ICT-Essay on the Hole-in-a-Wall Initiative

2007

Tresor Ngassa (st105190)ICT10/30/2007

Hole in The Wall Initiative

Introduction

E-learning in the context of developing countries has brought a lot attention lately.Under the generally admitted assumption that a better and wider education will translateeventually in sustainable economic development, many initiatives have seen the lightacross the world.Acknowledging the importance of Information and Communication Technology (ICT),some of those projects focus on bridging the widening digital gap that exists betweendeveloped countries and developing countries.The most popular one is the OLPC initiative. Lead by several partners including bigmultinational companies and with a worldwide ambition, this initiative is the biggest,most visible part of the iceberg.But there are several other initiatives with a smaller scope both in terms of objectives aswell as in terms of geographical coverage.This article will present one of the most innovative initiatives in that field, named “Holein the Wall”. The project is lead by a company named Hiwel which stands for Hole-In-The-Wall Education Limited.

The Idea

The idea is radically new and somehow counter-intuitive.It’s about installing a computer (the digital hole) in a walland seeing what happens. That’s it.There is no access controlling and the hole is generally putin an open playground (a middle of a street for example).The computer is loaded with additional education-relatedsoftware but nothing is imposed and the children can usethe computer to do whatever they want to do, be itdrawing paint, surfing on the net or playing games.A mere, non intrusive remote monitoring is performed tomanage the necessary administrator tasks but nothingmore.As we stated before, the idea is quite counter-intuitive andat the first look seems not to be effective in the context of 2

learning as one would assumed (as we did when we first heard about it) that children areunlikely to dive into learning activities but rather spend most of the time into playinggames.But, as the founder says himself:

“Hole-in-the-wall Learning Stations seek to create a new paradigm in the learning process by providing unrestricted computer access to groups of children in an open playground setting. We believe that such an open setting will use child’s natural curiosityto stimulate learning.”

The following parts will present the implementation of the project and how successful (or not) it has been up to now.

The Installation

The “Hole” is actually a kiosk. Kiosks were constructed so that a monitor was visiblethrough a glass plate built into a wall. The PCs driving the monitor were usually placedon the other side of the wall in a brick enclosure.Instead of using a keyboard, computers can be accessed through a specially designed joystick mouse, which allows users to control the movement and press keys on a screen- based keyboard.This has helped alleviate concerns about vandalism, wear and tear of keyboard keys andthe susceptibility of computers to dust and abrasion.Internet Connectivity was provided using leased lines, ISDN lines and Dial-upconnections. In the locations where there was inadequate telecommunicationsinfrastructure, cached web content was provided to simulate web access.Computers are placed in a brick enclosure with thicker-than-normal walls to minimize theimpact of high daily fluctuation in temperatures and dust. Ventilating fans were used tomaintain ambient temperature, particularly in summer.

The Target and the Educational Challenges

The main objective of the project has been to provide underprivileged children, with littleor no formal education and living in poverty, with access to computers and the Internet.To understand the project we need to present the origin of the project. The founder isSugata Mitra, a physicist who is working in India. He observed that children were being poorly prepared for a technological future. Mitra believes that classrooms, teachers andtextbooks will be less important, while computers will increasingly become a prominenteducational tool to help shepherd India into the 21st century.Mr. Mitra spearheads research and development at NIIT, India’s largest commercialsupplier of information technology (IT) training courses yet, in one of the ironic twist in3