<<April 4, 2000>>

Dr. Parker Rossman <grossman@mail.coin.missouri.edu>

Mercy Grace A. del Rosario <merge2899@hotmail.com>

Rafael Bozeman Rodriguez, Ph.D. <rbrsat@pworld.net.ph>

Steve McCarty <steve@kagawa-jc.ac.jp>

Dr. Minda Sutaria <MINDA@innotech.ph.net>

Thomas D. Tilson <ttilson@aed.org>

Dr. David A. Johnson <daj@utk.edu>

Dr. Teresita I. Barcelo <tbarcelo@iconn.com.ph>

Victor T. Ching <vicching@compass.com.ph>
 

Dear Parker:
============

(1)  Many thanks for your msg (ATTACHMENT I).

Dear Mercy Grace:
=====================

(2)  I read your msg with great interest.

     We would be very happy if our project could be of any help to yours.
     Pls visit;

      Draft of Travel Grant Application to the National Science Foundation
     for the Manila Mini-Workshop -- 1 of 5: Travel Grant Application / 2 of
     5: Workshop Schedule / 3 of 5: Grant Nominees / 4 of 5: Philippine
     Counterparts / 5 of 5: GUS in the Philippines Pilot Project Proposal -
     February 16-17, 2000"

     and any others at;

     <http://www.kagawa-jc.ac.jp/~steve/global-univ-2000.html>.

     You may be of some interest in helping our telemedicine demonstration
     with echocardiography during the workshop.  Pls contact Teresita, Ralph
     and Victor at your earliest convenience.

(3)  I took the liberty of admitting you into our listserve so that you will
     be kept updated with our daily progress.

Dear Ralph:
===========

(4)  I would be very happy if you can locate any person at St. Luke's College
     of Medicine and St. Luke's Medical Center (ATTACHMENT II), who can help
     our telemedicine demonstration.

     I have sent you enough materials about it before -- in case when you
     lost them, pls go to the web site mentioned above.

Dear Steve:
===========

(5)  Many thanks for your msg (ATTACHMENT III) with Dr. Sutaria's very
     interesting and excellent paper (ATTACHMENT V).

          Dear David:
          ===========

          Many thanks for your msg (ATTACHMENT VI) -- this would be a very
          good answer to Dr. Sutaria's proposition.

Dear Ralph:
===========

(6)  Referring to your msg (ATTACHMENT IV), have you talked with Dr. Sutaria?

     If so, pls inform me her email address.  Thanks.
 

Best, Tak
            ****************************************

Return to Global University System Early 2000 Correspondence

                          ATTACHMENT I

Date: Tue, 28 Mar 2000 07:44:02 -0600 (CST)
From: G Parker Rossman <grossman@coin.org>
To: Tak utsumi <utsumi@columbia.edu>
Subject: [GKD] Introducing the Merge Foundation, Philippines (fwd)

I am sending this in case you do not know about it.

Parker Rossman               grossman@coin.org
3 Lemmon Drive           author, EMERGING WORLDWIDE ELECTRONIC
Columbia MO 65201        UNIVERSITY (Praeger, 1993) Draft of sequel volume
                         RESEARCH ON CRISES is at address below:
                            http://trib.net/~prossman
            ========================================
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 27 Mar 2000 08:13:02 -0800
From: Mercy delrosario <merge2899@hotmail.com>
Reply-To: gkd@phoenix.edc.org
To: gkd@phoenix.edc.org
Subject: [GKD] Introducing the Merge Foundation, Philippines

Dear Members of GKD,

I would like to tell you about the Merge Foundation, Inc. of the
Philippines.  Merge Foundation was founded in 1997 in response to a felt
need for assistance by a health sector to improve and streamline their
information/communication methods and procedures. Even as they have
expanded organizationally, corresponding office and program management
systems were not sufficiently developed and adequately installed. For
its launching project, Merge partnered with a national consortium of
community-based health programs, and each program was given a
multi-media computer provided with sustained and customized training
program. After 1 year, an interactive network was established. The
results were so positive that they paved the way for an expansion of the
network. As a result, the second Phase strengthened the network and is
leading to the eventual establishment of a comprehensive Health
Information System.

