Tag: technology

Commerical computer software is not sustainabile, particularly in developing countries when compared with free and open-source softare (FOSS)

This is my introduction to a project that I have proposed as a goal for my third year extension as a Peace Corps Volunteer. Although originally created as a project for a single school, my recent introduction to the Ministry of Education’s ICT department has provided a new possibility of spreading the use of free and open source software within the kingdom. I am now furthering this project and using it as a component for a www.Coursera.org class that I am attending online.

 

 

The United Nations Millennium Goal #2 : Ensure that, by 2015, children everywhere, boys and girls alike, will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling

 

Every developing country’s education system will share a single key component in the future. This component is the inclusion of computer technology inside the classroom and within academic structures. All future classrooms in developing nations will have some connection to modern technology, weather through computers meant for students, teachers, or administrators.

 

Any large corporation or institution that currently has developed technical infrastructure will cite the cost of training staff to switch to Free and open-source software as a key component of its failure to supplant traditional purchased software. The costs of maintaining commercial software extend years beyond initial purchasing, covering specialized hardware, software upgrades, and vendor-specific training required to operate the technology. The commercial software industry has within its best interests a continuous cycle of software purchase, software update, software obsolescence, and software replacement.  These costs are a recurring burden on institutions, and once a specific technology or vendor has been implemented within that institutions it is tremendously cost-intensive and technically overwhelming to change.

 

As developing nations invest further into technology for classrooms, their is a choice available to these nations that is not available to currently established countries and institutions. The choice is between software that is Free and open-source software (FOSS) versus expensive commercially available software. Developing nations have a unique opportunity to prevent being trapped int he cycle of continuous costs associated with commercial software. These countries are in a position to train engineers, architects, programmers and technicians on FOSS before they have any dependency or reliance on purchased and entrenched commercial software.

 

Swaziland is a country with an extremely youthful demographic population. It is estimated that over 25% of the population are children that have been orphaned because of the HIV and AIDs epidemic. These children through the assistance of international donors such as PEPFAR and the Global Fund are being exposed to a free primary school education that has never before been available to the children of this country.

 

Swaziland is ranked by the UN as a middle-income country. Due to many factors much of this income remains out of the hands of the severely impoverished. The majority of Swaziland’s citizens live on approximately $2 per day. With the incredible income disparity and poor conditions of many rural schools, there is little or no money for technology infrastructure, and no money for proper training of staff. Without the finances to continually purchase new or updated software, the use of commercial software for improving educational systems in developing nations is an unsustainable tool for use in meeting the UN’s development goal.

 

My project proposes that implementation of training on free and open-source software through the Swaziland Ministry of Education will present an opportunity within the public school system to break from the need for purchasing expensive software.  This training presented by members of the Swaziland Computer Society (a technical user group) will be directed at those schools within the country currently operating a computer lab for students. These instructors will gain the knowledge necessary for installing, configuring, and troubleshooting selected Linux operating systems, and other open-source software selected by the Ministry of Education.

 

The milestones for this project are:

  • Creation of a presentation conveying the benefits and significance of moving the country’s educational system to FOSS
  • Scheduling a viewing of the presentation to the Swaziland Computer Society
  • Scheduling a meeting on FOSS with the Chief Inspector of ICT for the Ministry of Education
  • Preparation of training materials to be used in class
  • Acquisition of funding to finance first series of training classes
  • Selection of teachers for training class
  • Completion of the training class
  • Follow-up with training attendees on implementation results

 

The timeline for this project from beginning to the successful completion of the first training lesson will be no more than 10 months long, dictated by the Swaziland school calendar.

Where is all the tech going?

A few months ago while living in Tucson, I read a book aptly named “Being Digital” by Nicholas Negroponte.  This book has over the last year or so given me great pause when considering the future of our technology.  We have cell phones, PDA’s, computers in our kitchen, cars, bathroom sinks, and we even have our digital music players.

