GautengOnline school left unused.

25 Oct 2005

I'm sure it's not the only one, but a GautengOnline school has been sitting for over a year and a half unused, and probably won't be used until two years after it was installed. Why isn't it used? No electricity.

So that's what they mean by "dropping" PCs. One thing I think The Shuttleworth Foundation's tuxLabs project has got right from the get-go. Before any PCs are installed, before any agreements are signed, the school must have a dedicated secure location that's ready to have the PCs installed.

This gets me thinking about the use of refurbs vs. new machines again. The cost of failure of the tuxLab setup is about R40k. The cost of the "failure" above is R250k. For the same amount of machines. Now one can't spend too much time thinking of failure, but given that this is a complicated and intricate process, it should factor into your risk assessment.

I find it interesting that the GautengOnline project manager blamed the teachers, suggesting that they are resistant to being taught themselves. I've not seen that in the Cape - every TuxLab was greeted by an entire community built around the school. A teacher resistant to change is accountable to that community, and would not last long. Maybe Gauteng is different? Or maybe it's just the blame game?

Given the relative lack of accessible and useful content (in other words, content that is free and usable from open source software), I can only imaging what a small portion of that R500m project could achieve if it were dedicated entirely to getting such content developed. Edubuntu, while perhaps not immediately 100% efficient in a particular environment, is a few custom packages away from containing this content, usable on refurb thin clients or new thick clients, as chosen by the needs and available resources of the school or project. This way the schools who aren't sponsored by government programs, that have a community that includes those willing to work with them to build their own labs can choose the solution that matches them, but they still get the content that's been developed with the community's taxes.

It is the reliance on particular proprietary software and content that seems to make the situation that much more complex. That's where there is some value in being skeptical of proprietary software and content "donations". It's a hook that is aimed to prevent open source software and open content from being used, ensuring vendor lock-in and licence fees later. "The first hit is free".

6 old-style comments

  1. ings — October 26, 2005 at 09:03 AM.

    From what I understand, Gauteng online has not worked in such a way as to include the community in the project. Schools are identified and computers and training are taken there. With tuXlabs, the computers and training don't arrive until the community has helped the school get ready for them and have a sustainable plan for keeping them. This community ownership is what makes the tuXlab project such a success.

  2. A.J. Venter — October 26, 2005 at 10:17 AM.

    It's a blame game, the difference has nothing to do with the schools and everything to do with the roll-out plans. I know because I've been involved with this for a long time, and managed several roll out projects in numerous countries. The shuttleworth guys, and us at OpenLab have known for a long time that a "box-drop" doesn't work, GoL probably knows it, but never cared. The real difference is drive, we (meaning all the FOSS people in education) do it primarily out of passion, the GoL project was motivated by politics - political success does not depend on the long term success of the project. I wrote an article about this for linuxjournal, it's a bit old now but mostly still relevant:

  3. A.J. Venter — October 26, 2005 at 10:18 AM.

    Grr, forgot to paste the URL :p http://www.silentcoder.co.za/tiki/tiki-read_article.php?articleId=32

  4. Sello — July 23, 2007 at 08:38 PM.

    I still do not see the link between Gauteng Online Project and the New way of learning and Teaching using Copmuters. What they call Computerbased Learning and Teaching

    Sello

  5. Reinet Barnard — August 02, 2007 at 11:03 AM.

    I've been teaching at 2 school, one of which is an LSEN school, using the GOL labs for Computer Literacy.

    At both schools these labs have been used with great enthusiasm by learners, teachers etc. It depends a lot on the teacher and the school's attitude.

    However, since last week the internet connection was switched off. Why? nobody can give me a straight answer. There are also no working number to report faults.

    Good luck to all!

  6. piet noah — November 27, 2007 at 02:48 PM.

    I am very disappointed with the way GDE ,IT DEPARTMENT see things schools like dan kutumela high in bronkhorstspruit they have computer labs but its not benefiting learners in any form & whereas most of the student cannot find jobs after matric & one reason is that they are not computer literate.these computers were brought in 2002 and now is almost end of 2007 what i will like to know is what is the point of having equipments that are not of aid to our disadvantage learners?
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Hi, I'm Neil Blakey-Milner, a technology generalist most interested by open source, security, and building scalable systems (especially if I get to use the Python programming language).

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