Merge Foundation mission/vision:

We envision a society where the citizen's basic rights are protected,
upheld and promoted by the social institutions mandated for such a task.
A society that thrives on democratic processes that are just and
respectful of the rights of the poor and the majority. And where there
is equal opportunities for social advancement and economic emancipation
for all. To this end, efficient, appropriate and mass-based computer
technology shall be utilized to assist developmental organizations in
their information/communication needs.

Our goal and strategy:

The Foundation aims to install information and communications technology
that services the needs of the poor and marginalized.

Towards this end, the Foundation shall forge partnership and join
efforts with developmental organizations and concerned individuals
aiming for the maximum utilization of computer technology as a tool for
genuine social transformation.

Our slogan:
Computer democratization for people's empowerment.

Best regards,

Mercy Grace A. del Rosario
Technology Dev. Director for
Merge Foundation
            ****************************************
                         ATTACHMENT II

Date: Wed, 29 Mar 2000 00:26:59 -0500
From: Ralph Rodriguez <ralphrod@nsclub.net>
To: utsumi@friends-partners.org
Subject: RE: Mtg for native American community project and others

Dear Tak -

The fast-ttracking of your global distance learning program via broadband
is getting very exciting and i\I am sorry that I cannot be as active aqs
you atre with it. Please rest assure that I will try my best to help you in
whatever way I can. As you know my interest is in telemedicine because of
my work with St. Luke's College of Medicine and St. Luke's Medical Center.
I pray that we can be involved with your project and with the coming
(although postponed as of now) meeting in Manila. I am so glad for you and
I know that your world-wide project is getting much support. The best to
you always Tak. I am so happy to have known you and our long time
association since Bozeman, Montana. Go to it and get this world closer
together and at peace with one another.

Always your friend,
Rafael Bozeman Rodriguez, Ph. D.
    (Ralph)
            ****************************************
                         ATTACHMENT III

Date: Fri, 31 Mar 2000 16:30:26 +0900
From: Steve McCarty <steve_mc@kagawa-jc.ac.jp>
To: utsumi@friends-partners.org, gcole@www.friends-partners.org
Subject: Re: Requesting your help

At 11:05 AM +0900 00.3.31, Tak Utsumi wrote:
><<March 30, 2000>>
>

Utsumi-Sensei,

By the way, I'm afraid Dr. Minda Sutaria whom you were looking for
in the Philippines has retired or something.  By various Web searches
I was able to locate items only up to 1997. Her e-mail was
MINDA@innotech.ph.net but there has been no response to my message
earlier this year.

> Dr. Sutaria is Director of SEAMEO INNOTECH in the Philippines.
> Formerly, she served as Undersecretary of Education for Programs in the
> Philippine Department of Education, Culture and Sports.

This was in her article "Technology is the Answer" for UNESCO at:
http://www.unesco.org/education/educprog/lwf/doc/portfolio/opinion11.htm
 

Best wishes,

Collegially,
Steve McCarty
Professor, Kagawa Junior College, Japan
President, World Association for Online Education
Website Map: http://www.kagawa-jc.ac.jp/~steve/
In Japanese: http://www.kagawa-jc.ac.jp/~steve_mc/
            ****************************************
                         ATTACHMENT IV

Date: Wed, 8 Mar 2000 11:34:34 -0500
From: Ralph Rodriguez <ralphrod@nsclub.net>
To: utsumi@friends-partners.org
Subject: RE: Dr. Sutaria's article on International cooperation in learning
environment technology

Dear Tak -
Thank you for this message - I know Minda Sutaria and I will make a point
of seeing her and telling her how impressed you are with what she is doing.
It will be good working with her - she is a sincere and dedicated person.
Hope all goes well with you - I know that you are making waves with GUS and
GLOSAS and it will be successful - the future needs your vision and
mission. You do not need luck - you are doing it and doing it in great
style. Keep up with the good work and more power.

