Sabbatical Clippings 2005
Sabbatical
Clippings 2004
Sabbatical Blog
For links that can be blogged.
Many links from the Bangkok Post and The Nation do not
work for Blogging. Those articles are tracked on my clipping site. A
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for 2004 and 2005.
Please do not link directly to this page because these
articles are copyrighted.
Stephen Cysewski
Professor CIOS/ITS
UAF/Tanana Valley Campus
(907) 455-2816
ffsdc@uaf.edu
cysewski@gmail.com
http://www.tvc.uaf.edu/its/
http://www.faculty.uaf.edu/ffsdc/syllabus/
http://www.wanderinginthailand.com
http://www.wanderinginalaska.com
http://www.cysewski.com
ENGLISH TEACHING: Complete overhaul ‘essential’
Published on August 28, 2005
Chaturon calls for drastic measures; educators propose raft of
initiatives. Calling for an overhaul of the teaching of English in Thai
schools, Education Minister Chaturon Chaisang said that most students’
inability to communicate in English despite spending years learning the
language pointed to a clear failure in language-teaching in Thailand.
The minister’s comments came yesterday during an Education Ministry
workshop on improving the teaching and learning of English held at the
Prince Palace Hotel. A total of 135 language-school executives,
English-teachers and education professionals participated in discussions.
Chaturon stressed that both the teaching and learning of English must
be refashioned, including curricula, textbooks and tests, in order for
Thai students to acquire an acceptable level of competence in the
language. He added that the practice of encouraging students to memorise
grammatical rules by rote must be discontinued in favour of providing them
with opportunities to practice speaking, listening and writing.
“Most of our students have been taught with a heavy emphasis on grammar
without having the chance to practice the language verbally,” the minister
explained. Such practices have had sorrowful results, he said. “When many
of our students go overseas to study, all they can say are things like
‘What is your name?’ and ‘I love you’.”
Chaturon said several questions in the standardised TOEFL had been
changed to make the language test better measure students’ grasp of
English usage in everyday situations, integrating writing, speaking,
reading and listening skills.
It transpires, Chaturon noted, that even many of those Thai students
who score well on their English exams in Thailand encounter severe
difficulties in writing and speaking during their studies abroad.
The General Achievement Test last year found that the English language
ability of primary and high-school students in Thailand was equally low.
Their average mark for English was among the lowest in all subjects.
According to the Commission on Higher Education, the average score of Thai
students in English tests administered during university entrance
examinations has not reached 50 per cent in the past three years.
Dee Parker, an executive of the American University Alumni Language
Centre (AUA) in Bangkok, added, however, that the ministry’s goal to have
Thai students learn only enough English to “understand” was aiming too
low. Thai students should be encouraged to express themselves fluently and
descriptively in both spoken and written English, Parker stressed.
Arunee Viriyachittra, a consultant for the English Resource and
Instruction Centre (Eric), in turn said Thai teachers of English needed
training themselves as many of them were still grappling with the
vernacular. She explained that a recent survey showed that some 40 per
cent of 100,000 Thai teachers of English had a poor grasp of the language
with their grammar and communicative skills hovering in the low to
middling range.
“I recommend that all new English-teachers be required to demonstrate
high degrees of linguistic competence through rigorous evaluation,” she
said, adding: “Old English-teachers who don’t show signs of improvement
should in turn be moved to other positions.”
Arunee went on to say she had found that several schools which used
native English-speakers to teach even one class a week had achieved
demonstrable improvements in their students’ ability to communicate in
English.
She added, however, that she disagreed with the policies of some
schools to go “overboard” by teaching all subjects in English, arguing
that many students’ language skills remained too deficient for them to
handle complex subjects in a foreign tongue. “We might create a situation
in which many of our students become inferior not only in English but in
many other subjects as well,” she warned.
Arunee added that current curricula also failed to differentiate
between students with different learning abilities, whereby slower
students risked falling further and further behind their more gifted
peers. “Would it not be better if schools tailored their English classes
to students’ individual levels of language competence, rather than lumping
them all together in the same class?” she asked.
Boonladda Chainam, a professor at Mahidol University, stressed that the
surest way to encouraging students to master English was to have them
develop an affection for the language so that they considered studying not
as a gruelling chore but rather as a rewarding activity.
“In a like vein, we have to find further ways to enable students to use
English often outside classrooms,” she added.
Chatrarat Kaewmorakot
The Nation
August 25, 2005
Cellphones Catapult Rural Africa to 21st Century
By SHARON LaFRANIERE
YANGUYE,
South Africa - On this dry mountaintop, 36-year-old Bekowe Skhakhane
does even the simplest tasks the hard way.
Fetching water from the river takes four hours a day. To cook, she
gathers sticks and musters a fire. Light comes from candles.
But when Ms. Skhakhane wants to talk to her husband, who works in a
steel factory 250 miles away in Johannesburg, she does what many in more
developed regions do: she takes out her mobile phone.
People like Ms. Skhakhane have made Africa the world's
fastest-growing cellphone market. From 1999 through 2004, the number of
mobile subscribers in Africa jumped to 76.8 million, from 7.5 million,
an average annual increase of 58 percent. South Africa, the continent's
richest nation, accounted for one-fifth of that growth.
Asia, the next fastest-expanding market, grew by an annual average of
just 34 percent in that period.
"It is a necessity," said Ms. Skhakhane, pausing from washing laundry
in a plastic bucket on the dirt ground to fish her blue Nokia out of the
pocket of her flowered apron. "Buying air time is part of my regular
grocery list."
She spends the equivalent of $1.90 a month for five minutes of
telephone time.
Africa's cellphone boom has taken the industry by surprise. Africans
have never been rabid telephone users; even Mongolians have twice as
many land lines per person. And with most Africans living on $2 a day or
less, they were supposed to be too poor to justify corporate investments
in cellular networks far outside the more prosperous cities and towns.
But when African nations began to privatize their telephone
monopolies in the mid-1990's, and fiercely competitive operators began
to sell air time in smaller, cheaper units, cellphone use exploded.
Used handsets are available for $50 or less in South Africa, an
amount even Ms. Skhakhane's husband was able to finance with the little
he saves from his factory job.
It turned out that Africans had never been big phone users because
nobody had given them the chance.
One in 11 Africans is now a mobile subscriber.
Demand for air time was so strong in
Nigeria that from late 2002 to early 2003 operators there were
forced to suspend the sale of subscriber identity module cards, or SIM
cards, which activate handsets, while they strengthened their networks.
Villagers in the two jungle provinces of Congo are so eager for
service that they have built 50-foot-high treehouses to catch signals
from distant cellphone towers.
"One man uses it as a public pay phone," said Gilbert Nkuli, deputy
managing director of Congo operations for Vodacom Group, one of Africa's
biggest mobile operators. Those who want to climb to his platform and
use his phone pay him for the privilege.
On a continent where some remote villages still communicate by
beating drums, cellphones are a technological revolution akin to
television in the 1940's in the
United States.
Africa has an average of just one land line for every 33 people, but
cellphones are enabling millions of people to skip a technological
generation and bound straight from letter-writing to instant messaging.
Although only about 60 percent of Africans are within reach of a
signal, the lowest level of penetration in the world, the technology is
for many a social and economic godsend.
One pilot program allows about 100 farmers in South Africa's
northeast to learn the prevailing prices for produce in major markets,
crucial information in negotiations with middlemen.
Health-care workers in the rural southeast summon ambulances to
distant clinics via cellphone.
One woman living on the Congo River, unable even to write her last
name, tells customers to call her cellphone if they want to buy the
fresh fish she sells.
"She doesn't have electricity, she can't put the fish in the
freezer," said Mr. Nkuli of Vodacom. "So she keeps them in the river,"
tethered live on a string, until a call comes in. Then she retrieves
them and readies them for sale.
William Pedro, 51, who deals in farm and garden plants, said he tried
for eight years to lure customers to his nursery in a ragtag township
near George, a resort town on South Africa's southern coast. Only when
he got a cellphone two years ago, he said, did his business take off.
"White people are afraid to come here to my place in the township to
buy plants," Mr. Pedro, who is of mixed race, said as he stood outside
his makeshift greenhouses. "So now they can phone me for orders and I
can deliver them the same day."
Hamadoun Touré, development director for the International
Telecommunication Union, said the economic blessings of cellphones were
magnified in the developing world.
"What is the alternative?" asked Mr. Touré, whose agency was founded
in the days of the telegraph and is now part of the United Nations.
"Somebody may have to leave work, travel for days, spending much more
money" just to pass on a message.
Initially, he said, mobile operators based their predictions of
cellphone use on the typical land-line user, someone with a bank
account, a job and a fixed address.
"The woman selling vegetables in the market, with the baby and the
umbrella, they weren't in the profile of the normal subscriber," Mr.
Touré said. "But they use them."
Mobile operators cannot put up towers fast enough, not just in
established markets like South Africa, which is already home to about
one in four African mobile subscribers, but also in nations that barely
have electricity, much less existing cellular networks ready for
expansion.
Five years ago, for example, sub-Saharan Africa (excluding South
Africa) accounted for one of every five mobile subscribers on the
continent. That ratio has now doubled.
Executives of the MTN Group, another major African mobile operator,
say the company's Nigerian network cost two and a half times as much as
its South African network because of lack of infrastructure. But demand
is so intense that MTN is adding hundreds of new base stations.
Congo was in the midst of a civil war when Alieu Conteh, a
telecommunications entrepreneur, began building a cellular network there
in the 1990's. No foreign manufacturer would ship a cellphone tower to
the airport with rebels nearby, so Mr. Conteh hired local men to collect
scrap and weld a tower together.
Now Vodacom, which formed a joint venture with him in 2001, is
grappling with other problems. Its trucks get stuck in the mud. A crane
is out of the question; it takes 15 to 20 men to haul each satellite
dish into place with ropes. Base stations must be powered by generators.
Each morning, executives send instant messages to employees containing
the latest rate for the plunging local currency.
Despite all that, Vodacom Congo has 1.1 million subscribers and is
adding more than 1,000 daily.
There are no current plans to extend land-line service to the
surrounding steep mountains where Ms. Skhakhane lives, government
officials here say. But that may not matter: six months ago, Vodacom
erected a cellular tower whose signal can be picked up in the hills. Now
it logs 10,000 calls a day.
Before the tower went up, Ms. Skhakhane communicated with her husband
by letter. She waited weeks for a response. The nearest public
telephone, outside a little shop more than 10 miles away, has been
broken since March.
Ms. Skhakhane said she considered the $1.90 a month for a phone card
to be money well spent. "I don't use the phone very often," she said,
"but whenever there is something I really need to discuss, I do."
One problem remains even in the age of cutting-edge cellular
technology: How does an African family in a hut lighted by candles
charge a mobile phone? A bicycle-driven charger is said to be on the
horizon. But that would require a bicycle, a rare possession in much of
rural Africa.
In Yanguye, as in other regions, the solution is often a car battery
owned by someone who does not have a prayer of acquiring a car.
Ntombenhle Nsele keeps one in her home a few miles down the road from
Ms. Skhakhane's. She takes it by bus 20 miles to the nearest town to
recharge it in a gas station.
For 80 cents each, Ms. Nsele, 25, lets neighbors charge their mobiles
from the battery. She gets at least five customers a week.
"Oooh, a lot of people," she said, smiling. "Too many."
CP 7-Eleven plans retail school
Published on August 24, 2005
CP Seven Eleven Plc, the local convenience store chain, has set up a
new business arm to train retail professionals. In two months the company
will officially open the country’s first vocational college for retail
education. More than 1,000 students will graduate each year into a fully
guaranteed job at CP Seven Eleven, or 13 affiliated retail firms.
The “Panyapiwat Techno Business” vocational college will train retail
staff for their primary vocational education, deputy director Poontana
Musikaboonlert said.
The curriculum will be joint-ly developed by managers of the college
and CP Seven Eleven bosses.
Human resource staff at CP Seven Eleven will screen applicants. CP
Seven Eleven executives will occasionally be asked to give lectures on
their retail experience and practices.
The retail vocational college is the first educational business formed
by Sueksapiwat Co Ltd, a new educational business arm set up two years ago
by CP Seven Eleven Plc.
The company acquired a 10-year-old vocational college named “Bangkok
Technic Nonthaburi” on Ngam Wong Wan Road, which was later renovated and
converted to Panyapiwat Techno Business.
The new vocational college has been operating for two months. It has 35
teachers with an average age of 30. All teachers will have on-the-job
training at CP Seven Eleven to gain real retailing experience.
Poontana said that in addition to Panyapiwat Techno Business vocational
college, the educational arm also planned to open an undergraduate
institute for retail management and technology.
A workshop training centre for retail practice including marketing,
sales and service-minded development will be set up in the near future to
train retail professionals from middle to top levels.
“All students who graduate from Panyapiwat Techno Business will have
full knowledge about retail practices from store management to sales and
marketing, merchandising, product display, inventory management and
promotion management,” Poontana said.
Poontana has significant experience in both marketing and human
resource development, as he worked for Siam Cement Group in both areas for
almost 20 years. He retired from Siam Cement and worked for the past three
years as director of Thai Rubber Latex Corp’s management development
office. Poontana is also the assistant vice president for business process
improvement at CP Seven Eleven’s headquarters on Silom Road.
“We will teach our students real retail knowledge and make them into
retail entrepreneurs. Graduates can either work at our CP Seven Eleven or
other retail operators, or set up their own small retail business,” he
said.
CP Seven Eleven and 13 affiliated companies had a lot of demand for new
recruits every year to fill their business expansion.
“CP Seven Eleven and its 13 affiliates, including Counter Services,
recruited a total of 5,000 new employees every year. About 2,000 of them
are needed each year to fulfil the expansion of 7-Eleven stores only,”
Poontana said.
He said the group planned to increase the number of 7-Eleven stores
from 3,000 currently to 5,000 in the next two years.
CP Seven Eleven and its 13 affiliated firms currently employ more than
30,000 people within its retail organisations.
Piyaporn Chalapinyo, deputy academy director at Panyapiwat, said
students would spend three years at the college for the primary vocational
level and another two years for the higher vocational level.
Graduates would become store personnel at 7-Eleven outlets, and could
become store managers within about a year, she said.
Kwanchai Rungfapaisarn
The Nation
Federal grant helps rural Alaska gain Internet access
KODIAK (AP) -- Easy access to the Internet is taken for granted in most
American cities but considered a pipe dream in many Alaska communities
such as Akhiok. A federal grant could change that.
The remote fishing village of 51 people on the south end of Kodiak
Island could be wired - or wireless - by next summer.
A grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture Rural Development is
giving money to small Alaska communities without access to Internet
funding for broadband Internet, connecting even rural villages to the
World Wide Web.
Ouzinkie and Old Harbor on Kodiak also were targeted as potential sites
for funding.
The Alaska Regulatory Commission has wired about 20 rural communities
in Alaska and is looking to connect about 20 more, said Rich Gazaway, who
administers the grant program for the commission.
"We're trying to give access to communities that normally wouldn't be
able to get the Internet," Gazaway said.
All three villages have phone lines but the high cost of dial-up access
limits use.
Debbie Garner of Ouzinkie said she used to connect to the Internet
through her phone line with a toll charge.
"Here it's mostly at businesses. Most residents don't have the
Internet," Garner said. "Like I said, you couldn't afford it because there
is no local provider."
Garner said broadband Internet in Ouzinkie would be wildly popular.
"I think everybody would go out and buy a computer," Garner said.
Linda Amodo, an Alaska Native and secretary for the Akhiok Tribal
Council, said Internet just isn't feasible to most of her village.
"I want to get the Internet and I've been trying to weigh the pros and
cons, but it's just too expensive," Amodo said.
She said much of Akhiok is unemployed and relies on Native lifestyles
to survive.
"It's a lot of money and unless you have a steady job - and not
everybody has the opportunity here - you can't afford it."
