Figure 1.--The computer, once a novely, has largely replaced the old card catalogs and is now an indispensible reserch tool for most New Zealand school children. |
|
Computers were in the late 1980s an interesting if challenging novelty at New Zealand schools as well as schools in other countries. They have become by the late 1990s indespensable to the operation of many schools. They offer special advantages to a
small country, isolated from world academic, artistic, and finalcial centers. Students now have trouble conceiving how schools functionded before computers. Teachers are feeling increasingly compfortable working with computers. One of the many advantages is an ibcreased ability to communicate with parents. Computers also, however, present some problems for the
schools.
Several schools report how they have approached computers.
For the first half of the year, we enjoyed superb access to the Internet, courtesy of Otago Polytechnic and their support team of Mr Bruce Gavin, Colin Armstrong and Denise Rahana.
The ISDN line provided immediate, reliable, fast access with none of the
frustrations experienced by many less fortunate schools. Once the software
had been mastered by the new classes, it was well used for projects in a wide
range of subjects, as well as for checking out prices of sports gear to enable
keen local bargaining. Some used it to support their music groups (”Harold•
and ”Deflate•), saving guitar chords of recent releases, others for history or
science.
There was a snag of course, and it offers a parallel with the story of the
tortoise and the hare. ISDN is very expensive to run and by mid-Term 3, our
ability to pay for it had evaporated and we turned to rely on slower, but
considerably less expensive ISP‘s.
Sooner or later, this situation must be resolved and it is not a matter of this
School throwing more moneyat the current problem, but access must become
affordable if we are to benefit from the advantages which we have begun to
discern. This will require a new educational policy from the major communication providers.
Meanwhile we are developing a user-pays solution using software (Wingate)
and a proxy server which our Polytechnic friends helped us to develop. Web pages will be placed on the server by Staff for student use and students will be able to access them at no cost. Any student who wishes to do so will be able to go onto the Internet and follow up their own researches, based on leads begun by the teachers.
Our solution is a debit-based system. Students will buy access time as if
buying a phone-card, and when it is used up, the link will be automatically
cut. Thus the School will not be faced with a large debt for cost over-runs. It
will become a matter of great interest to see just how much Net access can
be gained for the money - certainly not many people will pay to see all those
advertising images which have begun to clutter so many Web pages this last year.
Incidentally, we are one of the few schools to operate a similar debit policy for the use of computer printing, very similar to the University of Otago.
The issue of accessing undesirable Web pages has not really reared its head
as there has been a strong sense of community honesty around the machine.
Some of the software to monitor and restrict undesirable pages is very expensive and requires monthly updates, just like virus checking software. However, the Platform for Internet Content Standard (PICS) should bring some comfort to concerned parents for the ability it affords for control of the four ratings of sex, violence, offensive language and nudity. We propose to employ the filtering possibilities of this standard whenever
possible.