Ralph B. Rodriguez
            ****************************************

Return to Global University System Early 2000 Correspondence

                          ATTACHMENT V

<http://www.unesco.org/education/educprog/lwf/doc/portfolio/opinion11.htm>

                             Opinion Article 11

                          Technology is the Answer

                              Minda C. Sutaria

Education for all by the year 2000! This has been the battle cry of
countries across continents since the 1990 Jomtien Conference on Education
for All. In less than three years, the year 2000 will be upon us, yet we are
not any closer to this goal despite the dramatic efforts of governments and
the private sector to universalize primary education and eradicate
illiteracy.

Seven years after the Jomtien Conference, the picture is still bleak. Close
to a billion people can neither read nor write and compute. Nearly 130
million boys and girls of school age are not in school, and an alarming
number of young people drop out of school, and for many of them, the
prospects of retrieval are dim on account of reasons they and their families
alone cannot resolve.

To provide immediate and effective educational service to these hapless
sectors of the world's population before the year 2000 will require forays
into unbeaten paths and a paradigm shift in delivery systems and curricula.
No time must be lost in meeting the challenge of adopting fresh approaches
for providing basic education and illiteracy eradication programmes that
provide the foundation for lifelong and lifewide learning which should equip
them for life in the next millennium.

Traditional solutions to the problem, such as, providing more classrooms,
teachers, and books alone can no longer be depended upon to solve the
problem. There is an urgency for new alternatives that will make it possible
to reach the vast unreached populations as quickly, effectively and
economically as possible. There is no time to waste. The approaching
millennium will require more and higher ? level skills for coping with life
in a more complex, technologically?driven world. This is the raison d'etre
for the need to accelerate the tempo of action towards the delivery of
education for all.

How can the vast unreached populations be made functionally literate more
quickly, effectively and economically within the little time left before the
year 2000? How can greater learning effectiveness be insured? Technology is
the answer. Technology that is appropriate and affordable, if properly used,
can be the solution to the problem of how the great masses of illiterates
across the world can be made literate in order to prepare them for the
challenges of life in the next millennium which is only less than three
years away.

Technology is capable of revolutionizing the way education and training are
delivered and the manner in which individuals learn, if properly harnessed.
It is known to have toppled critical barriers to learning, such as, fixed
and rigid class schedules, so that learning can take place any time with
appropriate use of old and new technology. Learners who cannot join the
formal school or training programmes can now learn wherever they are and
whenever they can with appropriate technology in place: print, radio, audio
and video, TV or computer, or a combination of any number of these.

Technology can raise the quality of learning by making teaching more
interesting and consequently encourage learners to stay on until they
complete basic education or become functionally literate and capable of
managing their own lifelong and lifewide learning.

Technology has proven effective in countervailing the rigidities of the
formal school and in reaching out to vast unreached school?age populations.
This has been well demonstrated in Australia, New Zealand, India, Indonesia,
Pakistan and Thailand where distance education programmes have effectively
delivered education to young people who are unable to attend school or
training courses for various reasons. They have been able to effect
out?of?school learning for youth and children and even adults who are
separated from the teacher in time and space through learning systems that
heavily rely on printed self?instructional materials backstopped by radio
and audio and video tapes and supported by occasional contact sessions with
tutors and facilitators and user?friendly assessment systems.

Where teachers are insufficiently trained, distance education technologies
offer alternatives for providing them much?needed training or upgrading of
competencies without pulling them too often from their classrooms where they
ought to be.

Technology has made it possible for China to train 1.2 million teachers
through TV broadcasts within six years. The Allama Iqbal Open University
Primary Teacher Orientation Program of Pakistan trained 47,000 teachers in
only six months. The various permutations of distance education practised
worldwide provide a "smorgasbord" or selection from which education
providers can choose alternatives that are appropriate and affordable for
unique target groups of learners. Experience documented worldwide indicates
that while the initial cost of distance education programmes is high, in the
long run, they prove to be cost effective. Distance education need not be
prohibitive.

