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Today I had to listen to a seminar on the quality of public spending in Argentina and, among other things, when detailing spending on education, the Connect Equality Plan was mentioned as an important policy, through which a low-cost netbook is given to children who are in the last years of secondary school in order to reduce the famous “digital divide”.
To be completely honest, beyond criticizing its rickety and disorganized implementation, I cannot take a firm position on the "substance" of this issue. At first, it gives me the impression that it is a lot of money whose "impact" or "social result" is very difficult to measure. How to measure if this spending is really of quality, if it has indeed managed to "reduce the digital divide"? On the other hand, the question arises: aren't there other cheaper alternatives to reduce the "digital divide"? I don't know ... I suggest that after reading this article, which is very high on the Argentine experience, you join us in the debate and leave us your comments. |
Sure there is some dark business behind all this
The program to use inexpensive laptops for students was promoted by Nicholas Negroponte, an MIT kingpin whose idea was to create a $ 100 netbook to help children in developing countries learn. This project is called OLPC (One laptop per child or one computer per child). It has it all: a good slógan, a good price, and an unexplored and potentially captive market.
The OLPC is a $ 100-plus laptop designed to function as the "notebook and pencil" for XNUMXst century children, especially children in developing countries. This would reduce the digital gap between those who have the most and those who have the least. Let's agree that it is an idea that has a lot of appeal.
However, it is lawful to disbelieve their "good intentions." At first, one might suspect that behind the sale of these netbooks there is great business. In fact, there is. OLPC is not a charity program. Nor are they delivered free of charge to governments; they have to buy them, usually in large quantities.
In Argentina, the OLPC failed. The plan Connect equalityWhile it is more or less the same thing (stocking kids with a low-priced netbook to "bridge the digital divide"), it will not be using OLPC but other Netbooks. Instead of acquiring the OLPCs, the government began by acquiring the exomate at a cost of approximately USD 330. The Negroponte compus ended up being worth a little over $ 100, maybe $ 150 or $ 180, but still cost less than the Exomates. Of course, those who defend the decision argue, with reason, that the Exomate has more memory, a better hard drive and a better processor. That is to say, it's a better computer. However, I wonder if it will not be possible to get a netbook with better features in the US, to say a country, at the same price for which we are buying the Exomates.
But, one of the most notorious and suspicious downsides of government-chosen netbooks is that these netbooks come with a dual boot of Windows and Linux. As if having incorporated Microsoft had been little, the conspirators also draw attention to the version of Linux chosen. The OLPC comes with Sugar, a Linux distro with a long history but that is more oriented to young children (between 4 and 12 years old). For its part, the Conectar Igualdad program is basically aimed at children who are in the last years of secondary school. Those who defend the program maintain that this is the reason why Sugar had to be discarded. Those who criticize it denounce that they have chosen Pixart as an educational distribution when there are others that have international support and are globally recognized and supported by the community. Pixart is an Argentine Linux distribution based on the controversial Xandros, which is a distribution that is not totally free and gives a certain feeling of being discontinued. As if this were not enough, Pixart is a paid distro, which would end up "closing" the theory of the "negotiated", no longer from Negroponte but from an Argentine company that saw an opportunity and took advantage of it.
Defenders of the plan see it as a way to promote national industry and the development of SMEs. The last bidding process included the promotion of the national industry, by requesting as a manufacturing condition 58% of the netbooks that were assembled in Argentina and that had platelets with components integrated in the country. Regarding the «doubts» in relation to «about prices», they highlight that the unit value of the netbooks acquired by the State, at USD 349 each including taxes, is a lower cost than the indicative market values, which according to Studies requested from the private consultancy BDO and SIGEN are between US $ 365 and US $ 506.
Inclusion of proprietary software
One of the most criticized aspects of the Connect Equality plan is having introduced the dual boot (Windows and Linux), which did not exist in the original OLPC project.
One of the associations involved in this debate, the Solar Association - Argentine Free Software, maintains that the only possible option for the aforementioned Plan in terms of software is the exclusive use of Free Software, as it was carried out - among other countries - in Uruguay and Switzerland. The latter, some time ago, abandoned the software provided by Microsoft in their school machines after an exhaustive analysis of the conditions of use.
There are five reasons that Solar exposes as a basis for the exclusive adoption of Free Software (SL).
