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Computers Alone Can't Bridge Digital Gap 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)