Under the grant program, the USDA is willing to pay for about 75
percent of the costs to the village, with the village covering the rest.
Typically a satellite would be installed in the village and that would
connect wirelessly to households.
"Residents would still have to pay installation charges for their
homes, but it would be significantly less expensive than normal," Gazaway
said.
Amodo, said the only place in the village where Internet is available
is at the school.
"The kids just love it," she said.
Funding for the grant just opened up recently and the Regulatory
Commission is taking feedback from communities. Government employees at
the three villages in the Kodiak Island Borough said they had not received
word on the grant.
Amodo said she remains cautious about wiring the village. Television
and the Internet can be a distraction to villagers who rely on subsistence
living, she said.
"Unfortunately, most of us have satellite TV," Amodo said. "You just
have to keep a balance and continue the Native way of life."
---
Information from: Kodiak Daily Mirror,
http://www.kodiakdailymirror.com
Brainstorming English
Published on Aug 17 , 2005
The Education Ministry will invite 100 experts to a brainstorming
session on August 27-28, with the aim of finding strategies to improve the
standard of English education in schools across the country.
Khunying Kasama Varawarn na Ayutthaya, permanent secretary at the
ministry, said the sessions would focus on reaching a mutual understanding
of what quality English-teaching methods consist of, what results should
be deemed to be satisfactory, and how to develop teachers' abilities.
"We have discovered that schools still have different views about what
quality English classes actually consist of," she said.
She added that the sessions were in response to Education Minister
Chaturon Chaisang's announcement of a policy to improve English education.
Kasama was speaking after she met with a working panel Chaturon
appointed to improve the quality of English education.
"Basically, we plan to shift the focus from English grammar to
communication skills and we need to develop teachers' abilities
continuously. Just using native speakers would not be the right solution,"
she said.
Six years on and no results in education reform
Published on August 17, 2005
Recent official evaluations have concluded that after six years,
education reform in the Kingdom remains far from achieving its goals.
Those goals include encouraging self-motivation, boosting analytical
abilities, enhancing academic knowledge, promoting vocational education
and developing teachers’ skills.
“This reflects a need for improvement in different areas. Our primary
concern should be developing children’s analytical abilities and
encouraging them to embrace life-long learning. We also need to focus on
improving teachers’ abilities,” Education Minister Chaturon Chaisang told
a seminar this week.
He said his ministry would set up a working panel to take charge of
learning reform and developing teachers’ abilities.
Chaturon said that since the National Education Act of 1999 took effect
six years ago, the country has focused mainly on restructuring government
agencies and passing relevant laws.
A representative from the ministry’s Education Council told the seminar
the government wants a fifty-fifty ratio of general to vocational
education by 2008, but statistics from last year show a ratio of 63-to-37.
He said the average for national test scores in Prathom 6 and Mathayom
9 and 12, as well as Toefl results, also point to low levels of academic
achievement for students, who especially need improvement in maths and
analytical ability.
Furthermore, the council pointed out that most schools still cram too
much material into classes, reducing chances of children developing
analytical abilities. There are also not enough classes for pupils with
special needs.
He said the had also concluded that teachers’ skill development has not
progressed satisfactorily during the past six years.
“Delegation of education-related tasks among the relevant agencies is
still inefficient, and educational services are concentrated mostly in
urban areas,” he said. Private operators and local administrative bodies
still play a very limited role in educational services.
In addition, the council said a failure to inform the public about new
educational options has provided opportunities for unethical operators to
trick students into paying for uncertified home-school courses.
The ministry’s Office of National Education Standards and Quality
Assessment reported it had conducted quality checks at 17,562 schools
across the country, or 49 per cent of all educational institutes.
Of the schools assessed, 39.2 per cent provided satisfactory
instruction with a student-centred approach, and only 13.5 per cent
impressively arranged activities to promote creativity and analytical and
problem-solving skills.
The office said students at 47.6 per cent of the schools had very low
levels of foreign-language ability.
The Education Ministry concluded that most teachers clung to old and
outdated teaching methods and lacked efficient techniques. The problem
exists mostly in small schools, where heavy workloads prevent teachers
from improving themselves.
Kids: Teachers don't get it
`Misunderstand' new ministry curriculum
SIRIKUL BUNNAG
Students and parents have urged the
Education Ministry to rectify teachers' misunderstandings of child-centred
teaching saying it led to too much work and stress for students instead of
analytical thinking, creativity and academic achievement.
Their move follows the ministry's assessment, to mark the 6th anniversary
of education reform, that 90% of the 17,562 schools included in its survey
had not succeeded in developing students' analytical and critical
abilities.
About 60% of the surveyed schools had failed to adopt the child-centred
learning curriculum which answered to the educational needs of children in
different localities, and most were clueless about formulating an
effective curriculum.
Wilaiwan Laichanthik, a student of Huay Thalaeng Pitthayakom School in
Nakhon Ratchasima, said the ministry should find ways to urgently end
confusion among teachers nationwide about child-centred education as the
evaluation results found most schools still failed to teach students to be
analytical and creative and that the method also caused them to perform
worse in major subjects.
She said teaching reform over the past six years had failed because all
teachers had been forced to change their teaching methods to child-centred
teaching without guidelines or plans for them to adjust to the changes
systematically.
Natsuda Chuchart, a Mathayom 4 student of Triam Udom Suksa Pak Tai School
in Nakhon Si Thammarat, said students were now in trouble because teachers
had no idea about proper child-centred teaching techniques and thought
their only duty was to assign students to do research themselves on the
internet and in libraries and to check and grade reports submitted to
them.
``Now, teachers of most subjects assign students to do research and learn
by themselves many times a week. Each week, I'm assigned to write reports
for at least four subjects. We study harder and become more stressed than
under the old curriculum which focused on rote learning.
``We study very hard, but feel as if we've not got as much knowledge as is
expected. In class, there is no process leading to analytical thinking and
teachers do nothing to help and fail to explain to ensure basic
understanding before assigning research.
``Now, it's like students have to depend on themselves and teachers have a
smaller teaching role. This does not seem to be right,'' she said.
Danaisak Nuphuak, a student of Thart Phanom School in Nakhon Phanom, said
teachers were doing poorly in their jobs to their lack of understanding
about child-centred learning, and were also busy with other tasks such as
preparation for academic accreditations and school evaluations, skipping
classes for training outside the schools several times a week.
Namfon Rangket, a student of Doi Saket Witthayakom School in Chiang Mai,
called for urgent action to ensure teachers' understanding of the child-centred
learning curriculum and to bring teaching methods in line, saying students
were now really confused since teachers adjusted their own teaching
methods, designed what they would teach themselves and chose textbooks in
their own particular ways.
Somsri Sunanthawiwan, a parent, said the permission for schools to design
curricula themselves without limits caused many schools to sink below
standard, caused students to become more stressed than when they learned
by rote, and increased the burden of parents since their children could
not use the same textbooks anymore.
Another parent, Chingchai Charupanichkul said teaching under the new
curriculum was badly organised with teachers of different subjects
assigning too much homework, which was sometimes similar, to students and
schools not allowing parents to take part in drafting the curriculum and
formulating policies.
Softer Cell
In Mobile Phones,
Older Users Say,
More Is Less
All the Features Just Confuse,
They Tell Vodafone, So It
Tries Making a Simple One
Pushback From Young Staffers
By DAVID PRINGLE
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
August 15, 2005; Page A1
At a time when cellphones are letting users do more
tricks, from video calling to downloading digital music, one of the latest
models from Vodafone Group PLC has no camera, no browser and hardly
any icons. Instead of being sleeker and cooler than ever, the phone is
large and ordinary-looking.
What it is, though, is easy to use, and if Vodafone is
right, the market will love it. That's because of who its market is:
people getting up in years.
If the battery on the Vodafone Simply, as it's called,
gets low, the phone doesn't signal this with a tiny icon somewhere.
Instead, on its screen, the words "please charge" appear. If a message is
waiting, a light flashes, like in old-fashioned answering machines. To
help people who tend to lose their phones around the house and let the
battery run down, this one comes with a stand that serves as a place to
stow the thing, and charges it while it's there.
Ann Ridley is the kind of customer Vodafone has in mind.
A 65-year-old ballet teacher in Claygate, near London, Ms. Ridley rarely
gives out her mobile-phone number, never uses text messaging and doesn't
store her friends' numbers on the phone. "I can't see the numbers, and
it's too complicated," she says. The result is that she uses the cellphone
for fewer than a dozen calls a year, spending less than $18 annually.
The Vodafone Simply handset.
|
|
The hope at Vodafone is that when people like Ms. Ridley,
who said she wasn't familiar with the Vodafone Simply, hear about it,
they'll find its ease of use so comforting they'll start to use their cell
service more. If so, Vodafone, which collects a fee for each cellphone
call, can expect more revenue.
Vodafone isn't the only company -- nor cellphones the
only industry -- trying to shape some products for older consumers or to
simplify them. At Ford Motor Co., designers who test-drive
prototypes sometimes wear a "third-age" suit that gives them a sense of an
older person's experience by means of stiff fabric at the elbows and knees
and thick padding at the waist. Ford has made many modifications to cars
as a result, from wider doors to more-comfortable seats, says one of its
technical specialists, Jeffrey Pike.
Philips Electronics NV, whose many products range
from beard trimmers to X-ray systems, has a "Simplicity Advisory Board" of
outside experts, and next month will bring out the first products of a
companywide simplicity drive. Consumers are saying, "Many products
complicate my life instead of making it easier," says the head of
Philips's global marketing management, Enderson Guimaraes.
The Vodafone Simply isn't an attempt to match certain
ultra-simple phones sold to the elderly for emergency use, such as one
from a France Télécom SA unit that has no keyboard but just three big
color-coded buttons linked to preprogrammed numbers such as that of a
doctor. Instead, Vodafone is trying to appeal to a large market of
middle-aged and older people with a handset they won't find intimidating.
The company's European target market is everyone who's 40 years of age or
over and isn't issued a cellphone by an employer.
That's a sign of how young the usual market for
cellphones is -- and what a change this move is for an industry that keeps
adding features to get customers to upgrade. Vodafone's plan reflects the
need for new sources of growth. Cellular markets in much of Western Europe
and Japan are becoming saturated, so that the middle-aged and older are
among the few places to look for new growth.
Vodafone is offering the Simply in nine countries so far,
not including the U.S., a market in which it participates through a 45%
stake in Verizon Wireless. The U.S. cellphone market still is growing
briskly, although its growth, too, is expected to slow before long. The
countries where Vodafone Simply is available are the U.K., Germany,
Austria, Switzerland, Sweden, Spain, Portugal, Greece and New Zealand.
Other European cellular operators have ideas similar to
Vodafone's for more effectively tapping into the older market, says Kai
Oistamo, a senior vice president at Nokia Corp. The Finnish manufacturer
of handsets is in discussions with some other service providers now, he
says.
Vodafone's initiative began two years ago, after the
company surveyed 5,000 Europeans about what they wanted from a cellphone.
What it heard from consumers aged 35 to 55 shocked executives of the
Newbury, England, company. Many in that age range didn't know their
cellphone numbers or how to use basic functions.
One-third, for example, said they didn't know how to tell
when they had received a text message. Some thought the envelope icon that
signals a message meant their phone bill had arrived.
One woman in Italy told Vodafone she didn't know how to
reply to a text message, so she would send back handwritten notes through
her son, on his bicycle.
Many 35- to 55-year-olds also didn't like going into
Vodafone retail stores because the young staff -- average age 24 -- talked
in acronyms they couldn't understand. These consumers said they weren't
interested in the cameras, Internet browsers and many of the other
features that are becoming standard on the latest cellphones. "Our biggest
customer segment turned round and said: 'You haven't been listening to
us,' " says Guy Laurence, the company's consumer-marketing director. "It
was an industry for kids."
As the Vodafone Simply project took shape, company
executives debated how much emphasis it should get. The company's chief
executive, Arun Sarin, a silver-haired 50-year-old who once headed a
Silicon Valley start-up, was convinced the appetite for a simpler handset
was substantial. "It's not tiny. It's a chunk," he said at a recent news
conference.
At an industry gathering in early 2004, Mr. Laurence
invited manufacturers to build a basic handset that could make voice calls
and handle text messages and do little else. "They looked at me like I was
from Mars," he recalls. "They said: 'It's not needed.'"
Eventually, Vodafone found a supplier in Sagem SA, a
Paris-based electronics maker. Vodafone also engaged IDEO, a London design
agency that had worked on the Palm V personal organizer, widely acclaimed
for ease of use.
During development, young Vodafone product managers kept
trying to add features, like software for sending picture messages. Mr.
Laurence said no. He showed them an old TV comedy sketch about an elderly
person being humiliated by a hi-fi salesman who delighted in the
customer's technical ignorance.
Vodafone ran the ideas of product managers past groups of
over-40 consumers. One finding was that the consumers tended not to enter
many names into their cellphone contacts books because they thought they
might lose the handset and have to do it all over again on a replacement.
This wasn't good news for Vodafone, which finds that the more names in a
phone's contacts book, the more the phone gets used.
To allay people's concerns about the hassle of
re-entering numbers in a replacement phone, Vodafone made it easier to
copy the contacts book onto a personal computer for storage. The handset
automatically transfers contacts to a PC when connected to it, something
that with most handsets can't be done unless owners first install special
PC software. It is then straightforward to transfer the numbers from the
PC back to a replacement cellphone.
Based on what older customers told it, Vodafone also
installed dedicated buttons for volume control and for locking the keypad,
to prevent accidental redialing of the last number called. It added a
'tips' function to give users guidance if they got stuck in any of the
menus. The handset is bigger than most and has a spacious keypad.
Gary Sheehan, a 38-year-old director of a London
information-technology company, likes that keypad, along with the phone's
simple menus and large screen. He replaced his Sony Ericsson camera phone
with a Vodafone Simply in July. "It was all singing, all dancing," he says
of his old phone. "But if I wanted to change the ringer volume, I couldn't
find it."
On his new one, "I can see what I am typing without
squinting," he says.
The downside is that his colleagues at the IT firm,
mostly in their 20s, frequently mock his choice of handset. He says his
wife, using British slang for "idiot," calls it the "Vodafone Wally
phone." But he doesn't care: "I just wanted a phone that phoned," he says.
The simple handset remains a work in progress. In the 2½
months since Vodafone launched it in mid-May, the company has decided it
needed to make about 60 tweaks to the software.
The company's Mr. Laurence was wary of permitting
advertising agencies, typically staffed by young people, to create a
commercial for the phone, fearing it would be too flashy or complicated.
The company first commissioned a print ad to run in a European edition of
Good Housekeeping magazine -- not a usual venue for cellphone advertising.
Its print ads, which also ran in Golf Monthly, picture the handset and
describe what each button does.
One of them, highlighting the volume-control button,
says: "No mucking about in menus to find the right setting. So no excuses
for letting your Vodafone Simply phone ring in the middle of your cousin's
wedding."
Mr. Laurence ran the ad by product managers working on
fancy multimedia handsets for young people. "The more they hated it, the
more we knew we were on the right track," he says. Vodafone eventually ran
television commercials for the phone in four of its markets.
It won't say how many of the phones it has sold, but Mr.
Laurence says the company expects to at least recoup its investment
through added revenue. The average age of the phone's users is 45.
Many young staffers in Vodafone's retail stores don't
seem to grasp the concept, because they keep pushing older customers to
buy phones with fancy features, Mr. Laurence says. So the company has
taken to lending their parents a Vodafone Simply. "If their parents say
'this is the best thing since sliced bread,'" Mr. Laurence says, "they are
going to learn to sell it properly."
Schools fail ministry's evaluation
Most can't train young minds to be analytical
SIRIKUL BUNNAG
More than half of the country's schools from
kindergarten to high-school levels fail to train students to be
analytical, and students are doing more poorly in major subjects than four
years ago, the Education Ministry's assessment reveals.