Technology can improve the quality of learning and its outcomes by
encouraging active learning. This has been effectively demonstrated in
interactive radio instruction which has been experimented on in Nicaragua,
Kenya, Papua New Guinea, Bolivia and Costa Rica to improve the quality of
teaching and learning.

Technology can make it possible to individualize instruction and make
learners experience a sense of achievement in learning through computer
networks called integrated learning systems. The teacher can assign students
individual learning paths which they pursue at their own rate in a
psychologically secure manner. Technology can develop thinking skills by
provoking thought through interactive video and computer?aided programmes.
With computers, it is possible for students to collect and evaluate
information efficiently as well as communicate what they

think and feel. Experience in many computer?based learning systems suggests
that if learners are provided a collection of computer applications and
taught how to use them, they can significantly improve in the way they think
and work.

Technology can thus contribute to the development of personal and social
competence. Technology offers countless possibilities for providing quality
education for all in less the time that traditional strategies require,
provided that its utilization is well thought out, planned and subject to
continuing evaluation and system renewal.

When the old approaches continue to be ineffective in meeting the goals of
education for all, it is time to explore new avenues, to try out fresh
approaches and venture into unbeaten paths. Technology can infuse newness
that can generate interest and effectiveness in old approaches. It can
provide the innovative ingredient that spells the difference between success
and failure in meeting the goal of quality education for all.

It will do well for education decision makers and providers to muster
courage to depart from the old strategies and structures for providing
education for all and adopt technology that is appropriate and affordable.
Innovative or stagnate! might well be their battle-cry. They must have the
courage to experiment, to develop and try out new alternatives. This might
be a combination of old and new technologies, or a new technology grafted to
an old strategy to replace the traditional one which has become ineffective.

There will be some risks that will make those with faint hearts falter, but
they should have courage and not shirk the challenge of crafting a more
effective solution to a long festering problem. They must draw inspiration
from Andre Gide who said, "No man can discover new oceans unless he has the
courage to lose sight of the shores."

  ------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dr. Sutaria is Director of SEAMEO INNOTECH in the Philippines. Formerly, she
served as Undersecretary of Education for Programs in the Philippine
Department of Education, Culture and Sports.
            ****************************************

Return to Global University System Early 2000 Correspondence

                         ATTACHMENT VI

Date: Tue, 28 Mar 2000 19:48:13 -0500
From: djohnutk <djohnutk@utkux.utcc.utk.edu>
To: utsumi@columbia.edu
Subject: FWD: Business Week Article

Tak:

This was sent to me by a colleague.  I found it very interesting.
I think you will too.

