TAD Consortium March 2000 Information Update 1
********************************ANNOUNCEMENTS/REQUESTS
--- 18th International Conference on Technology and Education: ICTE
South Africa 2000
ONLINE RESOURCES
--- Math: Figure This! Math Challenges for Families
--- Online Project: EnviroNet
--- HRfree website
--- The Lesson Plan Links website
--- Social Learning in Multimedia (SLIM)
--- South African Information Technology Industry Strategy
(SAITIS) Baseline study
ARTICLES
--- Introducing the great digital divide by STEVE BURRELL
--- Radio Marries The Internet, To Mother The Poor In South Asia
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NEWS/TRENDS
Taken from Nua Internet Surveys: February 14th, 2000
Reuters: Despite Problems, Poland Gets Connected
The Polish Internet market will change dramatically this year as new technology, easier access and telecoms deregulation shake up the sluggish existing market, according to Reuters.
State-controlled telco TPSA no longer holds a monopoly and private telcos offering improved Internet access are mushrooming. Wireless devices and cable TV Internet services are expected to become increasingly popular in this new open market and the number of Internet users in Poland should double to four million by 2001.
Polish analysts describe Internet-related activities in the country as an "infant industry". Only 300 Polish firms make commercial transactions over the Internet and most of these are in the capital-rich financial sector. Banks and other financial services organisations currently offer information and a small number of financial services online.
While there is potential for serious ecommerce to develop in Poland, it will be difficult to build a successful B2C sector. Polish people are exceedingly wary of disclosing their credit card numbers and postal deliveries are erratic at the best of times.
Furthermore, in spite of the country's new-found enthusiasm for all things online, Internet experts are few on the ground. No colleges teach Internet skills and only 16 percent of schools are connected to the Net.
http://news.excite.com/news/r/000208/01/net-poland-internet
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Taken from Nua Internet Surveys: February 14th, 2000
San Jose Mercury News: Brazil's Unusual ISPs Causing Net Boom
Free Internet access is rapidly gaining ground in Brazil and, unusually, it is banks and car manufacturers that are leading the way. Mercury News reports that companies striving to gain the loyalty of younger consumers are offering free access and alternative ecommerce choices to Brazilians.
Apart from offering free Internet access to customers, Brazilian banks are also extending their financial services online and creating online shopping malls on their sites. There are few credit card holders in Brazil but recent developments allow Internet users to shop at these bank-malls by using money held in the bank to pay for purchases.
Italian car manufacturer Fiat is giving free Internet access to the first 1,500 purchasers of one of its new models and a General Motors spokesman said the US giant may well follow suit.
In a bid to stave off the unorthodox competition, ISPs in Brazil are also now offering free access. Industry executives estimate that 70 percent of Internet users there will have free access by the end of 2000.
Average annual income in Brazil remains low and the cost of Internet access has hitherto been a serious barrier to growth in the B2C sector. B2B ecommerce is taking off in Brazil as open trade policies and increased foreign investment have created the right climate for Internet commerce.
http://www.mercurycenter.com/svtech/news/indepth/docs/brazil020800.htm
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Villages get wired on air
By Kalinga Seneviratne
KOTMALE, Sri Lanka - Villagers in this picturesque mountain region of Sri Lanka, 150 kilometers from Colombo, are logging onto the Internet via their local community radio station.
The Kotmale Community Radio (KCR) project may well revolutionize rural communications in South Asia, by showing just how information technology can become accessible to rural folks. "We have opened the doors to knowledge, understanding and entertainment through radio," says Sunil Wijesinghe, controller of KCR. "This has motivated the community to participate and express themselves freely and receive information without censorship."
KCR, established in 1989 by the government-run Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation (SLBC) as a low-powered community-based radio service carrying development messages to the rural people, is now run by the community.
The staff and volunteers are the well-educated sons and daughters of plantation workers and farmers from the surrounding areas, where literacy rates are over 90 percent. They take information off the Internet to produce programs for broadcast.
