Lack Of Computer Access Puts Islanders At A Disadvantage
Increasing the pace of computer literacy in grade schools throughout the Pacific is an essential — and currently largely missing — ingredient for Pacific Islanders to take advantage of the revolution in telecommunications sweeping the globe.
That is the view of Forum Secretariat telecommunications advisor John Budden, who has just completed a region-wide survey of telecommunications capabilities in Forum member islands.
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Budden, who is based at the Forum Secretariat in Fiji, and Pacific Islands Applied Geoscience Commission (SOPAC) information communication technology adviser Siaosi Sovaleni, said the issue in the Pacific is not just getting technology to people, but improving people’s ability to make use of the new technology as it becomes available.
“It’s not just about telecommunications companies,” said Budden. “I’m concerned with the capability of people to use it (Internet and computers).”
“There’s no point to having a computer if you can’t use it properly,” said Sovaleni.
Access to Internet can improve business opportunities and government administration through so-called “e-commerce” and “e-government,” Budden said. “This can make a difference to isolated islands,” Budden said.
Budden has surveyed Forum island members ranging in population from just 1,200 to several million. What he has leads him to express the concern that as improved telecommunications technology becomes available, “do countries have the human capability to manage and use it?”
In many Pacific Island countries, elementary school children have virtually no access to the Internet and little access to computers, Budden said. It is little different at the high school level.
In many smaller islands, only a small percentage of schools even have computer laboratories — many of them at private schools — and typically they are under-resourced with students forced to share access for lack of adequate numbers of computers.
At the largest public high school in the Marshall Islands, 860 students compete to use just 10 computers with Internet access. “While this is an improvement from nothing at all, it is still severely insufficient,” said Marshall Islands High School teacher Richard Li. “In the year 2008, having a computer without Internet access is like having a car without gas.”
These Marshall Islands High School students cannot get enough computer time to learn how to use the Internet — handicapping them as they prepare for college, Li said. Graduating seniors “can word process but very few can elegantly perform an Internet search or send an e-mail,” said Li, who has taught in the country for five years. “Many have aspirations to attend college off-island. Yet when the time comes to apply, many are unaware of how to even find a college, let alone navigate an online application form.”
The lack of computer awareness is a hurdle for educational advancement — and therefore national development — because island students heading to the United States, Australia, New Zealand and elsewhere to college are way behind students from these countries who’ve had computer/Internet access since grade school, Budden said.
In rural villages in the Solomon Islands the government is now promoting a “one-laptop-per-student” policy that is seeing children teaching their parents how to use computers, Budden said. This is the type of computer literacy that can make a difference, he said.
“If computers are not available in schools, students are missing out,” he said. “It’s essential for capacity building and for career paths of students to college and beyond.”
