations. "There are users of all
ages, but mainly adults who are uncomfortable with the modern aesthetics of
cybercafes," said Fernández.
Fernández believes that the digital gap is not isolated from the other
social, cultural and economic gaps typical of a developing country.
"In order to bridge this gap, the solution does not lie in the acquisition
of equipment, but rather in the assimilation of this tool by the members of
the community, since this is the way to ensure that its use will contribute
to transforming reality," she said.
(END/2005)
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