The ministry's academic accreditation and educational evaluation office
said
A survey of 17,562 schools, including private ones, found 90% of them did
not succeed in developing students' analytical and critical abilities,
according to the ministry's academic accreditation and educational
evaluation office. There are some 30,000 kindergarten, primary and high
schools nationwide.
About 40% of the surveyed schools had adopted the child-centred learning
curriculum and did fairly well at it. The rest failed to come up with a
curriculum that answered to educational needs of children in different
localities, said the office's director Somwang Pitthayanuwat.
Most of the schools were clueless about devising an effective curriculum
and resorted to copying the models used by other schools, he said.
Mr Somwang said the survey also exposed a wide gap between state-run and
private schools in terms of education quality. State-run schools were
largely outperformed by in all areas, except relations with local
communities.
The government should learn from private schools and allow them access to
national education management, he said.
The survey also showed the quality of education varied depending on sizes
and locations.Students of large city schools tended to perform better
academically than their peers in small rural schools which were in
desperate need of resources.
Mr Somwang said at least some 10,000 of the surveyed schools appeared
oblivious to their own problems. They did not bother to make evaluation
reports, and it was unrealistic to expect them to shape up.
The office was also alarmed by the finding that a large number of teachers
employed by 60% of the surveyed schools were below standard.
The two billion baht spent by the state to train teachers was obviously
not a fruitful investment, he said.
Rungruang Sukapirom, adviser to the Education Council, said a comparison
with the 2001 figures confirmed Prathom 6 (Grade 6) students now performed
a lot more poorly in mathematics, sciences, English and Thai languages.
Also, the opportunity for children to have formal schooling was only
slightly better despite the size of the budget allocated to implement the
government's 12-year free education policy.
It was found the number of youngsters who completed 12 years of education
had remained capped at 84% since 2002.
The adviser said schoolchildren were forced to study too much while
subject contents were often repetitive. Teachers rushed to cover the
subjects they were assigned to teach and so had no time to encourage and
help students develop thinking and analytical abilities.
EDITORIAL
Internet gets a place in space
The successful launch of the world's
biggest commercial satellite was watched nervously by many, and has put a
feather in Thailand's cap. Thaicom 4, also known as iPSTAR, is not just
the heaviest private satellite ever launched, but is also one of the most
technologically advanced. The ``iP'' of the name refers to the ``internet
Protocol'', which is the manner in which information is exchanged on the
computer network of networks.
Most internet data travels along wires of various types. The new satellite
opens a huge new pipe in the sky, along which information can flow and be
processed in 22 countries across Asia.
iPSTAR is basically a high-speed internet service provider high above
Earth, in a geostationary orbit, meaning it turns with the planet and
remains directly above one point. Since the satellite was conceived five
years ago, Shin Corp has won both praise and some scepticism _ applause
for its forward-looking plans, doubts over whether they are, to coin a
phrase, pie in the sky. The theory of a huge internet provider, unfettered
by wires, is unassailable. It remains to be seen whether it will work
economically, and whether enough companies and outlying individuals can
make it profitable.
Previous Shin Corp satellites, which are handled by the firm's Shin
Satellite subsidiary, have focused on known and predictable commercial
enterprises. In particular, Thaicom 1, 2 and 3 have carried television and
other broadcasts. The growth and needs of broadcasters is uncontroversial,
and the satellites have made money from carrying programmes of stations
and networks.
Thaicom 4 delves into riskier territory. Indeed, as the satellite was
built and readied for launch, contracts were negotiated, agreed, discarded
and launched, often in ways unforeseen. Indian companies bid against each
other for satellite time; a major Australian company backed out at the
last minute. Burma, as many know, has signed on as a major customer. But
80% of the bandwidth is still available.
The new satellite is a commercial venture by the public company Shin
Corporation, which is responsible to its shareholders. But Shin Corp is
also a Thai corporate citizen, with the duties that go along with that
status. In fact, Shin Corp is one of Thailand's most closely watched
firms. Its name is derived directly from the family of Prime Minister
Thaksin Shinawatra who founded the firm, and whose wife and children are
major stockholders and voices in the company's operations today.
Not a few political opponents have speculated about this arrangement; Shin
Corp is suing one such commentator in a high-profile case in the Criminal
Court.
Allegations aside, Shin Corp is one of Thailand's biggest and most
successful firms, and thus has obligations to its country. Of course,
prospering, paying its taxes and providing employment for many thousands
of Thai workers is important.
But, as Thailand's biggest, most prosperous technology company, Shin Corp
could consider other steps. Most Thais, for example, still live outside
areas where affordable high-speed internet connections are available.
iPSTAR has the bandwidth and the national coverage to allow an internet
connection in every outlying village.
This is not to suggest that Shin Satellite is the only Thai company with
obligations to its citizens. CAT Telecom and the TOT Corporation have both
been freed recently from the restrictions of being state monopolies. They
have been remarkably unimaginative in meeting the demands of the public
for reliable computing service at realistic prices.
Instead, they have spent inordinate time trying to hold on to unearned and
unmerited pieces of companies like Shin Corp. Telecom firms are still
required to charge huge amounts from consumers to give to TOT and CAT
Telecom in return for so-called concessions.
CAT maintains a monopoly on internet services with a choke-hold on land
and submarine links to the country. iPSTAR effectively ends that monopoly
_ but only if the owners of the satellite share the wealth of the internet
channels from space.
Big companies can afford big payments to Shin Satellite for the use of
enormous amounts of internet bandwidth needed to share and process
commercial information. Shin could consider setting aside links for
consumers who have little or no avenue to other internet access.
CROSSING THE DIGITAL DIVIDE: Sipa hopes for equal access for all children
nationwide
Published on August 15, 2005
In the near future, children in the remote areas of Thailand will be
bridging the digital divide with the chance of equal access to information
in digital form.
The E-Book/E-Learning Sharing Project, initiated by the Software
Industry Promotion Agency (Sipa), aims to enable children throughout the
country to have the same chance as children in the cities to access
knowledge through the Internet.
Manoo Ordeedolchest, president of Sipa, said the project’s concept is
to build infrastructure to allow children to easily learn. This includes
work to encourage teachers to develop electronic books and also to assist
schools to integrate and share their electronic-book resources, allowing
children access across servers as well as client devices such as laptops,
PCs, personal digital assistants and mobile phones.
Content developed by teachers will be stored in schools’ distributed
servers across the nation. The distributed servers will probably be
linked, similar to peer-to-peer networks.
Once children access the network from anywhere in the country by
signing on with their unique user name and password, the software
management system will automatically know who they are and then the system
will offer information appropriate to them, instead of them wasting time
looking for the information they want from everything available over the
network.
“To manage the delivery of a particular child’s requirements, the
server hub is essential to manage traffic through the networks, similar to
Web services’ UDDI,” Manoo said.
Sipa’s role includes software management for server hubs, training
teachers to develop digital content with animation, multimedia and
graphics, and providing platform tools for teachers.
“Sipa will also invite publishers to convert their books into
electronic platforms for children at lower prices. With this model,
children in remote areas of the country will have a better chance to
access knowledge,” Manoo said.
This project is scheduled to start next year. Sipa has proposed Bt10
million as an initial budget for this project.
It is expected the server hub will be established at Sipa.
Meanwhile, to access the network, children must have appropriate client
devices. For proof of concept, Sipa has worked with a local company, Basic
Concept Development Technology, to develop an engine for client devices
across platforms including Windows, Windows CE, J2ME, Symbian, and Linux.
Clients will be enabled to receive any format such as text-based,
animation, graphics, and PowerPoint.
“A local company has already converted 1,700 pages of ‘Sam Kok’ into a
one-megabyte electronic version, compressed from 3 MB, and installed in a
pocket PC,” Manoo said.
Client devices do not need to be pocket PCs. They can also be thin
clients.
This initial project is part of the government’s decision to consider
the adoption of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab’s One
Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project after Nicholas Negroponte, chairman and
co-founder, approached Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra earlier this
month. OLPC was announced in January by Negroponte at the World Economic
Forum in Switzerland.
OLPC is the MIT Media Lab’s new research initiative to develop a US$100
(Bt4,100) laptop to revolutionise the education of the world’s children,
to be used for work and play, drawing, writing and mathematics. The
proposed $100 machine will be a Linux-based, full-colour, full-screen
laptop that will use innovative power such as wind-up generators, and will
be able to do almost everything except store huge amounts of data. These
rugged laptops will be WiFi- and cell phone-enabled, and have USB ports
galore. Its current specifications are 500MHz, 1GB, and 1 megapixel.
The idea is to distribute the machines through the ministries of
education of countries willing to adopt a policy of “one laptop per
child”. Initial discussions have been held with China and Brazil.
Under the plan, the government will order around 600,00 of the $100
laptops per year to distribute to children in remote areas to access the
world of knowledge.
The government’s adoption of OLPC, together with Sipa’s
“E-Book/E-Learning Sharing Project”, is expected to help bridge the
digital divide as well as to encourage children to carry their own library
around with them.
Asina Pornwasin
The Nation
asina@nationgroup.com
I use EverNote to gather
information for my Sabbatical, it is great and free. The problem is that
it is a computer file and I can not share it unless I put the information
into a web page or create a blog entry. EverNote is especially good at
gathering information from web sites that require subscriptions, two
examples being the Wall Street Journal and the Bangkok Post.
Highly recommended.
EverNote Organizes Your Endless Stuff Onto an Endless Tape
August 11, 2005; Page B1
Computer users are drowning in information. Between Web
sites and email, and the pictures and documents you download from them, a
flood of material pours into our personal computers each day. Organizing
it all is a major challenge.
Many people make do with the crude tools the PC provides.
They stuff all those documents and messages into folders in the computer's
file system or inside their email programs -- until they get lazy. They
overload the bookmark features of their Web browsers and cram saved Web
pages into their imperfect folder system.
Others just give up and save everything in the Windows
"My Documents" folder, where finding the data later can be a scavenger
hunt.
Macintosh users with the new Tiger operating system have
a leg up in solving the mess. The system's Spotlight feature finds almost
any document or email in seconds, and you can create "Smart folders" that
automatically accumulate files based on search criteria you specify.
Similar capabilities are promised for the next version of Windows, called
Vista, in the fall of 2006.
There is another way to tackle the information overload.
For years, some folks have turned to an obscure type of software called
information organizers. These are programs designed to collect and
organize your notes, as well as snippets of information copied from
elsewhere. Users of these are addicted to them.
Among these products are Info Select for Windows, $250
from Micro Logic; and StickyBrain for the Mac, $40 from Chronos. Microsoft
entered the field a couple of years ago with a Windows organizer called
OneNote, which is $50 after rebate.
A new contender has now entered this field, and it boasts
an unusual design. It's called EverNote, and is for Windows computers
only. EverNote is being offered as a free download from its maker,
EverNote Corp., at
www.evernote.com. A paid version, the $35 EverNote Plus, adds
handwriting and shape recognition for people who use tablet computers.
I have been testing EverNote and it works well. It is
fast and logical and a good way to round up random thoughts and resources.
Like many other information organizers, EverNote is
designed as a bottomless storage locker for your notes and clippings. So,
it dispenses with the regular Windows system of creating a new file each
time you want to do something and then saving it. Instead, EverNote lets
you quickly create notes in one central place and saves the material
automatically.
It doesn't use the interface of a word processor or a
virtual notebook. EverNote appears on the screen as an endless tape, with
notes falling one after the other down the length of the tape. Unlike tape
in the real world, this virtual tape isn't narrow. It can be whatever
width you like, up to the full width of your screen. But it is long.
You see only a portion of the tape at any one time -- the
portion containing the note you are creating or reading.
EverNote allows you to create notes in several ways. You
can just type them in; a new, empty note frame is always ready at the
bottom of the tape. Or, you can select and drag text or graphics into an
empty note from a document, email or Web page. Or, you can use the
standard Windows copy-and-paste system to get content from elsewhere.
Finally, you can install a special EverNote icon into your Web browser
that will automatically create a note from selected text on a Web page, or
even the whole Web page.
In most cases, when you create notes from copied content,
EverNote adds a reference line to the note saying where it came from. If
you double-click on this reference line while holding down the Control
key, EverNote will send you back to the source: a Web page, a document or
an email on your computer.
You can assign one or more category labels to each note.
Some are automatically assigned based on the form of the note, such as
"Web clips" or "Word clips." Others can be created and assigned by the
user, such as "Clips about David Ortiz."
There are three main ways to navigate the virtual tape
and to find notes quickly. On the right side of the tape, EverNote
presents a "Time Band," a single-column calendar with dates and hours, so
you can get a note whose creation date you recall by clicking on that
date.
On the left is a list of the categories. When you click
on a category, the tape shows only the notes that fit that category.
Finally, there is a search system that rapidly locates any word or phrase
you type and highlights it in yellow in every note in which it appears.
EverNote has too may other features to list here. It
saves a history of each version of notes you revise. It has templates for
common kinds of notes, like shopping lists and phone messages. It
automatically backs up, and can restore, your notes. The company also is
working on such things as a version for cellphones and a way to
synchronize with multiple devices.
So, if you are lost in a sea of files and data, give
EverNote a try. It may be just what you need.
Write to Walter S. Mossberg at
mossberg@wsj.com
Please note: these
laptops are not in production. They are not—and will not—be available for
purchase by individuals.
PRESS INQUIRIES:
Alexandra Kahn
Media Lab Press Liaison
617.253.0365
email via our contact us
page
OTHER INQUIRIES:
Nia Lewis
niav@media.mit.edu
The MIT Media Lab has launched a new
research initiative to develop a $100 laptop—a technology that could
revolutionize how we educate the world's children. One Laptop Per Child (OLPC)
was announced by Nicholas Negroponte, Lab chairman and co-founder, at the
World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland in January 2005.
Here Negroponte answers questions on the initiative.
What is the $100 Laptop, really?
The proposed $100 machine will be a Linux-based, full-color, full-screen
laptop that will use innovative power (including wind-up) and will be able
to do most everything except store huge amounts of data. These rugged
laptops will be WiFi- and cell phone-enabled, and have USB ports galore.
Its current specifications are: 500MHz, 1GB, 1 Megapixel.
Why not a desktop?
Desktops are cheaper, but mobility is important, especially with regard to
taking the computer home at night. Recent work with schools in Maine has
shown the huge value of using a laptop across all of one's studies, as
well as for play. Bringing the laptop home engages the family. In one
Cambodian village where we have been working, there is no electricity,
thus the laptop is, among other things, the brightest light source in the
home.
How is it possible to get the cost so low?
- First, by dramatically lowering the cost of the display. The
first-generation machine may use a novel, dual-mode LCD display commonly
found in inexpensive DVD players, but that can also be used in black and
white, in bright sunlight, and at four times the normal resolution—all
at a cost of below $30.
- Second, we will get the fat out of the systems. Today's laptops have
become obese. Two-thirds of their software is used to manage the other
third, which mostly does the same functions nine different ways.
- Third, we will market the laptops in very large numbers (millions),
directly to ministries of education, which can distribute them like
textbooks.
Why is it important for each child to have a computer? What's wrong
with community-access centers?
One does not think of community pencils—kids have their own. They are
tools to think with, sufficiently inexpensive to be used for work and
play, drawing, writing, and mathematics. A computer can be the same, but
far more powerful. Furthermore, there are many reasons it is important for
a child to "own" something—like a football, doll, or book—not the least of
which being that these belongings will be well-maintained through love and
care.
What about connectivity? Aren't telecommunications services expensive
in the developing world?
When these machines pop out of the box, they will make a mesh network of
their own, peer-to-peer. This is something initially developed at MIT and
the Media Lab. We are also exploring ways to connect them to the backbone
of the Internet at very low cost.
What can a $1000 laptop do that the $100 version can't?
Not much. The plan is for the $100 Laptop to do almost everything. What it
will not do is store a massive amount of data.