Madhushini Nilmabandara does a weekly program on human rights using the Internet. Her program is funded by the University of Colombo's Human Rights Center. "People were not aware of their human rights. So we give them information . . . how to take action to protect it. Now we have set up human rights clubs in schools and do programs with them (on radio)," she said.
Kotmale has become part of the world wide web under a pilot project funded by Unesco, which ended last October. A $50,000 grant in 1998 helped establish an Internet hub here, which includes a local server and five computer terminals. Local volunteers have been trained to log on and some have even learnt to put up websites. They have also recently started a web page on the community using information provided by listeners.
Since April last year, KCR has been broadcasting a one hour program at night, five days a week, to introduce the Internet and the information therein to listeners. "We wanted to be the first to open a gateway for rural Sri Lanka to the emerging information society. I'm glad to say this is happening," observes mass communication expert Michael David of the University of Colombo who is the KCR project coordinator.
Both he and Wijesinghe admit that the domination of the Web by the English-language is a barrier to access, but at KRC they have enlisted the help of bilingual speakers from the community to help program producers. "We have in this area well-educated people like doctors, lawyers, teachers. We get them involved in the program. They extract information from the Internet and interpret it for our listeners," Wijesinghe said.
During the program itself, listeners are encouraged to contact the station if they need more information on the subject. For instance, "school children ring us up or send letters asking for specific information. We go to the Internet, find the information and tell it on air in summary form. We send them a print-out of the information as well," he explained.
Listeners are also encouraged to drop in at the radio station to explore the Web. This has proved so popular that KCR now regulates the use of computers, and Wijesinghe said they may soon have to take older volunteers off to make way for new people.
KCR is also setting up computer terminals in three public libraries, including in Gampola, to widen community interaction with the Internet. At Gampola, 20 kilometers from the station, the librarian has been trained to teach people how to surf the Net. "The Internet is a very useful tool for my education," says Nayanasiri Dissanayake, a Grade 11 student, who was trained at KCR. "I have been able to get a lot of information from the Internet, especially for science projects."
With Unesco-funding stopping last October, KRC has had to find alternative sources of money. Coordinator David says they are working closely with hotels in the nearby hill town of Nuwaraeliya to attract foreign tourists to the region. In addition the telecommunication authorities are waiving their telephone bills and the Kotmale webserver could become the Internet service provider for the region.
Confident project officials are also considering other ideas like setting up a computer training center for rural people and a web-design center for rural businesses which could use the Internet to promote their products within and outside Sri Lanka. During a recent meeting with staff and volunteers here, Unesco consultant Wijayananda Jayaweera, a former SLBC broadcaster, advised them to turn KRC into "an advertising agency to create income for the project and yourself".
Kotmale resident Mahendra Wegodapola has done just that. He used the Internet to start an NGO, the Green Lanka Nature Conservancy Association, and "now we use the Internet to communicate with donors and international NGO forums."
(Inter Press Service)
http://atimes.com/media/BB16Ce02.html
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VIRTUAL UNIVERSITY IN MADHYA PRADESH
The Madhya Pradesh Bhoj Open University (MPBOU) signed an MoU with IBM, the global leaders in Information Technology to set up a virtual university in the State. This is the first time in India that an Information Technology (IT) major is associating with an academic institution to set up a virtual university. IBM will facilitate the development of the curriculum and provide training to the faculty.
http://www.mpchronicle.com/daily/19990506/0605001.html
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NON-ACCESS INTERNET SERVICES SHOW EXPLOSIVE GROWTH
Source: BMI-Techknowledge
According to information technology and telecommunications market intelligence and consulting company BMI-TechKnowledge's South African Internet Services Market Report, the total value of Internet and e-Commerce Services grew 55% from 1998 to 1999 to reach R1,204-billion. Access-services generated roughly double the revenue of non-access services in 1998 at R672-million and R326-million respectively, but by 2001 revenues generated by these two industries should both reach about R1,5-billion. By 2003, non-access services revenue is expected to double that of access services reaching R3,555-billion.