Dave Johnson
            ========================================

>ARTICLE:
>
>NOTE:  This article is from a Businessweek Online Daily
>Briefing, dated March 2, 2000.
>
>An Indian physicist puts a PC w/ a high speed internet connection
>in a wall in the slums and watches what happens.  Based on the
>results, he talks about issues of digital divide, computer
>education and kids, the dynamics of the third world getting online.
>
>New Delhi physicist Sugata Mitra has a radical proposal for
>bringing his country's next generation into the Info Age
>
>Edited by Paul Judge
>
>Sugata Mitra has a PhD in physics and heads research efforts at
>New Delhi's NIIT, a fast-growing software and education company
>with sales of more than $200 million and a market cap over $2
>billion. But Mitra's passion is computer-based education,
>specifically for India's poor. He believes that children, even
>terribly poor kids with little education, can quickly teach
>themselves the rudiments of computer literacy. The key, he
>contends, is for teachers and other adults to give them free
>rein, so their natural curiosity takes over and they teach
>themselves. He calls the concept "minimally  invasive education."
>
>To test his ideas, Mitra 13 months ago launched something he
>calls "the hole  in the wall experiment." He took a PC connected
>to a high-speed data connection and imbedded it in a concrete
>wall next to NIIT's headquarters in  the south end of New Delhi.
>The wall separates the company's grounds from a garbage-strewn
>empty lot used by the poor as a public bathroom. Mitra simply
>left the computer on, connected to the Internet, and allowed any
>passerby to play with it. He monitored activity on the PC using
>a remote computer and a video camera mounted in a nearby tree.
>
>What he discovered was that the most avid users of the machine
>were ghetto kids aged 6 to 12, most of whom have only the most
>rudimentary education and little knowledge of English. Yet
>within days, the kids had taught themselves to draw on the
>computer and to browse the Net. Some of the other
>things they learned, Mitra says, astonished him.
>
>The physicist has since installed a computer in a rural
>neighborhood with similar results. He's convinced that 500
>million children could achieve basic computer literacy over
>the next five years, if the Indian government put 100,000
>Net-connected PCs in schools and trained teachers in some
>basic "noninvasive" teaching techniques for guiding children
>in using them. Total investment required, he figures:
>Around $2 billion.
>
>On Feb. 25, BW Online Contributing Editor Thane Peterson sat
>down with Mitra, a stocky 48-year-old with a mustache and a
>mop of graying black hair, in his tiny, triangular office
>at NIIT's R&D center on the campus of the Indian Institute
>of Technology in the south part of New Delhi.
>Here are edited excerpts of their conversation.
>
>Q: What gave you the idea of giving slum kids access to the Internet?
>
>A: It was a social observation rather than a scientific one.
>Any parent who had given his child a computer would invariably
>remark to me about it. I could hardly ever find an exception.
>Within a very short period of time, the parent would be claiming
>that the child was a genius with a computer.  When I poked a
>little further, I invariably found that the child was doing
>things with the computer that the parent didn't understand.
>
>I asked myself whether the child was really doing something
>exceptional or if what we were seeing was adult incomprehension.
>If the adult was simply underestimating the child's ability to
>cope with a computer, then that should happen with any child.
>And I asked myself, "Why then would we want to  use the same
>teaching methods for children as we use for teaching adults?"
>
>At first, I tested my ideas with children who were easily
>available -- children at the company here, whose parents are
>in our executive group ...
>
>Then we tried this "hole in the wall" concept, where we put a
>high-powered Pentium computer with a fast Internet connection
>into a wall and let [slum] children have access to it with no
>explanation whatsoever. To be very brief on what happened,
>the results have been uniform every time we've done this
>experiment. You get base level computer literacy almost instantly.
>By computer literacy, I mean what we adults define as computer
>literacy: The ability to use the mouse, to point, to drag,
>to drop, to copy, and to browse the Internet.
>
>The children create their own metaphors to do this. To give you
>an idea of what I mean, a journalist came up to one of these kids
>and asked him, "How do you know so much about computers?"
>The answer seemed very strange to her because the kid said,
>"What's a computer?" The terminology is not as important as
>the metaphor. If they've got the idea of how a mouse works and
>that the Internet is [like a wall they can paint on], who cares
>if they know that a computer is called a computer and a mouse
>is called a mouse? In most of our classes here at NIIT, we spend
>time teaching people the terminology and such.
>That seems irrelevant to me with these children.
>
>But we also found that they would tend to plateau out. They would
>surf the Web -- Disney.com is very popular with them because they
>like games. And they would use [Microsoft] Paint. It's very,
>very popular with all of them.
>
>Because these are deprived children who do not have easy access
>to paper and paint. Every child likes to paint, so they would do
>it with that program.  However, that's all they could do. So I
>intervened, and I played an MP3 [digital-music file] for them.
>They were astonished to hear music come out of the computer for
>the first time. They said, "Oh, does it work like a TV or radio?"
>I said, in keeping with my approach, "Well, I know how
>to get there but I don't know how it works." Then I [left].
>
>As I would have expected, seven days later they could have taught
>me a few things about MP3. They had discovered what MP3 was,