How will these be marketed?
The idea is to distribute the machines through those ministries of
education willing to adopt a policy of "one laptop per child." Initial
discussions have been held with China and Brazil. In addition, smaller
countries will be selected for beta testing. Initial orders will be
limited to a minimum of one million units (with appropriate financing).
When do you anticipate these laptops reaching the market? What do you
see as the biggest hurdles?
Our preliminary schedule is to have units ready for shipment by the end of
2006 or early 2007.
The biggest hurdle will be manufacturing 100 million of anything. This is
not just a supply-chain problem, but also a design problem. The scale is
daunting, but I find myself amazed at what some companies are proposing to
us. It feels as though at least half the problems are being solved by mere
resolve.
How will this initiative be structured?
The three principals at MIT are faculty members at the Media Lab:
Nicholas
Negroponte (a founder of the Lab),
Joe Jacobson
(serial entrepreneur, co-founder and director of
E Ink), and
Seymour Papert (one of the world's leading theorists on child
learning).
Additional researchers include:
Mike Bove, Mary
Lou Jepsen, Alan Kay,
Tod Machover,
Mitchel Resnick,
and Ted Selker.
Organizationally, MIT will work with a small number of companies of
complementary skills to develop a fully working and manufactured laptop
(50,000 to 100,000 units) in fewer than 12 months, with an eye on building
about 100 million to 200 million units by the following year. Five initial
companies who have committed to this project are AMD, Brightstar, Google,
News Corp, and Red Hat. MIT will also work with the not-for-profit company
One Laptop Per Child (OLPC), as well as with the 2B1 Foundation.
August 2, 2005
Govt to spend over B3bn on pupil's PCs
500,000 laptops to be given away in scheme
PREEYANAT PHANAYANGGOOR
The government plans to allocate a budget
of around 3.2-3.5 billion baht for the first 500,000 personal computers to
be given free of charge to schoolchildren, said the new government
spokesman, Surapong Suebwonglee.
Mr Surapong said laptop computers, developed by the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology at a cost of less than US$100 (4,183 baht), would
be distributed to try to change the way primary and secondary students
learn.
He said Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra had ordered the Education and
the Information and Communication Technology ministries to come up with
the details and speed up e-textbook software development to complement the
One Laptop Per Child scheme.
Mr Thaksin told a seminar for 101 administrators of Thai Rath Wittaya
Schools on Tuesday that specialists from the US had said they could
produce a personal computer costing $100.
According to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab, the
full-colour, full-screen laptops will be Linux-based and able to use
alternative power (including wind-up).
The specifications include a 500MHz central processing unit, a 1GB hard
disk and a 1-megapixel display screen.
The computers will be WiFi- and cell-phone-enabled, with USB ports, but
will not be able to store huge amounts of data. The prototype is expected
to be available by year-end.
Thailand will join countries such as China and Brazil that earlier held
initial discussions with Media Lab.
The Ministry of Education will this year conduct a feasibility study on
the demand from Thai schoolchildren before beta-testing in selected
lower-secondary schools, said Education Minister Chaturon Chaisaeng.
Minister of Science and Technology Pravich Rattanapian said that the
National Electronics and Computer Technology Centre (Nectec) could provide
free Thai-language open-source applications to laptops in the scheme.
If implemented, the project will be Thailand's first large-scale effort to
provide free laptop computers to schoolchildren. The Thaksin government's
previous low-cost computer project sold desktop and laptop computers to
general users for less than Bt20,000.
Nicholas Negroponte, Chairman and co-founder of the MIT Media Lab
announced to the World Economic Forum the most recent plans of the lab: a
research initiative to develop a $100
laptop computer, with a 12” one megapixel screen, 1GB
hard drive, and 500Mhz processor. Other features include some sort of
innovative power (possibly wind-up), a plethora of USB ports, and a
ruggedized exterior to stand up to the elements in harsher climates. The
machines will be WiFi enabled, and have GSM
cell phone connectivity as well.
When answering questions about the lofty goals of the lab, Negroponte
explained that the
computers were like pencils; they are tools for the children to think
with. Studies have shown that there is a lot of value when
laptops are used across a variety of learning and entertainment.
Negroponte expects the pricing to reach the $100 level through the
large quantities of machines that would be ordered (marketing to groups
such as educational ministries), and by developing technologies that will
lower the cost of the display to less than $25. Currently, projection
technologies are the front runner, and it is expected that they can get
the cost to under $20. They are in early talks with China, whose 220
million students would be prime candidates for such a device, as well as a
large enough order to really drive prices down.
The machines will run on Linux, and aggressively cutting the amount of
redundant or unnecessary
software will help keep the system running smoothly in meager storage
space. But the real innovation comes from their connectivity. “When
these machines pop out of the box, they will make a mesh network of their
own, peer-to-peer. This is something initially developed at MIT and the
Media Lab,” Negroponte said. Most startling is the time frame for when
they plan to have these laptops ready: the end of next year, or possibly
the beginning of 2007.
If the MIT Media Lab can pull this off, it would surely be something
worth of a Nobel Prize. Education is the key to reducing crime, and
fostering world peace, and that’s not just some hippie prognostication.
They admit that manufacturing in the massive quantities that it seems such
a venture would require is a monumental undertaking, but that many partner
companies are solving problems through sheer force of will. This is a
bonding of corporate and public need (the project is only expected to cost
roughly $90 in parts, and factors in a $10 profit margin), and just goes
to show that the interests of the many do not always have to be at odds
with business.
THE PC OF THE FUTURE?
'If you are not already mobile-enabling your
business today, you're already behind'
Story by TONY WALTHAM
When a customer of Prudential Life
Assurance in Malaysia asks a sales agent what exactly his policy coverage
is, the answer comes quickly and authoritatively _ from the company's
database in Kuala Lumpur to the policyholder from the agent's smartphone.
In all, some 3,800 of Prudential's field agents are now equipped with Palm
Treo 650 or 600 smartphones in one of the region's biggest sales force
automation exercises _ one that Alex Tan, the project manager at
Prudential, said was also saving the company the equivalent of six million
baht a year in printing costs.
Using a combination of GPRS and SMS messaging and Palm smartphones,
members of Prudential Malaysia's mobile-enabled sales force are more
productive, making less than half the number of telephone enquiries they
used to make and earning more commission than before.
Mr Tan also says that the Palm Treos enhance Prudential sales agents'
image, in line with the company slogan "only the best carry the best."
He explained this the other day to delegates at a Palm Mobile Solutions
event in Singapore where he was one of several speakers demonstrating
business benefits derived from having a mobile-enabled workforce.
Today, most mobile applications are focussed around email and salesforce
automation, but as awareness grows of the productivity gains that can be
tapped, so companies are increasingly making smartphones available to
employees, turning these "data centric converged devices" into one of the
fastest-growing categories in computing today.
IDC figures project a 37 percent compound annual growth rate for
smartphones for the period beginning last year through to 2008, whereas,
by contrast, PDA sales are forecast to remain flat over this period.
"If you're not mobile-enabling your business today, you're already
behind," warns PalmSource's director for carrier services, Hugh Fletcher.
"It's now mainstream and the enterprise infrastructure was there," he
says, adding that market research showed that almost 50 percent of Fortune
500 companies were now planning mobile deployments.
"Once you have real-time access to mobile email, you will never go back,"
Fletcher said. Palm calls it "the initial killer application" for
smartphones.
Again, market research would appear to support this, and predictions are
that enterprise wireless email users will grow from 3 million in 2004 to 4
million this year, soaring to six million next year, 14 million in 2007
and 39 million in 2008.
The benefits of a connected mobile workforce can be wide-ranging. Tom
Garrison, general manager of Intel's APAC solutions group, said that Intel
had gained two hours a week from each employee by mobile-enabling 80
percent of its workforce with notebooks.
Palm, which has now reverted to its original name after flirting with the
moniker PalmOne following the acquisition of Handspring _ when it spun off
the software arm into a separate company called PalmSource _ speaks of the
concept of "found time."
Palm's Asia Pacific vice president Paul Blinkhorn said "the intersection
of time, opportunity and inspiration will drive competitive advantage. All
of us are looking for this in products or services."
Palm was looking at turning downtime into "found time," he said, giving
examples of how time is wasted waiting for a meeting to start, at lunch or
that which is spent standing in queues or waiting for a flight at
airports.
But using a Treo 650, an employee can use this time productively, possibly
to check email messages and tap out a response or to access a company web
site and keep abreast of assignments.
Blinkhorn observed that 10 minutes gained each day by a worker earning a
US$50,000 annual salary would save an employer $1,000 a year.
There are several choices of platform when it comes to mobile enablement:
Pocket PC, RIM's Blackberry, Palm and Symbian-based smartphones are some
of the major ones.
Palm executives cited market surveys that indicate that in the United
States the mobile operating system most sanctioned by IT departments is
the PalmOS, and PalmSource's Fletcher said that Palm's operating system
presented an opportunity for an organisation to exert its own choices.
The PalmOS also connected to key enterprise solutions and there was
middleware for many platforms and applications, with 34 percent of
developers for the Palm platform now working on enterprise applications,
he added.
Fletcher also said that IT departments needed to be proactive by providing
smartphones to the workforce, as opposed to allowing users to go out and
"mobile-enable themselves."
If they allowed that to happen, they would be responsible for all the
security problems that this might introduce, including responsibility for
confidential data should the CEO lose his phone.
Blinkhorn said that many organisations were now realising better
efficiencies or were gaining competitive advantage by deploying
smartphones.
Palm's customers in the region included Cisco, Starbucks, WalMart, Pfizer,
IBM and Jurong Shipyards, with Prudential Malaysia's sales force
automation being just one example of how the future of personal computing
is becoming mobile computing.
EDUCATION SHOW
Bangkok chosen as Worlddidac venue
SIRIKUL BUNNAG
Bangkok has been chosen as the venue for Worlddidac Asia
2005, the Asian region's showcase for educational innovation and
technology.
Chainarong Limkittisin, director of Reed Tradex Co's industrial business
division, the joint organiser, said the Oct 19-21 show is expected to
attract a large number of people from education circles worldwide.
A similar event was held in Bangkok in 1995.
Worlddidac and BESA, the educational media association of England,
considered Bangkok the most suitable venue for 2005 because
education-related businesses in Asia, especially in Thailand, had grown in
leaps and bounds, Mr Chainarong said.
Education media business operators in England were keen to take part.
The show will be a regional forum for executives and educators of all
levels from all over Asia to see educational innovations for curriculum
and educational institute management improvement.
Worlddidac Asia 2005 will be held at the Sirikit National Convention
Centre.
EDUCATION / QUALITY
UPGRADING
City schools to have face-lift; bilingual courses on
agenda
SUPOJ WANCHAROEN
City-run schools, normally considered
second-grade, are set to undergo a face-lift intended to put them on a par
with prestigious international schools.
In a pilot project, Bangkok Governor Apirak Kosayodhin plans to turn three
of 433 city-run schools into bilingual education institutes.
Wat Benchamabophit School and Wat Mahannop School have been selected to
provide English while Samphanthawong School will offer Chinese lessons.
The governor said Spanish is next on the BMA's bilingual programme list.
``This is to reduce the large gap in foreign language skills among
students at city-run schools,'' he said.
The city administration also plans to seek cooperation from Beijing in
introducing a scholarship scheme _ similar in kind to AFS scholarship _
for both students and teachers.
Besides bilingual programmes, the city administration also plans to
develop information technology and instal more computer units at 433
schools under its jurisdiction and hook them up to high-speed internet
access.
``Our schools are usually viewed as prachabal [rural] schools to which
well-to-do families won't send their kids,'' Mr Apirak said.
The agency is working with universities, international organisations and
the private sector in developing basic education curriculum and training
programmes, he said.
The governor will hold a meeting with school executives via broadband
internet on May 17, the day the new academic year begins.
BMA schools can accommodate 83,000 students at all levels.
Mr Apirak said the city administration will this year continue to
distribute free items _ uniforms, textbooks, stationery, lunch and milk _
to all students.
Sipa to launch free software programs
Ready for public to download in July
AMPA SANTIMATANEEDOL
The Software Industry Promotion Agency (Sipa)
plans to introduce 25 Windows-based, open-source, free computer software
programs to the public in July, a move that is expected to save the
country more than a billion baht annually.
Chairwoman Kruawan Samana said Sipa, which is a public organisation under
the Information and Communications Technology Ministry, has initially
developed 25 free software programs. They feature office, internet,
graphics, multimedia, utility, web development and entertainment
applications and will be ready for the public to download in July.
Mrs Kruawan said the open-source software programs to be introduced would
benefit the government's project to provide schools nationwide with
250,000 computers and internet connections next year. These schools would
be able to use free programs from Sipa and save a lot of budget money,
which would otherwise be spent on purchasing software from foreign
suppliers.
Sipa's free software project should help the schools save about a billion
baht a year, she said.
Sipa would also help train university instructors from across the country
to use its open-source software. They would later help train
schoolteachers.
Mrs Kruawan said Sipa's open-source software project was part of the
agency's attempts to promote Thailand's software industry, give people
wider access to information, and increase their chances to become
computer-literate. The attempts would eventually bring about e-government
systems.
``Sipa has triggered the idea among Thai people that it is unnecessary to
spend large sums of money on foreign programs every year. We allow the
general public to further develop our programs, and this will help support
our people, both young and old, who are software geniuses,'' she said.
``Our programs are public property and bear no copyrights. They can be
developed into new applications for sale. This will expand our software
industry. It is a win-win situation for everyone,'' she said.
More use of online learning
SIRIKUL BUNNAG
The Education Ministry plans to increase
the length of time that Thais spend in school from an average of 8.1 years
to 9.5 years in four years by intensifying online learning.
Deputy Minister Rung Kaewdaeng said yesterday that the 9.5-year goal of
his ministry could not be achieved by 2009 as earlier planned if it
adhered to the old method of increasing the time spent in education by
just raising teacher numbers.
He said a teacher could handle only 40 students at a time, so simply
increasing the number of teachers would not realise the goal. The answer
was e-learning that could teach millions of students at a time.
Mr Rung instructed non-formal education staff to study the number of
people reached by existing online educational programmes, the quality of
remote educational services, ways to expand the services without
compromising on quality and the amount of investment needed.
In another development, the ministry has selected 20 kindergartens and
primary schools in Bangkok to pioneer brain-based learning in the upcoming
school term.
Academics from Mahidol University and the National Institute for
Brain-based Learning are training executives and teachers of the selected
schools the techniques of this learning approach. Kasama Voravan,
permanent secretary for the ministry, said brain-based learning applied
music to stimulate development of children's bodies and brains
simultaneously.
Santhad Sinthuphanprathum, educators' development director, said the pilot
project would be evaluated initially in August. If the project is
successful, nationwide curricula will change and revolutionise Thailand's
education system.
SOFTWARE
Low-cost Windows hits Brazil
Sao Paulo, Brazil _ Microsoft Corp
launched a scaled-back version of its Windows operating system in Brazil
on Wednesday, hoping to get more people using computers in Latin America's
largest country while cutting down on rampant software piracy.
Brazil becomes the first country in the western hemisphere to get the
low-cost XP Starter Edition, which lets users run just three programs
concurrently and has lower-resolution graphics.
The announcement came only weeks before Brazil's government is expected to
decide whether the version will be included in a program aimed at helping
millions of poor Brazilians buy their first computers.
Designed for first-time users, the stripped-down Portuguese operating
system also lacks capabilities for home networking and multiple user
accounts.
The stripped-down Windows is already being sold or will be soon in
Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Russia and India. At a press conference in
Sao Paulo to launch the Brazilian version, executives did not say whether
Microsoft would start selling the system in other Latin American
countries.
While Brazil has a population of 182 million, only about 12% of the
country's households have computers and a mere 10% have Internet
connections _ and many experts say the numbers must be increased for
Brazil to emerge from the ranks of developing nations and vault itself
into the information age.