For the full story go to:
http://www.itweb.co.za/sections/internet/2000/0002161215.asp
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Taken from Nua Internet Surveys: February 21st, 2000
SIQSS:Internet Use Has Social Side Effects
More than a third of regular US Internet users report that the Net has significantly changed their lives, according to a new study from the Stanford Institute for the Quantitative Study of Society (SIQSS).
The academics who conducted the survey say their findings indicate that the Internet is an "isolating technology" that could seriously damage the social fabric of communities as users interact less with other people.
One quarter of respondents who are online for more than five hours a week say they now spend less time with family and friends or socialising outside the home. Sixty percent say they watch less television and one third say they spend less time reading newspapers.
In addition, 15 percent of regular users say they spend less time in traffic and 25 percent spend less time shopping in bricks and mortar stores since they first went online. One quarter of those surveyed had purchased goods or services online.
The study also found that the more years a user has been online, the longer each of their Net sessions is likely to be.
Email remains the killer application, with 84 percent of users sending and receiving mail regularly. Searching for information is users' second favourite online activity while about half of users search for travel and product information in particular. About 10 percent of users use online share brokerages, banking services or auction houses.
Other findings from the survey correlated with earlier reports that said African Americans, Hispanics, seniors and the less educated were less likely to have access to the Internet.
The Stanford survey has attracted considerable criticism from industry analysts who have described it as "obvious", "absurd" and "non-science". SIQSS interviewed 4113 adults from 2689 households but critics say the sample should have been more random and studied for a longer period of time.
Jakob Nielsen, the Internet use expert, commented that the old definitions of "personal contact" do not hold in the Internet era and chatrooms, message boards and email are very important points of contact.
Another study released this week by Thomas Staffing of California found that 300 million emails are sent per day in the US.
http://www.stanford.edu/dept/news/report/news/february16/internetsurvey-216.html
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ANNOUNCEMENTS/REQUESTS
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18th International Conference on Technology and Education: ICTE South Africa 2000. The main theme will be: Crossing the digital divide: Improving the quality of life through educational technology, April 16-19, 2000 at Potchefstroom University, South Africa. Calls for papers are still in progress and full information is available on the Webb: http://www.icte.org/edin19991.HTM or people can contact me at the above e-mail; tel 018-299-1465. In terms of the fees special support will be given to people with limited means.
Lou van Wyk Chief Director:
Telematic Learning systems
Potchefstroom University
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ONLINE RESOURCES
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Taken from Education Planet Newsletter
Math: Figure This! Math Challenges for Families http://www.figurethis.org/index40.htm Figure This! is an initiative to demonstrate to families the challenging mathematics that their middle school students should be learning and to emphasize the importance of high-quality math education for all students. This project is funded by the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Education. The website features a series of fun and engaging animated math challenges for families to solve as a reminder of the constant presence of Mathematics in our lives. Parents can find additional information in the Family Corner: Math Resources for Parents section of the website.
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Online Project: EnviroNet
Taken from Education Planet Newsletter
http://earth.simmons.edu/ EnviroNet consists of a series of environmental monitoring projects involving data collection and telecommunications for K-12 teachers and students. Current projects include: AcidRain, BatNet, BirdWatch, CoyoteHowl, InsectWorld, Ozone, Plants, RoadKill, SaltTrack, VernalPools, and WhaleNet. Students collect environmental data, share it with other schools, interpret the results and draw conclusions. EnvironNet also provides professional development for teachers to aid them with their EnviroNet projects and in integrating them into their curriculum.
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A selection of free, downloadable and customisable templates and forms covering a range of HR and personnel policies are available on the HRfree website. Takes the effort out of drafting a form from scratch!
http://www.trainingzone.co.uk/cgi-bin/item.cgi?ap=1&id=12697&d=1
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The Lesson Plan Links website: http://rrnet.com/~gleason/lesson.html has been updated with 10 new sites, bringing the total number of sites to 95.