>downloaded free players, and were playing their favorite songs.
>As usual, they didn't know what any of it was called. But they
>would say, "if you take this little box, and you drag this file
>into this box, it plays music." They had found out where
>all the Hindi music was on the Web and had pulled it out.
>
>Q: What does it mean? What does it say for the potential of
>these slum kids?  After all, being able to download music
>isn't enough to get them a job.
>
>A: I don't wish to claim that this shows anything more or less
>than what it has shown, which is that curious kids in groups can
>train themselves to operate a computer at a basic level. In doing
>so, they also can get a generally good idea about the nature of
>browsing and the nature of the Internet ... And, therefore, if
>they view these things as worth learning, no formal
>infrastructure is needed [to teach them].
>
>Now, that's a big deal, because everyone agrees that today's
>children must be computer-literate. If computer literacy is
>defined as turning a computer on and off and doing the basic
>functions, then this method allows that kind of computer
>literacy to be achieved with no formal instruction. Therefore
>any formal instruction for that kind of education is a waste
>of time and money. You can use that time and money to have a
>teacher teach something else that children cannot learn on their own.
>
>Q: What else have you learned?
>
>A: Well, I tried another experiment. I went to a middle-class
>school and chose some ninth graders, two girls and two boys.
>I called their physics teacher in and asked him, "What are you
>going to teach these children next year at this time?" He
>mentioned viscosity. I asked him to write down five possible
>exam questions on the subject. I then took the four children
>and said, "Look here guys. I have a little problem for you."
>They read the questions and said they didn't understand them,
>it was Greek to them. So I said, "Here's a terminal.
>I'll give you two hours to find the answers."
>
>Then I did my usual thing: I closed the door and went off somewhere else.
>
>They answered all five questions in two hours. The physics teacher
>checked the answers, and they were correct. That, of itself,
>doesn't mean much. But I said to him, "Talk to the children and
>find out if they really learned something about this subject."
>So he spent half an hour talking to them. He came out and said,
>"They don't know everything about this subject or everything I
>would teach them. But they do know one hell of a lot about it.
>And they know a couple of things about it I didn't know."
>
>That's not a wow for the children, it's a wow for the Internet.
>It shows you what it's capable of. The slum children don't have
>physics teachers. But if I could make them curious enough, then
>all the content they need is out there. The greatest expert on
>earth on viscosity probably has his papers up there on the Web
>somewhere. Creating content is not what's important. What is
>important is infrastructure and access ... The teacher's job is
>very simple. It's to help the children ask the right questions.
>
>Q: Are you saying that if we put computers in all the slums,
>slum kids could become literate on their own?
>
>A: I'm saying that, in situations where we cannot intervene very
>frequently,  you can multiply the effectiveness of 10 teachers by
>100 - or 1,000 - fold if  you give children access to the Internet.
>
>Q: This is your concept of minimally invasive education?
>
>A: Yes. It started out as a joke but I've kept using the term ...
>This is a system of education where you assume that children know
>how to put two and two together on their own. So you stand aside
>and intervene only if you see them going in a direction that might
>lead into a blind alley. That's just so that you don't waste
>time ... That would create teachers who are experts at
>composing questions.
>
>Q: What are the business applications of all this?
>
>A: I get asked this question all the time. It's kind of ironic
>that a company that makes [a big chunk of its sales from running
>computer-training institutes] should invent a method where no
>teacher is required. The answer is that just because a method
>is economically viable, doesn't mean you shouldn't look for
>alternatives. A good business is one which provides more and more
>for less and less. The cost of your goods and services should
>spiral downwards.
>
>The second point is that we are going to have an e-commerce boom.
>But what happens when an Indian businessman puts his shop up on
>the Web? Where's he going to get customers from? If someone lets
>me do this experiment for five years, with 100,000 kiosks, I
>reckon that I could get 500 million children computer-literate.
>It would cost $2 billion. But if you had to pay to educate the same
>children using traditional methods, it would cost twice as much.
>
>Q: If this were to become a business,
>would it require government funding?
>
>A: Advertisers like Coca-Cola might be interested. But it would
>absolutely have to have government funding. I can't think of a
>company that would put $2 billion into this. The governments
>will have to realize that the problem of the haves and have-nots
>is about to [become] the problem of the knows and knows-not.
>Do we want to create another great big divide where the problem
>of illiteracy will come back in another context? In a very short
>period of  time, adults who do not know how to deal with a
>[computer] mouse will have a very difficult time dealing with
>almost everything in life.
>
>Q: But most of the information on the Internet is in English
>and the people you're talking about don't speak English.
>
>A: We had some very surprising results there. We all have great
>misconceptions about what these children know and don't know.
>At first, I made a Hindi interface for the kids, which gave them
>links for hooking up with Web sites in their own language.
>I thought it would be a great hit. Guess what they did with it?