``We're determined to decrease digital exclusion and Windows XP Starter
Edition is precisely what we need to help us in this effort,'' said Emilio
Umeoka, chief executive of Microsoft's Brazilian division.
Umeoka said the timing of the announcement wasn't linked to the
government's impending decision on whether to let Microsoft participate in
the PC Conectado (Connected PC in Portuguese) effort to make computers
available for about 1,400 reals ($538), payable in 24 monthly instalments
of about 58 reals ($22) each.
That would make them more affordable for many working class families in a
country where the monthly minimum wage is 260 reals ($100).
While Microsoft has been fighting hard to be included in the program, a
big push by open-source software advocates is under way to keep the
company from participating. AP
FARMERS STUDY FOR DEGREE WITHOUT LEAVING THE FIELD
Four-year local wisdom course aims to increase
self-sufficiency
Story by PREEYANAT PHANAYANGGOOR
Nakhon Si Thammarat Rajabhat University
is inviting farmers to work their land and ``study'' for a degree at the
same time.
Farmers who own at least three rai of land can apply for a bachelor's
degree in local wisdom _ but they will not have to attend any lectures or
sit any tests.
The four-year course starts in June and at least 20 farmers are expected
to take part. Most learning will take place in the field.
Jaturat Kiratiwuttipong, vice-rector of the faculty of humanities and
social sciences and initiator of the degree, said the course would be the
first four-year university degree offered only to practising farmers who
learn from hands-on experience on their own land.
Farmers must be aged 20 or above, and own at least three rai, which they
will use for research, farming and development. They will get help from
academics, community leaders and farmers practising in different fields,
such as rice, rubber and fruit growers.
The course was inspired by the thinking of Mai Raeng community leader
Prayong Ronarong, a Ramon Magsaysay Award winner for Community Leadership,
who wants farmers to become self-sufficient and self-reliant. Its aim is
to turn out self-reliant farmers, who would form the basis of a future
self-sufficient community. It is also designed to keep competent farmers
in their home provinces, people who could stand on their own feet and earn
a living without moving to Bangkok or other big cities, Mr Jaturat said.
He hoped that by the end of the course, farmers would be equipped with new
farming techniques which combined local wisdom and modern technology in a
practical way.
At least 20 local community leaders and experts in the province including
Mr Prayong would act as advisers and help assess students.
Mr Prayong said the local wisdom degree would serve as good preparation
for a future self-sufficient community because young people would learn
from real-life experience.
Animation camp for teachers
The Software Industry Promotion Agency (Sipa)
and the Office of the Basic Education Commission will work together to
train 1000 teachers in animation and multimedia.
Sipa will host a training camp _ TAM Camp 2005: Training the Trainer _ and
encourage teachers in the arts and related fields to add animation and
multimedia skills. Participants would be required to produce e-curriculums
for the teaching of students in the future.
Each school can send up to five teachers for the training camp.
Sipa will run the TAM Camp in four provinces: Phuket on March 21-25,
Chiang Mai on April 4-8, Khon Kaen on April 25-29 and in Bangkok on May
9-13.
For further details contact Sipa at
training@sipa.or.th or 02-554-0452.
A NEW WAY
New teaching methods are keeping the young in
touch with their roots
Mention ``classroom'', and what comes to
mind?
Usually not trees, rivers, forests or the sky. When it comes to
classrooms, most of us think of a room filled with rows of desks and
chairs. But the College of Social Management (CSM) and the Alternative
Education Network are finding alternatives to the traditional classroom.
The college is promoting the ``community school'' project where villagers,
both young and old, can learn from each other.
``Communities in Thailand are so diverse. Hill top villages live
differently from those along river banks. Each community has a wealth of
knowledge and wisdom that it has accumulated as it has evolved and adapted
through the ages,'' said Chatchawan Thongdeelert, director of the CSM.
``So the community can function like a classroom, where students learn
about life and wisdom from community life. It's a living classroom. It
should be the best way to reform the country's education system.''
To show how a community-based school works, the CSM is holding a
``Community School Fair'' at the Office of Museum and Agricultural
Culture, Kasetsart University from April 1 to 3. The fair will introduce
seven communities who are forerunners in the project and show how a
student's knowledge can develop in their own community.
``Now students get well-educated but not well-versed in their community's
ways. The education system has taught them to alienate themselves from
their community, making them turn their backs on their roots,'' said
Prapat Apaimul, a community leader of Mae Ta River basin, in Mae On
sub-district, Chiang Mai.
``Those educated are taught to be employed. That's all right. But they
must know their roots so they can return home to farming if they are layed-off,''
agreed Promma Suwansri of the Mae Pern Mae Wong Conversation Network.
``The elderly have been aware of the problems arising from various
developments. So they came up with the idea of creating activities with
their children so that they [the children] can learn about the community's
traditional wisdom, otherwise, the knowledge can be lost,'' said Promma.
``The community school project aims to teach community wisdom to the young
through the learning camps,'' he added.
The lively learning environment will be showcased at the fair, and on show
will be activities such as organic farming, compost making, testing
produce for toxic substances, clay house building and other traditional
skills. The fair will demonstrate alternative ways of learning, and all
the students in the project will participate, sharing their knowledge and
opinions among the group.
``The activities will help the students develop their interpersonal and
social skills,'' said Sririwan Sripen, the project coordinator.
For those interested, admission to the event is free of charge, and here's
the schedule:
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Colleges that offer course materials online
By JEFFREY R. YOUNG
When the Massachusetts Institute of Technology announced an ambitious plan
to give away online materials for every course, officials wondered whether
other colleges and universities would follow suit.
The answer? Sort of.
Nearly four years after the start of MIT's OpenCourseWare project, several
colleges met to unveil their own plans to publish extensive sets of course
materials -- such as syllabi, lecture notes, and quizzes -- and encourage
anyone to use them freely. There is one major difference: No one other
than
MIT is pledging to give away every course. And most of the newcomers
expect
to convert only a handful of courses per year to an open format.
The main reason is money. MIT officials are spending $6-million per year
on
the project, much of which is coming from grants from the William and
Flora
Hewlett Foundation and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The project, which
has already published more than 900 of MIT's 1,800 courses, is being
touted
as a success, as it has drawn downloaders from around the world who are
using the materials as models for their own teaching or to learn on their
own.
Proponents say the main beneficiaries are in the developing world, where
students cannot afford textbooks and universities are looking for help
setting up courses. MIT officials say that the materials are also
inspiring
more people to apply to the institute, as well as helping students at MIT
decide which courses to sign up for.
Though many professors at other colleges already create course Web sites,
the majority do so haphazardly, or in a way that is designed to be used
only
by their students. Open courseware seeks to make sure each course's
materials are far more complete, and are presented in a way that makes
them
easy for others to use.
The growth of these giveaways marks a major philosophical shift from the
mid-1990s, when many colleges and professors thought they could rake in
profits selling course materials online.
Colleges that have bought into the open-courseware concept say they would
like to give away everything, but that they cannot afford to put all that
material online and keep it up to date. Besides, one set of free materials
may be enough, so other colleges and universities are focusing on making
available only their signature programs or courses that are not taught by
MIT. Many of the new projects also have grant support.
"I'm not surprised right away that it's a little slow to take off," says
Frank Mayadas, program director at the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.
"Regardless of the motivation and desire, it just isn't going to take off
like wildfire" because of the cost.
But Anne H. Margulies, executive director of MIT's OpenCourseWare project,
says that while MIT always hoped other colleges would follow its lead, it
did not expect many to give everything away.
"What we aspire to," she says, "is to work with other schools so we can
create a collective body of high-quality course materials."
Trading Tips
Representatives from MIT and six other U.S. universities that are starting
open-courseware projects met at MIT in February to trade tips on how to
manage their projects. Representatives from Chinese universities attended
as
well, as did officials from
Universia.net, a coalition of universities in
Portugal, Spain, and several South American countries that is working to
translate MIT's course materials into Spanish and Portuguese.
The U.S. institutions represented were the Harvard University Law School's
Berkman Center for Internet & Society, the Johns Hopkins University's
Bloomberg School of Public Health, Tufts University, the University of
Michigan at Ann Arbor's School of Information, the University of Notre
Dame,
and Utah State University. Ms. Margulies stressed that the meeting was
informal, and that no consortium had been created, though one may form in
the future.
Several of the colleges unveiled their first open courses at the meeting.
Among them was the Johns Hopkins University, which has two courses online
so
far, and hopes to have eight more by April.
Sukon Kanchanaraksa, director of the public-health school's center for
teaching and learning with technology, says that many of the school's
alumni
living in other countries already use the materials from Hopkins's courses
when they start teaching. "We're just going to make it one more step
easier
for them to use our content in their teaching," he says. Officials hope to
make available 50 to 75 courses over the next several years.
James D. Yager, senior associate dean for academic affairs at the school
and
professor of toxicology in the department of environmental health
sciences,
says he thinks alumni and professors will support the project.
"People who come to public health are committed to really making a
difference in the lives of people," he says. "By and large academics,
especially in public health, realize that the availability of the content
is
going to have a beneficial effect."
One focus of the meeting at MIT was developing strategies to keep the
costs
of creating such course Web sites as low as possible.
Utah State talked about software it is building to automatically grab
material from existing university course Web sites and turn it into a form
that is more user-friendly to users outside the university. The university
has made the software open source, meaning it is free for anyone to
download
and use for noncommercial purposes. Utah State won a $915,000 grant from
the
Hewlett Foundation to support the software, and to assist other
universities
that want to use the software.
"The idea is to make it as cheap and easy as possible" for universities to
start open-courseware projects, says David A. Wiley, assistant professor
of
instructional technology at the university, which has six courses in an
open
format. "We're trying to find a way to do this that can be sustained over
time without tens of millions of dollars of external funding."
Mr. Wiley's team has also built free chat-room software for
open-courseware
sites that MIT now uses in some of its course sites. The software is
designed to highlight the most useful comments in an online discussion
without the use of a human moderator -- since universities do not actively
teach or support those who want to use the free materials. The software
lets
anyone make a comment, and then allows users to rate how helpful each
comments is. The software then displays the most highly rated comments
first.
"It's a way for the community to reward good behavior and positive
contributions made by the group," says Mr. Wiley. "But that rewarding is
done by the group."
Getting Permission
Copyright is another challenge in running open-courseware projects, the
meeting's participants say.
Many professors regularly use charts, graphs, or other illustrations
they've
culled from textbooks or other copyrighted works in slide presentations or
handouts. Although using those illustrations in a classroom is allowed
under
fair-use provisions of copyright law, universities must get permission
before putting the same materials online where anyone can see them. That
can
take time and money because officials must track down who owns the
copyright
and often must pay a fee to post the materials. One college decided not to
convert a popular course to an open format because it included so many
copyrighted items that it would have been unmanageable.
Another issue discussed at the meeting was how to make it easy for
professors to participate in open-courseware projects.
"If a faculty member perceives that he's going to have to be hitched to a
wagon that's going to run for a long time, he's not going to do it," says
Alexander J. Hahn, a professor of mathematics at Notre Dame and director
of
the university's John A. Kaneb Center for Teaching and Learning. "You have
to lower the threshold of time and energy required of faculty."
Representatives from the Hewlett Foundation have worked to get a diverse
group of institutions to participate in open-courseware efforts.
Last year foundation officials approached Vivian Sinou, dean of distance
and
mediated learning at Foothill College, to encourage the district to join
in.
So the district proposed creating an open-courseware project that any
community college in California could participate in, and it won a
$124,000
grant from the foundation for the effort.
After months of development, the college unveiled its first eight courses
in
January. Ms. Sinou says her staff tried to pick the best examples in the
college district's most popular subject areas -- "the ones that the
majority
of community-college students go through."
Barbara S. Illowsky, a professor of mathematics and statistics at De Anza
College, teaches one of the courses, Elementary Statistics.
She says she has already received positive feedback, both from students
who
want to brush up on concepts, and from professors who want to adopt some
of
the materials for their own teaching. "I've had two faculty from different
community colleges ask me about it," she says.
Did she consider trying to sell the materials to a publisher or company
instead of working with the free-courseware project? No, she says, in part
because she says she was only able to create the online materials with
help
from technical-support staff at the college.
"I really felt that this course was a really combined effort of a lot of
different people from our district." And, she says, "why not educate
people
everywhere?"
Eric C. Carson, a geology professor at San Jacinto College North, has
already made use of one of Foothill College's open-courseware sites in his
teaching.
He says he prefers material on open-courseware sites over that found on
professors' Web sites. "There's some level of quality control and general
oversight associated" with open courseware, he says. "If I'm just
strolling
around on the Internet and come across some random professor's Web site,"
he
adds, "it just kind of dilutes my confidence in it, and it makes me spend
a
lot more time really sitting down and looking for what I like."
Many of the proponents of open courseware argue that making materials free
online is an important way to fulfill their institutions' public-service
or
outreach missions.
Mary Y. Lee, an associate provost at Tufts University and dean of
educational affairs at the university's medical school, says the
university
has a tradition of being involved in free-software efforts. Tufts is
working
to put 11 courses, mainly from the medical school, online. "It's a natural
extension of work we've already been doing," Ms. Lee says.
Though officials hope the materials will have educational benefit, they
stress that they are not a substitute for taking courses at the
institutions.
"We're not offering a correspondence course to become a doctor, no," says
Ms. Lee. She likened the materials to textbooks, noting that there is more
to an education than simply reading textbooks. "Most of the training in
medicine is actually experience with patients and small-group learning."
Still, some students who have found Foothill's courses have sent e-mail
messages asking how they can receive college credit for reading through
the
materials. Ms. Sinou directs them to the admissions office.
_____
8 COLLEGES THAT OFFER COURSE MATERIALS ONLINE
Several U.S. colleges have started "open courseware" projects, in which
they
publish extensive sets of course materials -- such as syllabi, lecture
notes, and quizzes -- online and encourage anyone to use them freely.
Carnegie Mellon University: The university has seven courses online in
what
it calls the Open Learning Initiative (http://www.cmu.edu/oli).
The project
has received $3.4-million in grants from the William and Flora Hewlett
Foundation.
Foothill-DeAnza Community College District: In February the district
posted
material for eight courses in a project it calls Sofia, Sharing of Free
Intellectual Assets (http://sofia.fhda.edu).
The district is working with
other California community colleges to convert selected courses to an open
format and hopes to add about 25 more courses per year for the next
several
years. The project is supported by grants from the Hewlett Foundation.
Harvard University: Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet &
Society is beginning an open-courseware project, and its leaders say they
are interested in developing new ideas for how to design and maintain such
efforts.
Johns Hopkins University: The Bloomberg School of Public Health last week
unveiled a draft version of an open-courseware project
(http://ocw.jhsph.edu
). Two courses -- "Understanding Cost-Effectiveness
Analysis in Health Care," and "Statistical Reasoning I" -- are up so far,
with eight more expected to be ready by April. The project is supported by
a
$200,000 grant from the Hewlett Foundation.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology: Since 2001 the university has been
rapidly working to put materials for all of its 1,800 courses online. The
OpenCourseWare project (http://ocw.mit.edu),
which has support from the
Hewlett Foundation and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, is expected to
take
about seven years to complete.
Tufts University: Officials are working to convert 11 professional courses
to an open-courseware format. Two are from the Fletcher School of Law and
Diplomacy, and the rest are from the university's four health-science
graduate schools -- the School of Dental Medicine, the School of Nutrition
Science and Policy, the School of Medicine, and the School of Veterinary
Medicine. The university is using internal resources to pay for the
project,
but is seeking outside grants to expand it.
University of Michigan at Ann Arbor: The university's School of
Information
is working to convert about a dozen courses to open courseware. It is also
working to build free software to help professors turn their existing Web
resources into open-courseware sites.