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Social Learning in Multimedia (SLIM)
The final report of this major EC supported project is now available on-line at http://www.rcss.ed.ac.uk/research/slim.html
SLIM investigated the process of innovation in multimedia products and services arising from the convergence of information, communication and broadcasting technologies. It focused upon the role of social learning: the widely dispersed interactions between producers, intermediate and final users and policy-makers which are critical to the future evolution and success of multimedia. The study involved 8 national research centres based in the UK, Denmark, Norway, Ireland, Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Germany, and was funded by the EC DG XII Targeted Socio-Economic Research programme
Abstract
This study showed that the eventual uses and utility of multimedia products are often far removed from supplier presumptions. Social learning is therefore crucial to how generic Information and Communication Technology (ICT) capabilities are applied and used in particular settings. In creating new multimedia products and services, diverse players are forced to collaborate: suppliers of ICTs and complementary products, media specialists and users. Certain actors (intermediaries) play a key role in maintaining such collaboration and knowledge flows. The importance of social learning is reflected in the proliferation of multimedia experiments: pilots, feasibility studies and trials, which provide a forum for resolving the uncertainties and differences surrounding the development of new multimedia products.
Multimedia projects remain inherently experimental. However the importance of this innovative effort, and the knowledge it throws up, has often been overlooked. The study highlighted the various options for organising social learning, from user-centred design, to evolutionary models in which technical and market development go hand in hand, and laissez-faire approaches in which users configure standard commodified technical components to their particular purposes.
Multimedia is thus an 'unfinished' technology, which evolves, and acquires its meanings in its implementation and use (innofusion). Non-specialist 'users' play an active role in fitting these offerings to their purposes, making them useful and imparting significance (domestication).
Conclusions and Policy Implications
The key policy challenge posed by the SLIM study surrounds the need for a 'double shift' in the focus of technology policy from Research and Technological Development of ICTs, towards:
* The appropriation activities of intermediate and final users,
* The development and appropriation of cultural and information content.
Public support for the appropriation of multimedia should include provision for a creative effort in implementing and using technologies, and for the dissemination of appropriation experiences to other appropriators and to future technology supply.
Decision-makers, in seeking to demonstrate the wider exploitation of public-funded projects, tend to look towards the development of novel technological artefacts. This is unhelpful. First this promise of wider commercial exploitation is rarely fulfilled (especially in the short term). Second it may discourage experimentation around usage. Finally, it may divert attention from the important non-material outcomes of a multimedia experiment: knowledge of potential users and markets; developing relationships with collaborators.
The social learning perspective draws attention to the transferability of results and how best to utilise the experiences gained in experiments. The lessons learnt may be contingent and difficult to communicate and generalise. It may not be helpful to search for best practice exemplars: attribution of success or failure is often contested and uninformative; there are many valuable lessons in projects formally defined as 'failures'. Knowledge about change processes provides a more reliable basis for transferability than correlations between specific factors and outcomes. A key question however concerns whether the players involved in an experiment are motivated to apply the experience gained more broadly. Public support provides crucial resources - but needs to be carefully configured to avoid unhelpful outcomes (e.g. where funding favours launching new projects over exploiting existing products and building markets).
Professor Robin WILLIAMS
Director
Research Centre for Social Sciences/Technology Studies Unit
The University of Edinburgh
High School Yards
Edinburgh EH1 1LZ
Tel: +44-131-650-6387
Fax: +44-131-650-6399
email: R.Williams@ed.ac.uk
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The South African Information Technology Industry Strategy (SAITIS) Baseline study report is now released and on the web at www.saitis.co.za. A rich set of basic info on ICT in SA.
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ARTICLES
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Introducing the great digital divide
By STEVE BURRELL
SYDNEY
Wednesday 16 February 2000
It's a society where the best jobs and the best education are the preserve of a privileged few.
Where access to the wellsprings of economic and political power is reserved for the urban elite and denied to the backblocks battlers. Where those who are rich enough are offered the lowest prices for the best products while the rest peer through the store window, excluded. It's not Soviet Russia's privileged nomenklatura, a Third World oligarchy or Aldous Huxley's Brave New World.
It could already be on its way, right here, right now, courtesy of the Internet.
A digital divide is emerging in Australia, splitting the nation into technological haves and have-nots.