>They shut it down and went back to Internet Explorer. I realized
>that they may not understand the dictionary meaning of [English]
>words, but they have an operational understanding. They know what
>that word does. They don't know how to pronounce F-I-L-E, but they
>know that within it are options of saving and opening up files ...
>
>The fact that the Internet is in English will not stop them
>from accessing it.
>
>They invent their own terminology for what's going on.
>For example, they call the pointer of the mouse sui, which
>is Hindi for needle. More interesting is the hourglass that
>appears when something is happening. Most Indians have never
>heard of an hourglass. I asked them, "What does that mean?"
>They said, "It's a damru," which is Hindi for Shiva's drum.
>[The God]  Shiva holds an hourglass - shaped drum in his hand
>that you can shake from  side to side. So they said the sui became
>a damru when the "thing" [the computer] was doing something.
>
>Q: Of all the things the children did and learned,
>what did you find the most surprising?
>
>A: One day there was a document file on the desktop of the
>computer. It was called "untitled.doc" and it said in big
>colorful letters, "I Love India." I couldn't believe it for
>the simple reason that there was no keyboard on the computer
>[only a touch screen]. I asked my main assistant -- a young
>boy, eight years old, the son of a local betel-nut seller --
>and I asked him,  "How on earth did you do this?" He showed me
>the character map inside [Microsoft] Word. So he had gotten
>into the character map inside Word, and dragged and dropped the
>letters onto the screen, then increased the point size and
>painted the letters. I was stunned because I didn't know that
>the character map existed -- and I have a PhD.
>
>Q: So what you're talking about is a different sort of literacy,
>a sort of functional literacy ...
>
>A: Yes, it's functional literacy. There are two examples I'd like
>to give you from the recent past. It's already happened in cable
>TV in India. There are 50 or 60 million cable-TV connections in
>India at this point in time. The guys who set up the meters,
>splice the coaxial cables, make the connection to the house, etc.,
>are very similar to these kids. They don't know what they're doing.
>They only know that if you do these things, you'll get the cable
>channel. And they've managed to [install] 60 million cable
>connections so far.
>
>Example No. 2 is the bicycle. I think we have the biggest
>bicycle-manufacturing industry in the world. The bicycle is
>ubiquitous here,  and it's much the same in Malaysia, China,
>Africa. But you don't ask how the population became
>bicycle-literate. They just use it. So what I'd like to see
>is an India in which a large part [of the population] treats
>the computer that way.
>
>The other thing is [how the Internet will change when most
>Indians gain access to it]. We have the analogy of cable TV
>in India. Originally, it was all in English. It took exactly
>four years for all the programming to become Hindi. Star TV
>is now almost all in Hindi. If you go to Bangkok, they hate it.
>
>Q: You're saying that a lot of Hindi content will appear
>as more Indians surf the Net?
>
>A: Exactly. Let me go on record as saying it's not a question of
>what the Internet will do to India. It's a question of what India
>will do to the Internet ... If rural India goes onto the Internet,
>there will be an absolute flood of Indian-language content from
>people trying to sell to them.
>
>Q: Has the Indian or any other government expressed interest
>in funding such  a project?
>
>A: Several government agencies, several state governments, and
>several world agencies have expressed an interest. Unfortunately,
>I don't want to name them because I need to get the funds first.
>
>Q: You say that only the children used the computer, not adults.
>What does this mean for adult education?
>
>A: I'm not even going to suggest that we use this [technique]
>for adults. The only reaction we got from adults was, "What
>on earth is this for? Why is there no one here to teach us
>something? How are we ever going to use this?"  I contend
>that by the time we are 16, we are taught to want teachers,
>taught that we cannot learn anything without teachers.
>
>There are two points I'd like to make about the adults. One is
>that the adults asked the children to do things for them. For
>example, to read their horoscopes on the Hindi news sites.
>The second thing is the reaction of the women. I would ask them
>why they didn't use [the computer], and they would say, "I don't
>have enough brains to understand all this." I would say,
>"What  about your daughters?" And the answer was, "They have
>lots of brains." So I said, "Do you think I should just remove
>this thing?" The answer was always, "No, no, no." I asked why
>not. And they said, "Because it's very good for the children."
>
>Now, if the mothers have realized that, I'm happy. I don't care
>if they don't come [to use the computer]. Because all we have
>to do is wait one generation. Not even that. In five years,
>a 13-year-old is going to be 18 and be an adult.
>
>Q: Where do you go from here?
>
>A: There is one experiment that scares me. These children don't
>know what e-mail is. If I gave them e-mail, I don't know what
>would happen. I'll probably try it anyway. But remember the
>stories one used to hear about people finding lost tribes and
>introducing them to Coca-Cola? I'm really seriously scared about
>what would happen if suddenly the whole wide world had access to
>these kids. I don't know who would talk to them for what purpose.
>
>
------------------------------------------------------------
Richard E. Klosterman, Professor
Department of Geography and Planning
University of Akron
Akron, Ohio  44325-5005
Phone:  (330) 972-8037
Fax:    (330) 972-6080
E-mail: Klosterman@UAkron.edu
<http://www.uakron.edu/geography/faculty&staff/klosterman.htm>
------------------------------------------------------------
            ****************************************