Utah State University: The university recently unveiled the first eight
courses in an open-courseware pilot project (http://ocw.usu.edu).
The
courses were chosen to highlight the university's most unique or
well-known
offerings. Programmers have also developed free software, called
EduCommons,
to help produce the Web sites. The project is supported by a $915,000
grant
from the Hewlett Foundation.
SOURCE: Chronicle reporting
_____
http://chronicle.com
Section: Information Technology
Volume 51, Issue 26, Page A32
<http://chronicle.com/help/copyright.htm#toponline#toponline>
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CHRONICLE ARTICLES ONLINE
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Modern Bangkok from an ICT perspective
Why this IT journalist is talking to the art world
Don Sambandaraksa
A few days ago I was contacted by a lovely lady by the name of Miya
Yoshida, the co-curator of the Lak-Ka-Pid, Lak-Ka-Perd: The Bangkok
Invisible Landscapes art and film exhibition and seminar. Miya asked if I
cared to deliver a keynote address explaining these ideas in the context
of today's Bangkok. She had arranged to invite other experts in the field
of sociology, urban planning, art and architecture to each explain not
just how Bangkok had changed, but why.
I was to meet such luminaries as Professor Sarat Maharaj of Sweden's Lund
University and London's Goldsmith College and Thailand's own Professor
Apinan Poshyananda. Names which, I am assured, mean much more in the world
of art than they do here in the pages of the Post Database. Also attending
and exhibiting will be artists from France, India, Korea, Sweden, Hong
Kong and Taiwan.
I have no illusions of being an expert in the field of fine art, though I
do admit to delusions of one day publishing a photo journal on the other
side of the Chao Phraya river, metaphorically of course, perhaps taken
with my old 1981 Pentax Super-A, perhaps with a digital SLR if they can
finally reach a decent resolution and get rid of the noise problems, or
perhaps with my medium format Bronica SQ-Ai (yes, I have one of those
too). But I digress.
As an outsider, I immediately felt this was interesting and challenging
yet felt unsure of whether I knew enough of the matter at hand. I soon
felt better once Miya told me I was to be the person who gives the
audience an explanation of the whys and wherefores of modern Bangkok from
a technology perspective. The best thing of all was that Miya specifically
asked me to address it from a critical perspective, rather than the
peaches-and-cream view that our leaders often subscribe to.
Being asked to elaborate on one of the things I am passionate about, and
more importantly, asked to be critical about it, is perhaps the greatest
birthday present I could wish for. All due credit to my co-conspirator
here at the Post Database, Geoff Long, who guided Miya my way.
The question I need to answer is perhaps threefold. What has ICT done for
Bangkok? What can it do and why it has not done so? And what ills has it
brought upon us?
Returning again to my often quoted metaphor of the telephone, it is clear
that mobile phones have given the residents of Bangkok the greatest
advance since the discovery of fire _ more time to work and conduct
meetings while stuck in our notorious traffic jams. Looking at the social
divide, we see that pre-pay technology has given our migrant workers and
the underclass the means of connecting to the world at large.
What has not happened here, but has happened in much of Europe and the
United States, is the freeing up of the workforce through 2.5G and 3G data
technology and the political reform that has graced South Korea. The
problems it brings are that of privacy and the decimation of social
manners _ with today's longer and longer talk times, being out of range is
tantamount to admitting that there is something to hide, and I am sure
that you will agree that many teenagers today seem to be constantly on the
phone, lack face-to-face interpersonal skills and, by and large, tend to
be somewhat annoying.
Another issue that comes to mind is that of online gaming. Way back when
Ragnarok was making the headlines for the damage it was doing to our
youth, creating a generation of Internet zombies, a friend asked me if it
was in fact an IT problem. No, I reasoned, it was not. The problem was a
social one. Our children were escaping from the real world for the online
world not because of the evil technology, but because real life was really
so stressful and depressing.
One topic I must ask the urban planner in the seminar is the challenge of
wiring up Bangkok and getting people online. It has been suggested that
South Korea succeeded with its VDSL Internet roll-out, piping 54 Mbps into
apartments across Seoul, because most people lived in neat and compact
apartment blocks that could easily be wired with fibre to the building and
short-range (but fast) VDSL within it. The wiring task they faced is quite
different to the sprawling, old metropolis with aging and sub-standard
telephone copper that is called Bangkok. Still, with the limited number of
fixed lines, do we need copper-wire DSL at all? Should we adopt fibre to
the home? Wireless? Satellite?
The issue of the effect that technology has on art is also one which I
find close to my heart. Are we to believe the rhetoric of the incumbents
that digital media only promotes piracy? Is the Napster (the original one,
that is) truly evil? What of Morpheus (currently gasping for its last
breath in court)? And if Apple's iTunes are the future, why are we left
out? Is our culture of software piracy turning the country into a pariah
state?
On the other hand, are we to believe others who claim that digital media
creates new opportunities and lowers the cost of entry to a market that is
monopolised by only a handful of promoters and media companies? Has the
MP3 file format truly made it possible for any new artists to break into
this most select of clubs?
These are just some of the issues that I will explore in my keynote
address this Saturday (12th March). The exhibition itself runs from the
11th of March to the 15th of April. You can find more information at
www.in-betweenartproject.com and I look forward to seeing you there,
cheering on an IT guy caught in-between artists and filmmakers.
Don Sambandaraksa is an open source advocate who is doing his bit to
advance awareness of the difference between free speech and free beer in
the corridors of power in Thailand. Email: Don@bangkokpost.net
Microsoft releases plans for activities in
Thailand
Published on February 21, 2005
Microsoft (Thailand) has announced that its business direction this
year will focus on encouraging local software development, continuing its
commitment to lifelong learning, working with partners to increase
business value to customers, and delivering integrated innovation though
its .Net technology.
Managing director Andrew McBean said the company would work with the
government sector and partners, as well as the education sector, to
utilise Microsoft’s technology to enhance ICT literacy.
Microsoft this year will also focus on SMEs along with government and
state enterprises, since they are high-potential markets. It now has 2,100
SME partners and plans to double this number by the end of 2005, McBean
said.
Chief marketing officer Chanchai Phansopha said the company planned to
set up a business productivity centre and a new business unit called the
public sector department to take care of the government and
state-enterprise market.
Moreover, the company this year has a strategy to debut Windows Server
2003 64-bit edition, Windows Server 2003 release 2, SQL Server 2005 and
Visual Studio 2005 to the market, and to release a new software product
code named Longhorn Server to the market in 2007.
McBean said the firm last year had revenue growth of 36 per cent over
2003. It served 3,553 customers and distributed 615,5112 software licences
to enterprises and SMEs. It had millions of users logging on to Messenger,
Hotmail and MSN.co.th, which hit 1.4 million users per month, with over
195 million pages per month viewed on MSN.
He also said that 65 per cent of software developed in Thailand used
Microsoft’s platform as its primary development tool.
Meanwhile, the firm offered 40,000 Windows 98 licenses free of charge
to 1,500 schools nationwide and set up three community IT centres with
local NGOs to develop IT skills.
“Thailand is full of creativity and imagination. This year we will
continue to invest in ICT and work closely with key government bodies and
our partners to develop the industry in Thailand and services to our
customers,” said McBean.
Charnchai added that with the high growth potential in the Thai
software market, the company expected to grow by up to 30 per cent this
year – a growth rate that will be maintained until 2008.
In addition, the company received Bt25 million from Microsoft
headquarters to join with government agencies for training and promotion
to develop Thailand as a Web services hub. The four-month project starts
next month.
Jirapan Boonnoon
The Nation
jirapan@nationgroup.com
ICT center popular across the ages
ICT Learning Centre finds an audience among young
and old alike
Story by Chaiyot Yongcharoenchai and Karnjana
Karnjanatawe
The newly-opened National ICT Learning
Centre is proving to be a popular hangout not only for youths, but also
elderly people who want to keep in touch with computing and Internet
technology. Visitors to the centre will also soon be able to add new media
technologies to their list of things to learn, with plans to introduce by
March a new range of training courses for people interested in producing
animation and multimedia content.
The centre on the sixth floor of Central World Plaza on Ratchadamri Road
attracts some 600-700 visitors during weekdays on average and 1,000-1,200
on weekends, including government representatives and student groups.
The ICT Learning Centre officially opened on October 30 last year with a
90 million baht budget from the government, which went to renovating and
equipping the 3,000 square metre location.
National ICT Learning Centre director Rachadaporn Tinaphongs noted that
the centre had attracted visitors across every age group since it had
opened. "It was a surprise to see senior citizens here because we had
never targeted them before. Mostly, they are here during weekdays and they
want to learn basic computer usage," she said.
One familiar face is a 75-year-old man, who often arrives from his home
near Lumpini Park with a friend of the same age to use the Internet.
"We have been here many times to surf the Internet because the speed is
fast and the place is clean," he told Database.
The two have learned how to use a computer by joining one of the training
courses at the centre, while he noted that there is also staff on-hand to
give assistance when needed.
Parents with children are also regular visitors. "We are here almost every
day," said Tawan Saetang, a father of two, who brings his daughter and son
here to play games.
"The place is quiet, unlike other Internet cafes. I want my children to
learn about the Internet and know how to use computers. They are happy and
I am also happy because children can use the Internet for free and the
price is cheap for me," he said, noting that the location is also
convenient.
Compared to the charges of other Internet cafes offering broadband
service, the service fees at the ICT Learning Centre are low. The price is
10 baht an hour for adults (aged between 22-60 years old), five baht for
young adults between 18-21 years, and free of charge for those who are
under 18 and over 60.
There are 140 stand-alone PCs with soft seats and 30 Sun Ray thin-client
computers at stands surrounding the Internet cafe area.
According to director Rachadaporn, the centre has something for the whole
family, with parents able to use the Internet while students access the
library and children can watch the latest in animation. It also houses
training and conference rooms.
The ICT Learning Centre was established last year as part of an initiative
by the Information and Communications Technology Ministry to create a
learning centre for ICT where young people could spend their time after
school or during summer holidays.
It is also part of the ministry's plans to boost ICT human resources and
comes after initiating the GoodNet project, a group of learning centres
where youths can learn basic software and PC operations, education
programs and access broadband Internet.
The idea is also being looked at by other countries. A minister from South
Africa visited the centre because the government there has a plan to set
up an ICT centre and wanted to learn from Thailand. In addition, some
local officers from Nakhon Si Thammarat, Phuket and Chon Buri plan to
offer some services under a similar model, particularly the Internet cafe
and e-library.
For example, an Education Service Area Office in Nakhon Ratchasima will
set up an e-library and training facilities to advance the skills of
14,000 teachers.
"We want to build up a centre to develop our human resources for 200
schools in two amphurs under our office coverage," said educational
instructor Yuttasak Jannaronk. "We have already prepared a two-storey
building for the purpose. The visit to the centre will help to give us new
ideas," he added.
At the centre, the services are divided in four e-sections. The first one
is e-content and comprises an e-learning facility and e-library service.
The director said there are some 2,000 general, business and IT textbooks
from here and abroad, while a kid's corner provides books for children.
There are also some rare text books sponsored by eight IT suppliers
including Adobe and IBM.
"We aim to have 5,000 books and we will have a committee to decide on book
rotation from each shelf, while the business partners will be asked to
handle their own shelves in order to bring more variety to visitors,"
Rachadaporn said, noting that the centre plans to rotate books every six
to seven months. Some of the books will be exchanged with the Thailand
Knowledge Park, which will soon open next door.
"We also plan to use a smart card to allow members to borrow books in the
future," she said.
Sakunthip Nakdee, a second year student of Rajamangala Institute of
Technology, says she always comes to the centre for the Internet and
reading books.
"There are plenty of books here. I can spend all day here and never get
bored because there are so many thing to do," she added.
The ICT Learning Centre also houses training professionals in its
e-Training corner. For those who want to increase their skills or get
certified, there are multimedia courses provided by Apple Computer as well
as animation and graphic design courses offered by Imagimax Animation and
Design Studio.
Open source, interactive English courses and basic computer literacy
courses are also provided.
Rachadaporn pointed out that the centre also provided facilities including
seven training rooms and a conference room for 280 people. People can rent
the space and beverages and lunch can also be served.
The rental service is one of the centre's plans to find sufficient income
to cover its monthly operation costs.
"We are a government agency but we have a structure to find our own
income. It's not for profit but we want to have sufficient earnings to
hire people, pay the rent and utility fees in the future," she noted.
The National ICT Learning Centre also has an e-Expo area for hosting
events, surfing the Internet, and watching animated movies in the only 4D
theatre in town. The theatre has 48 simulation seats and is equipped with
special effects that make the audience feel like they're in the action.
The theatre shows short animations from here and abroad every day. They
also have a rating system, so that parent's can ensure their kids do not
watch unsuitable content.
"It is interesting and fun. When they dropped flowers on the screen,
flowers also dropped from above. We have never experienced anything like
this before," said one audience member after a screening.
When walking out of the theatre, there is a technology showcase area
called the e-Technology zone. The zone is a drawcard for the young
generation and the tech savvy.
"I like to play (mobile) games here," said Poojade Sottianantachai, 16,
who has been standing at Nokia's booth for an hour.
His friend Worayut Huayhongtong said they like the centre because the
services are varied. Besides, they can charge their mobile phones for free
while spending time on the interactive mobile games, he added.
The e-Technology zone includes the latest technologies from CA, IBM,
Nokia, Microsoft, Sun Microsystems, Oracle and Cisco Systems.
The director said the centre plans to rotate the technology showcase and
have a monthly concept in order to keep it up-to-date.
In the future, the ICT Learning Centre plans to implement Wi-Fi hotspots
at its coffee corner and in the library. Radio Frequency Identification (RFID)
technology will also be implanted in books, while smart cards will be used
for library membership as well as for stored value so that visitors can
pay for services.
She said the management team also plans to enhance its e-learning courses
to serve the government's e-learning portal initiative.
"More activities will be organised here in future. We will recruit high
school students to be tour guides and assistants for visitors and
customers," she added.
ICT Minister Dr Surapong Suebwonglee also plans to set up one more ICT
Learning centre in Bangkok as well as in the three ICT Cities _ Phuket,
Chiang Mai and Khon Kaen.
Education is not only in the classroom, the minister said, noting that the
National ICT Learning Centre will be a step towards the country's goal to
develop a knowledge-based society.
Taking the Pulse of Technology at Davos
By JOHN MARKOFF
AVOS,
Switzerland
NICHOLAS NEGROPONTE, the technology guru from the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology Media Laboratory, prowled the halls of the World
Economic Forum holding the holy grail for crossing the digital divide: a
mock-up of a $100 laptop computer.
The machine is intriguing because Mr. Negroponte has struck upon a
remarkably simple solution for lowering the price of the most costly part
of a laptop - the display - to $25 or less.
He has been a passionate advocate of using digital technology to
improve the quality of life and erase economic barriers in the developing
world since the early 1980's, when he took Apple II computers to Senegal
with his colleague Seymour Papert.
Now, in partnership with Joseph Jacobson, a physicist at M.I.T., he
wants to persuade the education ministries of countries like China to use
laptops to replace textbooks.
He has not yet found a customer. Indeed, his mission has been
complicated at Davos 2005 because the digital divide and the information
technology industry are no longer the center of attention at this annual
intimate gathering of the world's most powerful and wealthy.
The digital power elite remain in vogue. Bill Gates of Microsoft, Eric
Schmidt of Google and Carleton S. Fiorina of Hewlett-Packard played
prominent roles, as usual, at the January forum. There was a distinct
shift, however, away from geek chic and toward traditional star power:
Richard Gere, Sharon Stone, Angelina Jolie and Bono took center stage.
The rush to close the digital divide began in earnest at Davos in 1998
during the height of the dot-com era, driven by American executives like
John Chambers of Cisco and John Gage of Sun Microsystems. Committees were
formed, money was committed and during the next three years the idea of
digital equity became a rallying cry for the world's dot-com elite.