The fault lines are defined by how much people earn, whether they live in the big cities or the country, their education, how old they are, their family structure and whether they have a job.
And while the number of Australians connected to the Internet expands rapidly every year and access prices fall, the gap between the information-rich and information-poor is getting ever bigger. Those on higher incomes are leaving the poor behind. And in an increasingly wired world, where information is power, this inequality of access can mean dramatic inequality of opportunity.
Those on the wrong side of this digital divide face being marginalised as the Net becomes an increasingly dominant feature of economic and personal life.
An Age analysis of unpublished Australian Bureau of Statistics figures on home access to the Internet illustrates starkly the depth of Australia's digital divide.
Households on $150,000 a year or more are almost 11 times more likely to be connected to the Net than those on less than $20,000.
By last August, the latest available figures, 66.4per cent of those in the highest income bracket had home Internet access, compared with only 5.7per cent for the lowest.
Access to the Internet through work or other sites, such as universities or Internet cafes, helps narrow the divide, but only slightly. In the year to November 1998, almost 59per cent of adults on more than $46,000 accessed the Net from any site, compared with only 18.8per cent for those on less than $12,000 a year.
A similar digital divide exists between city and country.
In August last year, 25.7per cent of homes in capital cities had Internet access compared with 17per cent in the rest of the country. In the previous year, 44per cent of adults in the capital cities had accessed the Net from home, work or other sites, compared to 35per cent in other areas.
However, the figures also show that, unlike the digital divide between rich and poor, the access gap between the city and the bush is gradually narrowing.
The National Farmers Federation's executive director, Dr Wendy Craik, says city people have almost unlimited access to information. "They have the capacity to be truly 'plugged in' to the global economy," she says. "Country people, on the other hand, suffer enormously from the tyranny of distance, with poor telecommunications, which deny them access to the Internet and a decent mobile-phone service.
"The impact of such poor access to technology means that, even though everyone tells them globalisation is a good thing and part of today's world, they don't have access to the information which backs up the theory."
The advantage of living in the biggest cities is also evident in the difference in access levels between the capitals and between different states.
For example, figures for 1998, the latest available, showed 23per cent of homes in Sydney had Internet access compared with just 14 per cent in Adelaide and Hobart. And there were similar disparities between the states.
Education is another key fault line in the information economy. The ABS figures show that more than 34per cent of people with a university degree or other tertiary qualification can access the Internet from home, compared with just over 12 per cent for those with secondary school or a trade as their highest educational qualification.
A digital divide has also emerged between the young and older Australians, many of whom are intimidated by the new technology. By August last year, 31per cent of 18-24 year olds had home access to the Internet, compared with just 6.7per cent for those over 55. Family structure can also count. Single parent households are less than half as likely to have home Internet access as two parent families. Only 16per cent of single parents with dependent children has access compared to more than 36per cent of couples with children. Access to the Net from work, school or other sites can make up for some but not all of the disadvantages of not being connected at home. But whether you have a job is a big determinant of whether you are one of the Connected or the Unconnected. Only 15.6 per cent of those not in the workforce and 38.7 per cent of the unemployed accessed the Net from any site in the year to August last year, compared to 57 per cent of those in full-time jobs.
These differences in access are creating new inequalities and a widening divergence of opportunity in society. It has the potential to become a hot political issue as the Net becomes more and more woven into the fabric of daily life.
The Unconnected are already cut off from a powerful tool for plugging into the world, providing a vast range of news, information, services and social interaction. As more and more companies, Government services and community groups move their operations on to the Web, and traditional ways of delivering these services are superceded, these disadvantages will intensify.
Increasingly, the best prices for goods and services, and the most convenient way of shopping for them or paying bills, are also being found on the Net.
As electronic commerce continues to expand, lack of access will become a hot issue. Similarly, in vital areas such as education and training, lack of access to computing power and the Internet is becoming a big disadvantage.
This is adding to existing opportunity gaps between public school systems and the private schools, where computer resources are greater.In the job market, too, the best opportunities can increasingly be found on the Web rather than via traditional sources such as newspaper classified advertising.