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Steve McCarty
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Dr. Minda Sutaria
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Innovative Technology (INNOTECH)
UP Diliman, Commonwealth Ave
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Manila, Philippines
tel: 928-7348
fax: 921-0224
MINDA@innotech.ph.net
info@innotech.org<<February 24, 2000>>Did not work.
http://www.innotech.org
http://www.islesite.com/innotech/
http://www.islesite.com/innotech/news/story.turning.htm
http://cleo.murdoch.edu.au/gen/aset/confs/edtech94/rw/sutaria.html
http://www.unesco.org/education/educprog/lwf/doc/portfolio/opinion11.htm

Thomas D. Tilson
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Academy for Educational Development
1875 Connecticut Ave. NW
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fax (202)884-8402
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Dr. David A. Johnson, AICP
Board member of GLOSAS/USA
Former President of Fulbright Association
Professor Emeritus, School of Planning
College of Arts and Sciences
University of Tenneseee
108-I Hoskins Library
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USA
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Manila, Philippines
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     523-1633
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**********************************************************************
* Takeshi Utsumi, Ph.D., P.E., Chairman, GLOSAS/USA                  *
* (GLObal Systems Analysis and Simulation Association in the U.S.A.) *
* Laureate of Lord Perry Award for Excellence in Distance Education  *
* Founder of CAADE                                                   *
* (Consortium for Affordable and Accessible Distance Education)      *
* President Emeritus and V.P. for Technology and Coordination of     *
*   Global University System (GUS)                                   *
* 43-23 Colden Street, Flushing, NY 11355-3998, U.S.A.               *
* Tel: 718-939-0928; Fax: 718-939-0656 (day time only--prefer email) *
* Email: utsumi@columbia.edu;  Tax Exempt ID: 11-2999676             *
* http://www.friends-partners.org/GLOSAS/                            *
**********************************************************************

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