"It was really cool, but in the end we got nothing done," one executive
candidly acknowledged.
At the time, Mr. Gates was a notable skeptic, arguing that it was more
important to address basic life necessities - health and food, for example
- before connecting the world's poorest citizens to the Internet.
Although he was widely criticized for his remarks then, he now appears
to have been vindicated. Mr. Gates was in the thick of the plenary
discussions at the 2005 Davos forum - considering ways of eliminating
poverty and disease that do not encompass information technology.
In a late-evening discussion Jan. 28, however, he acknowledged the
shift in emphasis: "I think it's fascinating that there was no plenary
session at Davos this year on how information technology is changing the
world."
Despite technology's absence from center stage, there was a general
consensus that many of the technology companies have dug in for the long
haul with significant education initiatives in countries like Jordan and
Egypt, with support from companies like Microsoft and Cisco.
Mr. Negroponte said that he had found initial backing for his laptop
plan from Advanced Micro Devices and said that he was in discussions with
Google, Motorola, the News Corporation and Samsung for support.
The device includes a tentlike pop-up display that will use the
technology now used in today's rear-projection televisions, in conjunction
with an L.E.D. light source.
Mr. Negroponte said his experience in giving children laptop computers
in rural Cambodia had convinced him that low-cost machines would make a
fundamental difference when broadly deployed.
"You can just give laptops to kids," he said, noting that they quickly
take advantage of the machines. "In Cambodia, the first English word out
of their mouths is 'Google.' "
Advanced Micro, Mr. Negroponte's first backer, brought its own low-cost
computer initiative to Davos 2005. Hector de J. Ruiz, the chief executive,
said that the company believed that its new Personal Internet
Communicator, or PIC, might have a broader market than just developing
countries.
At the 2004 Davos forum, the company started an effort to give half the
world's population access to the Internet by 2015. Currently, about 12
percent of the world is connected.
Now, Mr. Ruiz said, Advanced Micro has been working with a variety of
mainstream applications for low-cost computing, ranging from inexpensive
Web surfing terminals to digital cash registers.
The PIC, which sells for $185 without a monitor and comes with a
stripped-down version of Microsoft Windows, is housed in a rugged sealed
case without a fan.
"With very minor alternations we can create a variety of new
platforms," he said.
The box, which Advanced Micro hopes to shrink to the size of a deck of
cards soon, has generated a good deal of interest. But the availability of
an inexpensive device that can do the work of its higher-priced cousins
will undoubtedly create challenges for high-technology companies as they
try to sell low-cost versions of hardware and software products that are
far more expensive in the developed world.
Several people at the conference, for example, suggested that Intel had
shied away from inexpensive laptops for fear of cannibalizing its
fastest-growing market. An Intel executive, speaking at the conference,
responded that the company believed in offering computer users a wide
variety of options.
Mr. Negroponte said he was confident that his computers, which run the
free Linux operating system, would find a ready market as early as 2006.
"China is important because there are 220 million students," he said.
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company |
Chiang Mai shows its broadband credentials
KARNJANA KARNJANATAWE
Chiang Mai _ Chiang Mai has marked its first year as an ICT City with a
high-speed metropolitan network using TOT Corp's fibre optic network.
Information and Communications Technology Minister Dr Surapong Suebwonglee
said that Chiang Mai was the first province to support connections of up
to 100 Mbps.
Within February, the 10km-radius service will be extended to cover a 50
kilometre radius in 10 amphurs of Chiang Mai, including Mae Rim, Sansai
and Jomthong.
"When we have high-speed connections in place, people will better
understand the benefits of being an ICT city," he said, noting that the
government would promote its e-services while the high-speed connection
could also support e-business among the private sector.
"The ICT Ministry has already handed over two million smart ID cards to
the Interior Ministry. These will facilitate card holders when using
e-services of the government, such as registering new companies or
applying for study loans for students," the minister said, noting that the
cards would also be distributed in three southern provinces, Bangkok and
the other two ICT Cities, Khon Kaen and Phuket.
In addition, the government will fund a budget of 362 million baht, part
of which will be spent establishing an ICT Park in Chiang Mai.
Dr Surapong said the ICT Park would be a technology and education centre
with high-tech infrastructure and facilities to encourage students and the
public to gain more knowledge in technology. It would be like the National
ICT Learning Centre in Bangkok, but there would also be services for
software developers including an animation studio.
The government wanted to emphasise that it is seriously promoting the
animation and multimedia businesses and also aimed to develop Chiang Mai
ICT City as an animation and multimedia hub, he added.
The ICT Park will be set up this year.
TOT board chairman Sathit Limpongpan said that TOT Corp had already
implemented a fibre optic connection throughout the province and was
working with Internet Thailand to provide the metro service to businesses.
At present, there are 576 ports available for the same number of customers
and TOT will add another 624 ports this year, he said.
"We are supporting the government's Chiang Mai ICT City project with a
budget of 500 million baht to upgrade our infrastructure and to provide
new services," he said.
Beside the metro network, it will also add 17,148 fixed line numbers to
its existing 15,108 base, increase its ADSL service to 14,000 ports and
implement 4,682 ports for a digital data network and virtual private
network.
TOT is also looking at providing an Internet data centre, Internet
gateway, 3G mobile network as well as wireless broadband service based on
Wi-Max technology.
"Chiang Mai will be the first province to have wireless high-speed
connections, allowing users to be connected anywhere," said TOT vice
president Arnon Tubtiang.
The service would be the second phase after providing the metro network,
he said, adding that Wi-Max would support convergent communications and
allow TOT to provide voice over Wi-Max as well as offering value added
service to its fixed and mobile phone services.
The service would cover a 30 kilometre radius, he said.
However, TOT still has to make a decision on the radio frequency, between
its existing 2.4GHz band or the 3.5GHz band suggested for Wi-Max, which
would need approval from the National Telecommunication Commission.
E-learning for everyone
Thailand's proposed cyber university could help
the disadvantaged get an education
Story by SASIWIMON BOONRUANG
Surasak
is 27-years-old and works in a small firm doing photocopying, but in his
free time he's something of a mechanical whiz. He repairs his own
appliances as well as those of his neighbours, and his company has hardly
had to pay anything for copy machine maintenance because it's something
that Surasak has learned to do.
But like many Thais, he does not have any formal education and no
prospects of going to university or gaining other qualifications. When it
comes to fixing things, he relies on his natural ability or gets ideas
from old magazines and books that he can get his hands on.
However, a plan by the government could see Surasak _ and the many Thais
that are in similar situation _ gain access to educational opportunities
in the hope of finding a higher-level job.
The Office of the Commission on Higher Education has recently proposed the
"Thailand Cyber University," a government initiative to increase education
opportunities by providing low cost, life-long education to students and
the general public online.
While many universities in Thailand already offer online courses, they are
generally offered to their own students. Few live up to the real potential
of e-learning by making them available to anyone at anytime and from any
location. They also follow their own procedures rather than having a
common system and standards.
Dr Anuchai Theeraroungchaisri, a committee member of the Thailand Cyber
University project, said providing a system that allowed for courses to be
transferred or learned across different institutions was difficult.
However, that's the goal of the Thailand Cyber University (TCU), which is
based on collaboration among the universities. A central concept is that
universities can share the e-courseware of others.
"All students can learn here together, while the universities can jointly
develop the course syllabus," he said, more importantly adding that all of
the content will be open for the general public to access.
The collaboration could save resources and costs for the universities. In
addition, it would help the institutions that are short of lecturers in
some subjects to be able to have online courseware that is of a standard
level.
The Commission on Higher Education provides a caretaker role for
government universities throughout the country and has a policy to promote
learning via the Internet. So far it has developed the Inter-University
Network (UniNet) _ IT infrastructure that connects the universities to the
Internet.
Along with setting up UniNet, it is involved in developing courseware, a
learning management system, and e-library.
The TCU has a goal to provide e-learning to the public _ at any age and
with any career _ via the UniNet.
It will be free of charge for individuals to attend.
TCU is seen as a continuing strategic project to promote quality distance
learning from the universities to the public. It is part of a goal to move
towards a knowledge based society, as well as share academic resources and
people.
The commission has already granted funding to universities developing the
courseware and so far there are around 150 subjects being prepared for
online use. Some 100 topics of the content are general or fundamental
subjects that are available in every institution, such as science,
biology, chemistry and social science, while 50 topics will be provided
from engineering faculties.
By September of this year, Dr Anuchai said there would be some 300 topics
available through UniNet.
Another e-courseware module covers fundamental engineering and was
developed by Kasetsart University's engineering faculty. This courseware
has also been run in a traditional classroom setting to help students with
the lessons.
The Commission Office has also contracted CU's Continuing Education Centre
to develop the Learning Management System (LMS), which provides an online
content management system and student management system.
"Every subject that has been developed by the universities and institutes
will be conducted on the same system, using the same database," Dr Anuchai
said. "For example, Chulalongkorn students who would like to learn courses
from other universities can do so and will also be accredited. Likewise
students in other universities can do the same," he pointed out.
E-learning relies a lot on technology and a good quality of
infrastructure, Dr Anuchai said, noting that the growth of Internet,
electronic devices and networks had driven infrastructure and made it more
distributed in the rural areas.
Other factors making e-learning possible were cheaper PCs, computer modems
and telephone lines. "These are the physical factors that have to be done
first, and now it is the process of transforming the content into
courseware _ that requires an effort from the education sector," he said.
TCU will be the central agency for coordinating with the universities and
academic institutions to develop the online courseware that will be
delivered via the UniNet.
TCU is supporting the universities in areas such as e-learning objects,
e-courseware for self-paced courses, collaborative courses and supplement
courses. It also provides them with a virtual library covering e-books,
e-journals and e-thesis. Accredition and content will be covered by the
universities and institutions.
The Office of the Commission on Higher Education has developed an
e-library called the Thai Library Information System (ThaiLIS), a centre
of knowledge resources for students, instructors, and the general public
where members can borrow books across 24 universities.
The ThaiLIS database covers reference books, the union catalogue, a
digital collection, e-journals and an e-book directory.
ThaiLIS is linked to the Thai Library Network (THAILINET) and to the
provincial university library network (PULINET) on the UniNet.
TCU will be a multi-disciplinary school _ a centre of e-learning that
covers all systems of education, including formal education, non-formal
education as well as informal education.
The newly-launched TCU is now open for informal education, while modules
for other subjects will be added by the end of this year. Certification
for the online courses is expected to be ready over the next year,
according to Dr Anuchai.
In addition, the The Office of the Commission on Higher Education and the
universities are now working out regulations for online learning. So far,
there are no laws supporting students who have passed distance learning
courses.
In future, Surasak and many other Thai people will have a chance to access
a broad range of resources and learning modules from universities
throughout the country.
It is expected that TCU will better promote relevant education to all
students.
So now people like Surasak, who has learned how to deal with machinery and
appliances through his natural talent, can complement their abilities
through more formal learning.
Lessons from Baan Sam Kha
Primary school teacher shows how technology can
help a village _ with a little outside help
Story by Karnjana Karnjanatawe in Lampang province
Primary school teacher Srinuan Wongtrakoon
helps a student use the computer. |
A student gets on top of this computer
problem. |
Many students are happy to use computers
as an educational tool. — KARNJANA KARNJANATAWE |
Srinuan Wongtrakoon, a primary school teacher in Sam Kha Village of Mae
Tha in Lampang, is proof that you don't need to be a computer expert to
introduce computer classes to students.
Instead, she sought out the expert help available at the Non-formal
Educational Centre in Lampang to train her and her young students in basic
computer usage even before they had a computer lab of their own.
Now that they have a computer lab, she and her students can help adults to
learn computers and the Internet after school, during weekends and over
the summer holiday.
"Children can do many things and learn quickly if they have the chance,"
said Srinuan, who has taught every subject at Baan Sam Kha primary school
for more than three decades.
She believes in child-centric learning methods and made a point of
bringing some students with her whenever there were computer training
classes at the Non-formal Educational Centre.
When Srinuan first used the computer given to her by a friend in 1995, she
realised that it would be an important educational tool for her students.
So instead of keeping it for her family, she gave the computer to the
school.
"I brought the computer to school so that the students could play with
it," she said, adding that they learned the basics of the computer through
this.
However for the villagers at the time, mostly farmers some 40 kilometres
outside the city of Lampang, the computer was something new.
The village is surrounded by mountains and forest and there are no fixed
telephone lines to any of the homes and only two public telephone lines to
the school, while mobile phone network coverage is rarely found.
Baan Sam Kha is the only school in the village and at present it has 43
students and only three teachers _ hence one teacher must teach every
subject. One takes care of grades one to three, Srinuan teaches the higher
grades four to six, while the four kindergarden children are taken care of
by the school head.
While the classes are all under one roof, this does not confuse the
children. "The students know what to do," Srinuan said, noting that they
make a plan of their lessons for each subject and class.
For computer classes, the students have one two-hour computer class each
week. They share their studying time together and those who have higher
computer literacy, such as students in grades five and six, always help
their juniors.
Athipong Kirika, 12, said he has used computers for two years and can also
use the Internet, including email and web browsing.
"I like visiting my village web site (samkhaschool.haii.or.th). I also use
Hotmail and know how to install computers," he said.
Today in his morning computer class, he is concentrating on the screen,
navigating the software with ease. "I am doing my assignment and writing a
story about a grateful dog by using the Microworld program," he said while
choosing a dog from a graphics list and pasting some trees to make his
animated story. He also knows how to do simple coding to make the dog move
from left to right.
Microworld is an application developed by the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology (MIT) and donated to the school by the Non-formal Educational
Centre, Lampang branch. It is a computer-aided-instruction program that
can encourage children to use their imagination to tell stories through
many colourful animated characters.
The students learn to create a story and organise their ideas in a Thai
language class before moving to an open-air computer lab next door to use
the Microworld program. Some juniors also write down their stories and
create a presentation in PowerPoint, while others are learning how to
type.
"With Microworld, the children can indirectly learn how to type, use a
mouse and learn English language at the same time," said Srinuan.
She said that it is a very good program and thanked Dr Suchin Petcharak of
the Non-formal Educational Centre for providing it. Since 1997 he has
supported the program as well as donated five computers to the school.
Dr Suchin also asked TOT to install a telephone line for the school in
order to let students use the Internet after they received some basic Net
training in 1999.
However, all has not been problem free and the introduction of Internet
brought worries for elders, parents and monks.
There concerns are documented in a book called Lessons Learned from Sam
Kha Community, printed by the National Electronics and Computer Technology
Centre (Nectec). The village headman, Channong Chantrajom, said he did not
like computers and Internet because it was a sign of capitalism and could
bring harm to the villagers.
But Srinuan and her children proved that they could take advantage of the
technology for the good of the village.
In 2001, she and 45 youngsters including some primary school students and
a number of village teenagers attended a 10-day computer camp organised by
the Non-formal Educational Centre.
"It was a good opportunity not only for the children to learn how to take
advantage of computers, but also their parents, who visited them at night
to learn how to use the Internet along with their children," she
explained.
The students help villagers by using the computer to manage the community
financial records as well as for running a community bank.
Since the computers were old, sometimes they were also in need of repairs,
but once again they turned this into an opportunity. "We asked staff at
the Non-formal Educational Centre to help fix them. When they disassembled
the parts, the students also had the chance to learn how to fix the
hardware," she said, noting that some of her best computer students could
ease her workload by fixing basic hardware problems.
"I do not know much about this, but the students know how to handle the
problems," she said.
Eleven-year-old Chanakan Yutharaksanukul is one of a number students to
pick up computers quickly. He always assists his younger classmates to
find programs, repair hardware or help his friend finding computer parts
to fix the hardware problems.
There are now more than 10 PCs in the computer room, which is called the
Constructionism Lab and was set up by Cement Thai through the support of
the director of the Siam Cement Group, Paron Israsena Na Ayudhaya, and
some of the villagers a couple of years ago.