The primary factor behind the digital divide appears to be cost. Business, unions, lobby groups and politicians are already waking up to the problem and the need to improve access and increase "bandwidth" (the capacity of the electronic "pipe" down which Internet services flow).
For business, it is emerging as a crucial issue, particularly those involved in e-commerce. The more people online, the bigger their market.
http://www.theage.com.au/bus/20000216/A20778-2000Feb15.html
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RADIO MARRIES THE INTERNET, TO MOTHER THE POOR IN SOUTH ASIA
Campaigners trying to give a voice the common Indian on the airwaves are taking no chances. If the Indian government still continues to dither on opening up the airwaves to the commonman, there are other options being eagerly tried out.
By Frederick Noronha
BOMBAY (India): Heads we win, tails you lose. Campaigners trying to give a voice the common Indian on the airwaves are taking no chances. If the Indian government still continues to dither on opening up the airwaves to the commonman, there are other options being eagerly tried out. For long, radio has remained a government monopoly in this country. Now, the sector is being opened out to commercial firms, strictly with an emphasis on entertainment.
Community radio -- which could have immense potential in this diverse country where education is a crying need -- has so far consistently been sidelined. This has been the case in much of the rest of South Asia too. Now, some interesting initiatives are underway.
Dr Arun Mehta, a Delhi-based communication engineer and activist, has some interesting ideas that offer both a technical and a legal solution. His plans include an experiment that will spread community radio using a mix of traditional radio and the Internet, thus bypassing government laws that till date prohibit direct broadcast by citizens through community radio stations. As Dr Mehta puts it: "The Indian government has been almost paranoid in its control over the electronic media. While TV has enjoyed a modicum of private enterprise via satellite broadcasting, radio has almost totally remained in government hands."
Recently, the Government offered some loosening of its hold over radio. "(But as expected there have been) stringent regulations relating to ownership and content. (Non-governmental or non-profit organisations) will hardly be able to afford to set up radio stations with substantial reach," he adds. In this context, his proposal seems ideal: delivering community radio to millions via the Internet. Its advantages are global reach, low costs for the broadcaster, and freedom from government regulation. Its major disadvantage is that the listener needs access to a computer connected to the Internet.
While the new Internet policy in India is expected to trigger massive private sector investment in the Internet, little of that money will flow towards rural areas in the normal course, where purchasing power is low and most are non-English speakers. "Audio applications such as Internet radio and telephony have the potential to change that, as they do not require the ability to write, and are equally accessible to people speaking any language," argues Mehta. But, for them to take off, they must be able to reach the masses, which cannot happen as long as each listener is expected to have a PC and a telephone. He suggests to use the Internet-for-radio in a manner that makes such broadcasts available to the poor.
How? By using technologies already put out globally by companies such as Real Networks (www.real.com) which have developed software that allows radio broadcasting via the Internet. Unlike the "elitist" Internet, large numbers of poor could be reached out through such a proposal, as Mehta explains. In this scheme, each village would contain a community information center, containing a mutimedia PC connected to the Internet. This, of course, could be used for many different purposes.
On this community PC, a Real Audio or equivalent server could be installed, which in effect would convert this PC into a radio station, which people could use to tape and disseminate audio content. There are at least two ways to provide low-cost access to Internet radio broadcasts. In the "dumb" approach, the output of the sound card on the computer can be fed to an amplifier, and distributed over ordinary copper wire to surrounding houses, each of which only needs a loudspeaker. In the "smart" model, audio signals could be distributed from the community PC using either twisted-pair telephone wires, or the coaxial cable used by Cable TV operators.
So what? Since there will be no 'broadcasting', such community radio stations could simply bypass current restrictive laws. Installed in each house in the village that wished to receive radio broadcasts, would be a small Internet radio, consisting of a simple embedded microcomputer, a loudspeaker, a microphone and a couple of buttons for channel selection. While the dumb radio would only allow the listener to listen to a single broadcast set at the community center, the smart radio would allow choice, as well as the ability to interact.
