K12> Computers, Classrooms for Cambodia:
- From: Gleason Sackmann <gleason@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: NetHappenings <nethappenings@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 7 Feb 2003 08:12:13 -0600
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Net Happenings - From Educational CyberPlayGround
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Computers, Classrooms for Cambodia: A Program to Build New Elementary
Schools and Bring Them Online
http://loohooloo.mit.edu/plan/plan_issues/55/Cambodia/article_bottom.html
In the village of Robib, a Cambodian outpost of 4000 people with a per
capita income of about $37 a year -- a village with no piped water,
electricity or telephone systems -- children are swapping e-mail
messages with pen pals around the world.
At the same time, a group of village women are selling their woven
silk scarves on the Web from Boston to Tokyo, payable by credit card
and delivered in a fortnight.
And now a telemedicine project is getting underway that will link this
tiny village to medical experts at Harvard and the Massachusetts
General Hospital.
All of this is the result of a highly ambitious program initiated by
Bernard Krisher, a US philanthropist and Far East representative for
the Media Lab, to build two hundred new elementary schools in Cambodia
and hook them up to the Internet -- a program that has a number of
unofficial connections to MIT.
For starters, many of the computers being installed in the new schools
are donated by MIT, and one of the project consultants is Michael
Hawley, professor of media technology at the Media Lab, who has
founded a school there in his mother's name. (The best Christmas
present she ever got, he says.)
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Two more schools have also been founded there by Nicholas Negroponte,
co-founder and senior director of the Media Lab - one in his name and
one in the name of Bradford Washburn, with funds Negroponte received
for the Washburn Award from the Museum of Science.
And MIT's Chris Nutter (MArch'96) is doing design work for the new
program, a reprise of his role in another of Krisher's projects, a
charity hospital designed by Kenzo Tange, just a few years back. (See
[3]PLAN 48.)
Of course all these new schools, and especially all these new
computers, raise an obvious question: who will teach computer skills?
And the answer, surprisingly, is Cambodian orphans. Equipped with a
fleet of computers, many of which were given by MIT, the Future Light
Orphanage in Phnom Penh has in just a few years raised some of
Cambodia's smartest computer experts.
So last year, when a satellite Internet link was set up in a
pigpen-like structure just outside the new school in Robib -- to keep
the cows from messing with it -- an MIS team of orphans was brought in
to set up the machines and get the villagers underway.
Now, as the next step in learning how villages in developing countries
can benefit from the Internet, the telemedicine project is being
undertaken. Once a month, a nurse from the Sihanouk Hospital-Center of
Hope in Phnom Penh -- the hospital Krisher and Nutter worked on
together -- visits the village with Dave Robertson, a volunteer on
leave from the Media Lab, to conduct basic patient check-ups, record
their information and take digital photographs of their symptoms.
Dave transmits the data and photos back to the hospital in Phnom Penh
and on to Mass General doctors who study the data and respond to each
patient within hours. While at Robib, the nurse also instructs the
villagers in general preventive health care and gather questions for
the specialists at both hospitals; the responses are then placed on
the village web page in both English and the Khmer language.
For a country that is considered to be the world's most neglected,
medically -- during the Pol Pot regime, there was only one doctor in
country for every 45,000 people -- this project is a bold experiment,
an attempt to demonstrate how a people isolated for decades can use
the Internet to leapfrog into the developed world.
If you'd like to take part in the program, see the [4]sidebar. If
you'd like to visit the Robib website: [5]www.villageleap.com. To
learn about the school-building program, go here:
[6]www.cambodiaschools.com. To learn about the Future Light
Orphanage:[7]www.futurelight.org.
References
1.
http://loohooloo.mit.edu/plan/plan_issues/55/Cambodia/photo1_enlargement.html
2.
http://loohooloo.mit.edu/plan/plan_issues/55/Cambodia/photo2_enlargement.html
3. http://sap.mit.edu/plan/plan_issues/48/toc.html
4. http://sap.mit.edu/plan/plan_issues/55/Cambodia2/index.html
5. http://www.villageleap.com/
6. http://www.cambodiaschools.com/
7. http://www.futurelight.org/
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