Another problem the school has found is the cost of the Internet
connection.
They use to pay 3,000 baht a month for TOT's service, but this
disconnected three or four times every hour, Srinuan explained, adding
that the connection was later changed to a satellite via the IPstar
service, but the cost was high.
"We used it for three months and could not cover the expenses, so we
changed the connection back to a service from Karnchanapisek (sponsored by
TOT corp to support the SchoolNet project of the National Electronics and
Computer Technology Centre). "But the service was not stable so we again
changed the connection back to satellite two years ago," she said.
For the first year, the service was free of charge.
However, now the school needs to find a budget to cover the service, which
costs 2,675 baht for a 750 kbps connection. The school manages to recover
some costs by charging those who use the Internet at 12 baht an hour. The
service is available after school and during weekends.
Meanwhile, the students are continuously updating their computer skills
through the Non-formal Educational Centre. The centre loaned them a
computer and video recorder for a year after they had undergone a video
editing course.
One group of grade six boys learned how to develop video presentations.
They have been working with teenagers of the village and a computer
teacher at the Non-formal Educational Centre of Lampang to develop more
than 10 video documentary programmes.
The short documentaries are all about their village, such as how they dry
roast bananas _ the top product of the village _ how to make the popular
Phai Maew dish, and how rock dams are constructed to preserve the water in
their forest.
Chanakan, one of the video production team, said he and his friends shot
the film by themselves as well as used the software for editing.
"I like video editing. I also want to be more skilful in this because I
think that I can earn money out of it," he noted.
Apart from video editing skills, Srinuan helps her students to study the
Northern Lanna language.
"The Lanna language programme is essential because many elders here still
use the language. We also have some 300-400 years old herbal medical
treatments recorded in Lanna language. When my students know the old
language, they can communicate with the old people and also translate the
old local knowledge into Thai," she noted.
The school got a free copy of a Lanna language software program from Payap
University. Unfortunately, the program is not complete so it has a problem
with fonts when typing some characters.
Srinuan is still searching for the complete program as well as other
needed software, such as a mapping program in order to create a village
map and let her students know where their houses and where the houses are
of those who have specific knowledge, especially village elders who
sometimes become guest teachers to share their experiences with the young
generation.
In addition, she is looking for some English language and CAI programs.
"Although our PCs are old, we can still use them or borrow computers from
others. The more important thing is to develop our children's skills and
minds," she said, noting that nothing is more important than human
development.
Computer firms feel pinch after boom
RANJANA WANGVIPULA
The government's low-cost computer
project caused a sudden boom in computer sales in mid-2003, but some firms
were forced to cut prices drastically to compete.
The executive of a domestic computer assembly firm, who spoke on condition
of anonymity, likened the impact of the so-called Ua-arthorn computer
project to the collapse of the financial sector in 1997. Her firm was
still recovering.
The government urged local manufacturers to make cheap PCs for low-income
earners and the poor, to increase sales and lower the ``digital divide.''
Previously poor people found it hard to afford computers, and in the
government's view the market needed a shove to get PC prices to fall.
Today, some computer firms are asking whether the government was right to
intervene.
After the one-month campaign, the government was able to list 150,000
people as new computer users.
But one year after the boom in sales, some firms say the computer market
has turned quiet with sales volumes falling at many companies. The
assembly firm executive believes the Ua-arthorn project is partly to
blame.
``Our firm was once admired for selling a large number of computers, but
under this price onslaught we could barely survive,'' she said.
Her firm had to cut PC prices to compete with Ua-arthorn PCs, but was left
with a heavy burden in after-sales service for which the firm alone, not
the government, picks up the tab.
The company, which did not join the project, was forced to cut its basic
computer price from 19,900 to 15,900 baht to compete with the 10,900 baht
offered by the government and its allies at Desktop PC makers.
The firm cut its prices despite the fact that the Ua-arthorn computers
offered by the government and its partners were basic in extreme, and
offered less than conventional low-cost computers.
Despite an increase in sales, she said, the sharp drop in the price of
computers made the company unable to bear the cost of hardware, spare
parts and software expenses, included in after-sales service.
The government stimulated demand across the market, but the company alone
had to deal with after-sales costs.
``That's why we felt like we lost as we sold more,'' she said.
The post-computer Ua-arthorn period was a hard time for her company. She
was forced to downsize her business to survive, a setback she had never
experienced before.
The Information and Communication Technology Ministry (ICT) ran the
project. Spokesman Chatchai Khunpitiluck said it was intended as a
``market shaker,'' to force manufacturers to cut prices.
Previously, he said, the market lacked a stimulant, and many poor people
found it hard to buy PCs. He insisted the government's intervention had
worked.
``I think companies are probably wary now. They are afraid the government
will launch the Ua-arthorn project again,'' he said.
Mr Chatchai admitted the project hurt some firms, but insisted sellers
would be happy in the end because of the increase in demand, driven by
low-cost computers.
``Many lost interest as the project was viewed as another political
campaign while businesses initially crticised us but later fell silent as
their markets grew,'' Mr Chatchai said.
The number of computer users jumped last year, which the government says
is evidence the campaign worked. In May, 2.2 million people were using
computers, but at the end of the year that had increased to four million.
One computer programmer said the specifications of an Ua-arthorn computer
are too low to be compatible with new software, which requires more
computer efficiency.
However, some consumers are happy with the Ua-arthorn version.
``My son likes it,'' said Nongnuch Sansomruan, mother of a 10-year-old
boy.
``He uses the computer to print his school reports and search for OTOP
products.
``And when he's at home, I can control his internet use,'' she said.
BridgingTHE GAP
KRIENGSAK NIRATPATTANASAI
Allowing others to `fail successfully'
Vanida, the CEO, is having lunch with Kitti, a senior
executive reporting to her. ``Kitti, I notice that you never turned your
mobile phone off, even in the meeting room,'' she says. ``You always
excuse yourself from the meeting room when you see a particular incoming
call number. Who is calling you? Why is it so important?''
Kitti replies uncomfortably: ``Nothing. It's personal. I am sorry.''
Vanida smiles and is silent for a moment before continuing. ``Kitti, we
have worked together for a while. I consider myself your elder sister
since I am a few years older than you. Would you mind sharing your concern
with me? What's going on?''
Instead of criticising Kitti for improper manners in the meeting room,
Vanida has decided to use the phi-nong (elder-younger sibling) approach.
It works in Kitti's case and he agrees to explain his situation.
``I hope you aren't angry with me,'' he begins. ``It's a call from my
daughter. She moved to Australia to attend high school a few months ago.
This school is very strict and has lot of assignments and homework. When
she was here, I helped her with her homework. I have only one child. She
is everything I have.
``She calls to get advice on her homework since I told her that she could
call me anytime. At night, I don't have enough rest since I have to help
her do some mathematics and English homework and fax it over to her. I
don't want her to fail.
``Sorry that I don't manage my time well,'' Kitti concludes with a guilty
shrug.
Vanida expresses empathy. ``Your story sounds all too familiar. I think I
can imagine how difficult it is for you. I have a daughter studying in the
United States as well and I used to do a very similar thing to what you're
doing. She has been studying for an MBA. She did not have any work
experience since she went straight from a bachelor's degree to a master's
programme. Hence, when she does case studies, she cannot contribute much.
Besides, when she doesn't understand something she is afraid to ask her
teachers. I did help her on case studies and even went so far as to do a
report and e-mail it to her. But I've stopped helping her for quite some
time.''
Kitt asks with surprise: ``Why? Don't you love your child anymore? Or do
you think your work is more important than family?''
Vanida explains with smile: ``I do love her and still value family as much
as my work. Fortunately, I have an American friend. He had noticed how I
helped my child. One day he gave me a book The Power of Failure by Charles
C. Manz. He marked a particular page for me. I'll share it with you.
``It was a story of a man who was watching a butterfly struggle to break
out of its cocoon. After making some progress to work its way through a
small hole, the butterfly appeared to simply stop its efforts. For some
time, it seemed to make no headway, so the man concluded it was stuck and
decided to lend a helping hand by forming a larger opening in the cocoon
with scissors.
``Afterward the butterfly emerged easily but with small, shrivelled wings
and a swollen body.
``It turned out that the struggle to emerge from the cocoon would have
forced the fluid from the butterfly's body into its wings, a necessary
process for enabling it to fly. As a result of a man's well-intentioned
`help', he had interfered with nature's life-strengthening process. The
butterfly was now doomed never to fly, but to crawl around with its
swollen body and shrivelled wings for the rest of its life.
``Many of our failures in life present us with the same kind of challenge
that the butterfly faced. Learning, personal growth, skill development,
courage, persistence, the potential to empathy, and a host of other
desirable life assets can be gained from failing successfully. We cannot
hope to become really successful in our lives unless we learn to fail well
in a way that prepares us for greater success. If we get caught in the
trap of trying to avoid challenge and backing away from our setbacks, we
cannot earn the valuable lessons that we need to learn.''
Kitti listens attentively: ``That's so inspiring. But I am afraid my child
will hate me.''
Vanida continues: ``Kitti, there is a saying, `No pain no gain'. It's our
fault as parents that we `spoon-feed' our children too much. In my case, I
told this story to my daughter. I apologised for spoiling her in the past.
Our children are smart enough to `get it'.''
``Look around us. We have some staff who are well educated and come from
wealthy families. They are yiab-kee-gai-mai-phor (scared to step in
chicken manure). They lack patience when faced with adversity. The persons
who should be blamed are their parents.
``Would you like to be blamed in the future and also make your child weak?
It's your choice.''
Kriengsak Niratpattanasai is the founder of TheCoach, specialising in
executive coaching in the areas of leadership and cross-cultural skills.
He can be reached at 02-517-3126 or coachkriengsak@yahoo.com.
Scrap rote-learning, teachers told
Encourage students to think, speak out
SIRIKUL BUNNAG
Teachers should do away with traditional
rote-learning by embracing student-oriented classes and promoting joint
learning between teachers and students, says Prime Minister Thaksin
Shinawatra.
Speaking at a gathering of 1,000 teachers on Teachers' Day yesterday, Mr
Thaksin said it was time for teachers across the country to brainstorm
ideas on the education system, ahead of a national workshop he planned to
hold after next month's election.
He wanted teachers to focus on student-centred learning and cited a move
by Gloria de Souza, a primary teacher in India, who pushed for changes in
the education system which has shifted from rote-learning to joint
learning.
He urged teachers to stimulate their students to dare to think and speak
out in this new era when a lifetime of learning and participation was
essential.
If most students dared not to give their views, student-centred learning
would not work.
On the other hand, if students dared to think and speak out, joint
learning would result.
Mr Thaksin promised to increase emphasis on social development, education
reform, the development of teachers and students after the next election.
Mr Thaksin said the change from teacher-centred learning to student-centred
learning could not be done overnight, but it would take more time.
He said the government was in the process of setting up a public
organisation to develop children's brains and learning and revamp the
curriculum to match their brains.
``I will devote more time to develop youths and education. It's a pity
that we have spent most time solving other problems in our first four
years in office. From now on, we will focus more on the social issue and
the development of students and teachers. After the election, I will hold
a workshop to discuss education management.
``I will preside over the workshop, in which teachers' welfare, curriculum
revamps and better management at the Education Ministry will be on the
agenda,'' said Mr Thaksin.
Meanwhile, teachers in the three southernmost provinces of Yala, Pattani
and Narathiwat say they are happy with increased security put in place at
schools in the troubled region, where classes re-sumed last Monday.
Sanguan Intararak, secretary of the Narathiwat Teachers Confederation,
said all his members want on Teachers' Day is not better welfare but
safety.
Teachers have been given the name of a military or police officer
responsible for their personal safety, which had helped teachers feel more
secure.
They could call the officer if they felt they were under threat.
Computers in schools `under-used'
Many teachers unable to even operate them
SIRIKUL BUNNAG
Half of the computers distributed by the
government to primary and lower secondary schools are left lying around
like rubbish or are under-used, a study by the Education Council has
revealed.
Researcher Suttanu Sauries, of Chulalongkorn University's education
faculty, said yesterday the study found 20% of the computers were either
broken or obsolete. Another 30% were rarely used because teachers were
computer illiterate and could not teach students to use them.
Around 200 primary and lower secondary schools, private and state-run,
were included in the nationwide study to assess the efficiency of
computer-based teaching. About 5,000 questionnaires were sent to school
administrators, teachers, students and parents.
Mr Suttanu said superficially there seemed to be enough computers in
schools. The ratio was one computer to eight students. In some regions, he
said, the figure was better. Schools in the South had a ratio of five
students to a computer.
But on-the-spot assessments told another story, he said. Half of the
computers were not usable or fully utilised. Some southern schools still
ran Chula Word, an outdated word-processing program designed at
Chulalongkorn University, or programs even older, he said.
Mr Suttanu said about 63% of teachers were able to perform basic tasks
such as switching on and off the computer and using some popular programs.
But teachers demonstrated low skills in other areas of computer
technology, he said. Fewer than 30% had email addresses, knew how to
maintain a computer or were even able to access the internet.
In Thailand, only 7% of teachers graduate with computer degrees. However,
these graduates are headhunted by private firms, Mr Suttanu said.
He said the survey found students relied on computers mostly to type
reports and homework, or to play online games. Very few bothered to log
onto the internet.
Mr Suttanu said it was not so important how many computers the government
gave schools, but it must train teachers and school administrators to make
the best use of these resources.
The computers are a tool for breeding knowledge, he said. Proper training
of teachers was essential.
BROADBAND / UNIVERSAL
ACCESS NEEDED
Nectec to trial WiMax upcountry
KARNJANA KARNJANATAWE
The National Electronics and Computer Technology Centre (Nectec) will
run a wireless IP phone pilot project at Samkha village of Mae Tha in
Lampang.
The project will cost around one million baht, with financial support also
coming from the Asia-Pacific Telecommunity.
Nectec director Dr Thaweesak Koanantakool said the one-year "Rural
Wireless Broadband Access" project aimed to determine the real investment
costs for implementing telecommunication infrastructure in remote areas.
"We want to prove to the National Telecommunication Commission the real
cost of implementing telecom service in rural and remote areas," he said.
In accordance with the Universal Service Obligation (USO) of the Telecom
Bill, telecom operators will have to contribute to the USO Fund, which
will be managed by the NTC.
In order to know how much one telecom operator should give for USO, Nectec
started the pilot last month to find out the real costs.
"We know that USO is a problem worldwide in terms of the digital divide.
Wi-Fi and WiMax will be the answers to help improve communications in
remote areas," Dr Thaweesak noted.
Samkha village was chosen because there is no telephone service available
and because the village is surrounded by mountains and forest. The cost to
provide regular telephone lines to the village is high.
Nectec has previously worked with the villagers as part of a project to
provide IT facilities to the local school and promotes a community radio
project that is now used for broadcasting information and updated news to
villagers.
Dr Thaweesak said Nectec chose wireless broadband access technology
because it would be a future mass communication system. In addition, the
technology could support both Internet access and telephone service.
During the first phase, Nectec implemented wireless IP phones in five
locations. A satellite link via an ipstar connection delivers Internet
access to the school, the house of teacher Srinuan Wongtrakoon, who
oversees the school's computer lab, a village temple, a health station and
a retail shop of the village.
Samkha village is located 42 kilometers from Lampang city. There are 152
households and only one primary school.
Srinuan said the service had worked well during the first 10 days.
"Everyone was so excited because the voice is clear. Making a call within
the village, such as to the health station, is also free of charge," she
noted.
She said a call to an outside area such as to Bangkok is also cheap at
three baht per call.
However, voice transmission consumes the bandwidth of the school's
satellite link, she noted.
Dr Thaweesak said although voice consumes high bandwidth, the cost of
bandwidth will be cheaper in the future.
At present, Nectec is helping improve the service quality after the
communications system was broken recently.
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