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.