LITRETURE REVIEW

The Trinidad and Tobago Free Laptop Program is and a program started by the People
Partnership Government to provide students entering high school with a free laptop.
The aim of the program was to have students learn how to use computers quickly so
that they would be able to have an advantage in a world where technology is constantly
advancing. However there is an ever present feeling that for all the good that the
program was meant to do, poor execution may have caused the program to have the
opposite effect.
We use it a lot, but not in school that was the response of one of the students who
received a laptop when asked by the Trinidad express newspaper. That is right, with
millions spent each year to give students laptops every year and for many not only are
the computers not helping them with their school work but they dont even use these
devices in school. Not only that but according another student said that most of the
children used them to play games and record fights among other things. This means
that these devices have also been distracting the students. It is not even only the
children that think that the program is not yielding any results according to a study the
laptop program had no statistically significant impact on student performance. Clearly
among those who received laptops it is not seen as a move that will have a massive
positive effect on their grades.
This however is not their fault. Now surely one would say that it is the teachers fault as
they should be the ones making sure that the laptops are used in schools, but according
to the Principal at the Queens Royal College in Trinidad, Mr Lennard Hinkson, Its been
a little difficult, initially because the laptops were given to the students before the staff
was properly prepared. Now the then Minister of Education Dr Tim Goopeesingh said
that more than one thousand teachers, supervisors and principals were given training
on how to use the laptops in the curriculum; however Mr Lennard Hinkson also
commented on this saying I do not agree that the sessions were as effective as the
Ministry intended them to be. But Mr Hinkson is not the only one who has spoken about
the failure in implementation of the program, the First Vice President at the Trinidad and
Tobago Unified Teachers Association, Devanand Sinanan, said that he felt that more
Training needed to be given to teachers. According to Mr Sinanan "The approach that
the Ministry uses to train teachers is what is called the cascade approach, that is some
teachers were called to a training centre and exposed to one or two days of training in
terms of how to incorporate the technology into the curriculum and they were supposed
to have gone back to their schools and share those competencies with the colleagues.
That cascade approach is not always a successful one". This system also meant that
out of the three thousand teachers that the government decided that it was necessary to
give laptops to, only one thousand were invited to this training centre. Mr Sinanan also

said the "Teachers who were trained within recent times, for example the ones who
would have come through the Diploma in Education programme, they would have
learned to incorporate the technology into the teaching as it were, but older teachers,
who would have not updated and upgraded themselves would have had some
challenges. So there are some inconsistencies in the way the laptops are being utilised
in the various schools to enhance student learning outcomes." And finally he said that
all schools had not received or finished receiving the upgrades necessary to properly
capitalize on the advantage brought by the Free Laptop Program.
So how much money has been spent on this program that seems to have very major
problems you may ask, well between the years of 2010 and 2013 a massive amount of
two hundred and fifty three million had been spent to provide seventy two thousand two
hundred laptops for this laptop initiative, and that is without the cost of repair and
maintenance. That is a simply astounding amount of money for a program that has
been receiving so many complaints and seems to not be working, so clearly one would
think that there are calls being made from everywhere for this program to be stopped
right? Wrong. Even Mr Lennard Hinkson has stated that for many school around the
world, twenty-first century readiness necessitates providing a computer for each child,
but also added that these programs were about more than computers. He is not alone
either, while there are many complaints about how the program has been implemented
most agree that the program needed to be implemented. Even ICT-Pulse.com agrees
that the problem is not that the program was implemented but how it was implemented
with one of the major problems being that it was not properly integrated with schools.
With all these problems at least some of them would have had to have been predicted
right, clearly somebody had to have thought that this may not have turned out well, and
there were. Perhaps no call was more important that the call from the Trinidad and
Tobago Computer Society who, prior to the start of the program, took it upon
themselves to release a document about what they think that the issues with program
may be, and to the credit of the Peoples Partnership Government they did solve several
of the problems brought up in the document one of the areas where they fell flat was in
the training of teachers and how to implement the laptops into the curriculum. While an
article on Southerncrossreview.org which reviewed the arguments for using laptops in
school had come to the conclusion that implementation is extremely important and even
going to such an extent as to suggest the age at which we are giving students laptops in
this country may be a b it too low.

So clearly the free laptop program is not very effective if at all. So the question is,
should this program that is not doing what it is supposed to do and is a strain on the
nations economy be stopped, and the answer is a resounding no. Throughout this
literature review I believe that I have shown that it is not that the program has been
done but how the program was done. The government needs to have teachers go to a
proper training session on how to implement the laptops into the curriculum, so that this
program is not the country throwing money into a gaping hole in the ground but a major
investment in the future.