To most people Nicholas Negroponte is a very unfamiliar name.   He was an instructor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and is one of the most respected icons of technology.  His brainchild is the One Laptop Per Child www.laptop.org program that is now distributing hundreds of thousands of low-cost incredibly well-designed and unfathomably “awesome” laptops to ever exist!  The laptop is humbly described on their website:

“The laptop has rounded edges. The integrated handle is kid-sized, as is the sealed, rubber-membrane keyboard. The novel, dual-mode, extra-wide touchpad supports pointing, as well as drawing and writing.”

This device is so incredibly well thought-out and engineered it can be recharged from a car-battery if nothing else can be available.  How does someone come up with ideas this great?  The XO as it is called is such a perfect example of where our technology can go.

Is there a reason the computer industry still produces laptops that don’t ALL have touch-screens?  Why don’t we all have laptop batteries that are so tolerant they don’t catch fire in our laps?  The integration and culmination of our daily and mundane; yet increasingly, complex computer systems is going to be the next frontier.

How come when most people plug in their iPod it doesn’t automatically sync, and play on their new computer?  Where is the integration with your mp3’s?  Speaking of MP3’s what computer did you leave that song on?  “Was that on my desktop at work… or my desktop at home?  Do I even own that CD anymore?”

These complex and reoccurring conversations going on in everyone’s heads need to be addressed and massaged away by the silky-smooth future of tech that will be essential to integrated systems of the future.  For example say I have a stereo playing in my living room, and I need to go to the kitchen, but I don’t want to miss this song and I can’t hear anything from my kitchen?  Why can’t the stereo I have in the kitchen recognize that the signal is closer to those speakers, and the music should switch off from the living room, but start in the kitchen?  These items are coming… I remember when Java was first mentioned when I was going to college.  Java was touted as the computer programming language that would evolve into our refrigerators talking to our toaster, and the toaster talking to the microwave.  it was being hailed in textbooks from 1996 as the gateway language that would run on any kind of computer you could imagine.

Whether or is Java or not; and I’m not sure since I no longer spend time programming, the mechanisms that enable our computer to talk to our other computer, and the iPod to talk to the Blackberry are here.  Devices are being produced now with better capabilities than my wildest dreams as a kid.  The field of computer science is being moved into a world of converging technologies that are present in everyone’s life.

Microsoft recently extended to me an opportunity to joy in a “tech preview” of one of their upcoming products.  It is called Windows Live Mesh or Mesh for short.  What using Mesh has allowed me to do, was simply unheard of to me when I first started using it.  I’ve read that other products existed before Mesh,  so Microsoft is not the only company working on this, but for the ease of use that a Beta product has offered me is attestable to a company trying to get something done well.

I have a desktop at work, a laptop at home, a laptop for work, an old ActiveSync device, and my blackberry (and a pager that work gave me, but lets not talk about that).   Unless I’m spending half of my day remembering what computer I have my pictures and MP3’s on, I lose track.  Then I find myself with 5 copies of the same thing.  Then I have to spend hours trying to figure it out, and either keeping 5 copies of every file that’s important, or simply having one device, which as anyone with a crashed drive will tell you is… a bad idea.  Since I have to keep 5 copies of everything, and *need* those devices so much, I spend multiple hours of my life every week trying to keep my copies up to date.  Do I have all the files in all the right places?

I don’t have to worry about that kind of garbage with Mesh.  Mesh runs quietly in the background and syncs all my data with my 3 computers.  (Since its still in development, the plugins are not out yet for the Windows Mobile device, or the blackberry, but they are coming.)  So any folder I click and “add to my mesh” automatically syncs with my other PC’s whenever they turn on.  That’s fantastic to me.  Less time wasted since I always have a copy of everything I might need.

Ubiquity amongst our devices are coming.  My Bluetooth headset works with my phone, my computers, and if I had one, a new Ford equipped with Bluetooth.   Where is all this tech going?  It’s going to be ubiquitous in our lives.  Computer technology will for the rest of time (unless madmen have their way) be a part, and at times an integral portion of generations of people to come.  They have started and someday will become so partnered with living your daily life, that our gadgets have become just another household appliance.