1) Technological Sovereignty: that the State is the one who controls the information and computer systems of its own plans, accessing the code of the programs that administer them, ensuring the possibility of changing the computer service provider avoiding being tied to a company, in special, foreign. The supposed “neutrality” of the double boot actually hides the dominant position of one company over the others. But it also raises a scenario of possible interference on the sovereign and independent decisions of the State, which ends up being hostage to these companies that do not generate income for the country either.
2) Education as a human right: the decision to use Free Software has a double fundamental value since it allows both to truly learn through it due to its access to the source code, and to recognize the possibility of generating transformations and not conforming to the action of the habit. Learning with Free Software means learning to learn, and learning with freedom, a curious and critical spirit; as opposed to 'training' in the use of a certain application or system.
3) Digital inclusion: Free Software can be copied and distributed legally, guaranteeing equal access to all people, becoming a vehicle for the transmission of knowledge. The SL favors the social appropriation of information technologies, seeking a real digital inclusion - broad and comprehensive - that incorporates cultural diversity in all its expressions, without differences of gender, race, religion, occupation or belonging to groups, institutions or matches
4) Strengthening local development: adopting Free Software in State Plans redirects the money that today goes to large multinational companies, to other local service companies. The Argentine Government must contribute to local development through the use of Free Software, avoiding unnecessary expenses and transforming them into investment for the Software Industry and IT Services of the country.
5) Optimization of State resources: A double operating system (including a free and proprietary one) generates a double cost.
Articulation of educational policies
Regarding the importance of this plan to reduce the digital divide, there are those who argue that much emphasis was placed on the hardware part and not on what has to do with the insertion of the machine in the educational process. Nor was it said how it would be articulated with the plans that were already being implemented in different districts, such as San Luis, which has already begun to deliver machines in the primaries, or the city of Buenos Aires. In addition, there was no talk of whether or not there will be a review of the study plans.
The proponents of the plan are absolutely silent on this point. At best, they pose it as a future "challenge."
Infrastructure
The infrastructure that is necessary to carry out the plan is monstrous, especially taking into account the very poor state in which some of our schools are. To begin with, you need 2 basic basic services: electricity and internet (where possible, wireless). These are 2 conditions that not all of our schools meet. Then, it is necessary to have the servers, routers and other specific infrastructure for these "special" netbooks to function properly. To the latter we must add the fact mentioned in the previous point: education is delegated to the provinces and this is a national plan. The articulation between both jurisdictions is always difficult.
Teacher training
In the imaginary of the ideologues of the plan, the modification of traditional educational environments into one-to-one systems is contemplated where the teacher can develop their classes from a PC to which all the students in the classroom will be connected (each one with their computer) and can work collaboratively.
The challenge that this implies is enormous. That explains why computers come before training: no matter how much resources are made available, training the thousands of teachers contemplated in the plan is an arduous process that is already beginning to be carried out successfully in some schools anyway.
The dissenting voices, on the other hand, emphasize that netbooks can be an important help for individual use by students, but in terms of interaction with the teacher, they will become a negative replacement for the direct teacher-student relationship.
For their part, regarding educational and pedagogical issues, many teachers who participated in the training program for 4 months (divided into one class per week) to learn about the specific educational applications of e-learning and CMAP tools, complain that once the course was completed, they received no further orders or directions regarding how to implement the plan.
Responsible use
The voices that defend the plan argue that the mere presence of the artifact / chiche / iron will imply a paradigmatic change in the role of the teacher (who will have a motivating profile, more open). It will stimulate networking with common goals, and will induce the use of forums, blogs, wikis. The role of the students will change, who will also be producers of information, which could reach a global scale.
In addition, learning to use these new tools and having a personal computer can help kids increase their chances of employment. That is why the plan is aimed primarily at students who enter the final stages of secondary school.
The voices against the plan, on the other hand, say that although the notebooks reached schools in the interior of the country, both teachers and students have not yet been properly trained on the proper development of the educational program in the classrooms and the machines are used as computers traditional to log in to Facebook or upload pirated software, what happened?
It is clear that teenagers handle computers much better than teachers. They use them to machete themselves, they abuse copy and paste, obtaining information that they did not elaborate or analyze, etc. It is essential that teachers know how to work with children so that it is a tool that helps them think.