"Such a smart device does not yet exist. But the technology that it would be based on is well-known," says Dr Mehta, underlining the ingenuinity some Indians have shown in propping up untypical solutions to long-term problems. Basically it would need a stripped down computer, containing no keyboard, storage devices or monitor. It should be possible to design such a device such that in large quantities it can be made for $30 or possibly even much less. In a few years, it should be possible to make similar wireless radios at affordable prices too.
This radio, of course, would not just be able to receive audio content produced at the local community center -- via the Internet, it could receive broadcasts from all over the world. Thus, each community would be able to set up its own radio station with multiple channels, that people could receive worldwide.
So the microphone in the smart Internet radio could allow people to participate in talk shows and in audio conferences, as well as reap the benefits of Internet telephony. This would help people who migrated out of India to stay in touch with their families.
This model is similar to that of Cable TV -- only much, much cheaper -- and could well be called Cable Radio. In this manner, existing governmental laws would not be violated, and hundreds of millions could be reached out to via an affordable technology. Says Mehta: "We want to do is to showcase appropriate technologies for the environment -- the things people are not doing but should be doing. For example, the dissemination of information from the Internet over the radio. Radio is the only thing the poor can afford. Nothing else is that cheap."
Radio is something where poor people can access the software. "If it were a local radio station producing their own content, then that is tremendously empowering," he points out. There is no restriction on receiving Internet content, whether through the phone line or through satellite. Interestingly, short range broadcast within the village through cables strong across the village, which can cover a range of 30 metres or more from the cable.
"We are going to make it happen. It is not that difficult. Plus there are a lot of initiatives in the country to take bandwidth to remote parts of the country, at least upto the district level," says he confidently.
Meanwhile, some interesting reports are coming in from the island-nation of Sri Lanka too, south of India. At Kothmale, in the central part of Sri Lanka and three hours by bus from the capital city Colombo, a community radio serves a target area of 20km radius, which includes a number of rural towns such as Gampola, Nawalapitiya and Thispane. It is being implemented by UNESCO in collaboration with the Ministry of Posts, Telecommunications and the Media, Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation, Sri Lanka Telecommunication Regulatory Commission and the University of Colombo. The project uses community radio as an interface between the Internet and rural communities.
Inaugurated on April 30, the official opening took place after three months of trial period during which a WEB site database http://www.kirana.lk was developed and community volunteers were trained to handle various elements of the project.
There are three basic features in this project, which combine new information technologies with conventional radio medium.
* Radio programme to "Radio Browse" the Internet (information interpreted in local language). Here, the community radio broadcasts a daily two hour radio programme, interpreting in the local language information from selective Internet sites. Listeners can direct queries to the radio station to find specific information from the Internet.
* Community radio functions as a mini Internet Service Provider to the community with free Internet access. Besides its own "Internet Cafi" the community radio has provided two free Internet access points at Gampola and Nawalapitiya community libraries. This makes the Internet accessible in rural areas too.
* Community database development: The community radio also develops its own computer database (http://www.kirana.lk ), deriving information, which are often requested by community members, from the Internet. This database attempt to solve the problem of non-availability of packaged information in the Internet suitable to rural needs.
The project intends to address a number of challenges faced in introducing the benefits of communication technologies to rural areas which are common to many developing countries.
Radio is therefore playing a role in tackling the lack of access to computers and the Internet in rural areas!
NOTE: Dr Arun Mehta can be contacted at B-69, Lajpat Nagar-I, New Delhi-110024. Phone (+91) 11 6841172 or 6849103. His web-site is http://www.cerfnet.com/~amehta (Third World Network Features)
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Telematics for African Development Consortium
P.O. Box 31822
Braamfontein
2017
Johannesburg
South Africa
Tel: +27 +11 403-2813
Fax: +27 +11 403-2814
neilshel@icon.co.za
www.saide.org.za
* To view an archive of previous updates
visit:
www.saide.org.za/tad/archive.htm
* For resources on distance education and
technology use in Southern Africa visit:
www.saide.org.za/worldbank/Default.htm
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