Computer project receives mixed reviews

For a while it seemed that every day there was a news item on another school being equipped with an Intelco computer lab. Then at some point the press releases stepped and the only stories you saw about Intelco were about delays in the company’s introduction of service. Well, over the last week or so I’ve revisited some of those schools to see just what happened after the media moved on.

Janelle Chanona, Reporting

Officials in the Ministry of Education and Intelco report that since January 2002, five thousand computers have been installed in schools countrywide, under the Internet for Schools project.

On average, every lab has sixteen computers, but in some rural areas, that figure drops to only one or two. Thirty-eight hundred computers do not have Internet access, especially in the more remote parts of the nation. But by all accounts, the presence of the machines in the classroom has been a tremendous success.

Ira Modry-Caron, Computer Teacher, St. Mary’s

“The children really enjoy coming in here. They range from Standard One to Standard Six, so it’s one of the highlights of their week to come in and come in to computer class.”

Michelle Elliot, Computer Teacher, Queen’s Square Anglican

“The children who are not really academically inclined and who don’t do very well in their other classes, they love coming to the computer lab, even our troublemakers.”

Janelle Chanona

“But confusion reigns in the computer labs. Teachers say their hands are tied when it comes to accessing educational software programmes, and more disturbingly, they maintain that when their machines and internet service go down, they must deal with extended and unreasonable delays for getting back the service.”

Michelle Elliot

“We are not allowed to touch the computers when any of them go down. We have been told by the Ministry of Education that we must call them and report any fault with any of the computers and they will send someone in to come and fix it. From time to time, the men from Intelco come, but they can only check the internet, they cannot touch any of the computers.”

Grace Williams, Principal, St. Mary’s Primary School

“We thought that somebody, maybe the Ministry of Education, the Government, somebody would help us to maintain the computers. But I know we sent one computer to the ministry and we haven’t gotten it back. And when I asked about it, they said if you buy the parts that we need, we can fix it for you and send it back. We didn’t, but a couple of weeks ago we were able to fix about four computers that were down. It’s very costly, but we were able to do so because we really need the computers.”

School officials like principal Grace Williams of St. Mary’s Primary, says the repairs and upkeep are so expensive that they have had to resort to charging a computer fee to their students. It was a measure Williams says many parents strongly objected to.

Grace Williams

“Some of them tell you outright that they don’t want their children to take computer classes. Some of them, I think that some of them they really can’t afford it, but I wish the parents who are saying that they don’t want their children to take computer classes would rethink because that’s becoming necessary now in this world of technology.”

K. Mustafa Touré, Advisor, I.T. Internet Services Area

“Fundraising is one thing, a computer fee of fifty dollars a week or a semester is another thing. Now those are some of the things that would have to be regularised, otherwise we are going to punish the children whose parent’s don’t have and reward the ones [that have] and really enforce the inequities in the system that we are trying to eliminate.”

K. Mustafa Touré is an advisor in the Information Technology Internet Services Area, formerly known as SWAN, the Schools Computer Wide Area Network. Touré says the confusion is a result of a breakdown in communication channels.

K. Mustafa Touré

“The schools, many of the secondary schools feel like, “We’ve taught computer, we know how to fix this,” but invariably they may do something that will either void the warranty or the service from Intelco.”

Touré says to sustain the overall life of the machine, the Ministry of Education has determined that only certified and trained technicians, of which there is at least one in every district, are responsible for repairs to the computers.

K. Mustafa Touré

“If they don’t go through these arrangements, then unfortunately it might feel that either through ignorance or their eagerness that they have to fix it themselves. This has caused us a lot of problems where people have gone onto computers with the passwords, put in softwares, opened them up to viruses, and you know there’s a new virus every week. This is part of the reason why many of the computers are experiencing the problems they do.”

But teachers maintain without those same administration passwords, their teaching modules are severely hindered, mostly because it takes so long for the officials to show up.

Michelle Elliot

“We cannot download software for the children or have them use a lot of the educational games. For example, they might need JavaScript or something and we don’t have the administration password to get access. Also we cannot download any kind of material from a C.D. unto the computer without the Ministry of Education’s permission.”

Software access isn’t the only problem. According to the computer teachers, internet service gets a C.

Ira Modry Caron

“The service has been fairly good for the last half of the year, from January up until today, it’s been on fairly consistently. But before then it’s been on and off fairly regularly.”

“You typically call in and maybe they’ll come two or three weeks later. It all depends on–actually I don’t know what it really depends on when they come. Sometimes they come by unexpectedly. They’ll just show up, test a few things and leave and then we don’t hear from then for a couple weeks.”

While Intelco admits that they did have a problem with their service last year, they contend that a large portion of the problems the schools’ computer labs experience is associated with a breakdown in the machines themselves or the infrastructure of the lab. At St. Mary’s lab, which was the first officially opened in the project, visible water stains scar the ceiling and the open windows bring immeasurable amounts of dust in from outside.

K. Mustafa Touré

“At the time St. Mary’s got theirs there was no requirement to get air conditioning. Subsequently, Intelco and M.O.E. agreed that we needed to put air conditioning in all the schools, so all the subsequent ones would have had A.C., but at St. Mary’s is one that doesn’t have A.C. right now. That may be rectified in the future, depending on what the new budget brings.”

But whatever approach is taken those on the front lines are coming under increasing fire. At St. Joseph’s Primary, Principal Glorycela Torres says, her computer lab has been without internet access since November.

Glorycela Torres, Principal, St. Joseph’s Primary

“There is a crisis that we are facing and I don’t know how the Ministry of Education can help us. So we are asking or begging them to look after this crisis and I hope that the solution will be found after the Easter break.”

To make a formal report or complaint about computer labs, principals should contact Senior Technician Safalela Mohammad at the SWAN unit on Mahogany Street extension at 222-4096. As for the internet cafes that were to have been established at every lab, Touré says the security in the schools, especially primary schools, cannot support the initiative. However, at the ministry’s request, all public libraries do offer the service to customers.