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Kid Aid: Used Computers
And Technical Support Sought To Help Students In The Former Soviet Union
by Tom
Mahon, Special ChipCenter/eChips Correspondent
An editor's son teaching in Ryazan inspired ChipCenter editors to help collect used computers to help put Russian high school students on the Internet. Your donation of equipment, skills, or funds could make a difference for hundreds of children.
There's a lot of talk today about the "Digital Divide," the gap between the technology-haves and have-nots. The issue seems so big that it's hard for concerned people, both within and outside the information industries, to know where to begin addressing it.
As a contributing editor to ChipCenter, I'd like to use this space to suggest a pilot project. My son, Chris, is serving in the Peace Corps in Russia, teaching English in Secondary School #55 in Ryazan, a city of about half-million people located 150 miles south of Moscow.
While some communities in the U.S. have the luxury of putting Internet access on every desk, this school of 1,400 students from K-11th grade would dearly love to have a computer center of 20 PCs with Internet access for the entire school. (In Russia, Secondary School includes Kindergarten through 11th grade.)
Basic requirements are for new or current PCs, with a suggested minimum clock speed of 166 MHz, 32Mb RAM, 4X CD-ROM and Ethernet capability, as well as basic software (Russian language versions are available over there). A wish-list would also include the spare parts and peripherals that make a system tick: displays, ZIP drives, spare hard disks, CD-ROM burner, printers and supplies, spare keyboards and mice, connecting cables and, of course, the consumables.
A separate effort is underway to find funding for the cost of delivering the computers to Russia, currently estimated at $1500 to $2000.
Can you or your company help? And beyond the hardware, would you or your company adopt the school and its students for a few months to tutor them (from a distance) in setting up a computer lab and developing Internet skills?
Background:
Secondary School #55 is one of the foremost schools in Ryazan, winning "School of the Year" awards in 1996, 1997 and 1998. The director, Ms. Nina Sergeiivna Ivanyuk, has been there for 20 years and is reckoned to be a remarkable teacher and administrator. (It was in consideration of her work that the Peace Corps sent a volunteer there, among the many other schools requesting such assistance.)
She has, for example, made arrangements with several universities, including Moscow State University, Moscow University of Economics and Law, Ryazan State Pedagogical University and the Ryazan Radiotechnical Academy, for her students to take first-year university courses in biology, chemistry, physics, math, history, and Russian Literature while in 10th and 11th grade. Tests they pass are directly transferable to these universities, similar to the Advanced Placement programs in the U.S. In addition, Nina Sergeiivna has a program for disabled students and those with poor health who frequently miss school.
An on-line English Language resource center at Secondary School #55 would help prepare the students to enter the global society, via the Internet. Russia has traditionally had an excellent school system, but it has been badly crippled by all the factors making life overall very difficult there now.
Because English is the language of the Web, students in English and American Studies, taught by Peace Corps Volunteer Chris Mahon, can learn much while they study a "foreign" language. For example, Chapter 5 of the current textbook, Happy English 2, is titled, "How Do You Treat the Earth." When this material becomes interactive, instead of simply text about ecology, recycling, and pollution (very real problems in Russia, as elsewhere), the students will see real applications of the material at the same time they are learning a language. Streaming video and audio showing the causes and treatment of pollution are far more effective than memorizing Woodsy the Owl's suggestions on litter.
While Nina Sergeiivna is modernizing her own school the best she can with the limited resources available to her, she also wants to offer her school's hoped-for Internet access to other schools in the region. Nina Sergeiivna has an excellent track record organizing cooperative activities among the various schools in the district. In that tradition, she hopes the Internet could help Ryazan Oblast (or Province) connect to the global community.
The minimum need is for 20 or more new or recent PCs, with speeds allowing Internet access, and basic software. Picture the kind you'd want your own children using in school.
When they get the PCs, School #55 will, at its expense, provide a new classroom for the computer lab with a steel door to protect the systems from theft or vandalism, and will also cover the cost of the new digital phone line dedicated to Internet access.
To pay for recurring costs (monthly Internet access fees, electricity, etc.), the school will conduct (and charge for) regular seminars for teachers and administrators at other local schools, on such topics as: introduction to the Internet; online educational opportunities, etc.
If this pilot project works, it could be the first of other projects allowing IT professionals worldwide to offer their skills and products to other communities, while "keeping the day job." Call it Engineers without Frontiers, a sort of "Doctors without Borders" without the travel.
Very bright, highly motivated students are shut out of the global community for want of something we now take for granted. It doesn't have to be that way—here, there or anywhere.
For more information, contact tmahon@ncal.verio.com, lgoldberg@chipcenter.com, or pcv_cmahon@yahoo.com.
The Citizen Engineer — Engineering As If Humans Mattered Archive