St. Joseph Mercy Wings Vocational School; The Computer Lab

Today I headed out to the St. Joseph Mercy Wings Vocational School here in Guyana - to check on their PCs, to talk to people, and to see what needed to be done and get a feel for the place. School is presently out, and there's a lot of work being done on the buildings. Some of the students were there, cleaning and doing some carpentry. The area, as you will see from some of the pictures, is scenic and peaceful - and while the staccato sounds of young men with hammers resounded clearly for a few hundred yards, it all seemed quite natural.

The car would have had some problems driving in too far, so I hopped out and hoofed it for about 100 yards - I like having my feet on the ground in such places. That's the natural place for feet to be - the earth allowing for the flexing of the joints, the absorption of some of the shock of normal movement which we in the concrete world tend to forget when our synovial fluid doesn't. Perhaps that is why so many people do not enjoy walking in cities. Perhaps that's why people buy very expensive shoes to absorb the weight and shock of our bodies in the unnatural environments we create for our bodies.

Robert Frost wrote of in a similar context and a different world:

...Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

...

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

To the students that take this path, it's hopeful that this path will make all the difference. But my concerns are more focused - I have to look at what computers they have, what their needs are, and not how I can assist them but to see if I can find a way that they can assist themselves so that they don't need me.

I made my way in and spoke to Paula, who I was directed to by Sister Sheila. School is out, and there are renovations going on - apparently some of the students there are helping - cleaning, carpentry, and other things beyond my vision. The sound of hammers report development one nail at a time. I enter Paula's office.

We sit and discuss the situation. She tells me that the machines are old, many aren't working and the iMacs aren't being used. There's no internet connection to the school - much less a phone line at this time. These are not new challenges, these are old challenges - much like the lack of a clear road in front of the school, the path for bridging the digital divide has yet to be truly established in the present-day context.

So I head to the computer lab to take a look at what they have, to meet some students just finishing making the place pristine.

There are three working machines - all old IBM models. They are running Windows 98 SE fairly well, and I tweaked one for performance.

A machine sitting next to one of the working ones does not seem to be working - the BIOS beeps out a warning on the RAM, and there is no video output - so I pop it open to see what's going on with it. The RAM looks suspect, but I try it again anyway. The beeps have gone away, but there is still no video. I pull out the video card, and see the telltale discoloration of the S3 chip. Fried video card. It's possible that a new integrated motherboard and 128 megabytes of RAM would cost less than an old videocard like that.

They're certainly the cleanest machines I've seen in a long time - and though old, they sparkle with a bit of pride on the outside in ways that I have not seen in the developed world. The question is how to make them most useful - and how to take things from the pile of unused things and get them in use at a minimal recurring cost for the school. There are other things that need money, there are other courses - the IT course is not a reality at this time - and the main use of the systems as I understand it will relate to literacy. But the old PCs that have been donated do not last long (probably why they were donated in the first place), and will perhaps provide pollution in landfills that developed nations avoid through such donation. To top things off, the Guyana Power and Light company is reputed for voltage spikes so severe that even UPS and power surge protectors are not as useful as one would hope.

The iMacs present the greatest challenge - they are in the back row. When they arrived, they were all working. Though I didn't check them today, I am fairly confident that they are still working - but for how long remains a question, especially without any local support for Apples. So when those Apples die, they are dead - no way to resuscitate them meaningfully. Just like the monitors in front of the iMacs - they are cheaper to replace than fix.

Paula and I discussed the iMacs a bit. They are useful to schools in that they are robust machines which will be almost completely immune to viruses and other things which Microsoft Windows remains to be. But there is no internet connection now... something which will have to be looked into further. The Operating Systems, circa Mac OS 8, can't run the latest software which means training will be on obsolete software. That's not good.

On the way back, I tossed around the iMac problem in my head. It's possible that an iMac can run Linux, which means that Linux is an option at this point - but that means that training on Linux on older machines will be needed. That, in itself, presents another challenge which is difficult. Someone would have to be good at Linux to administrate the systems and troubleshoot them - but on the flip side, when the hardware goes bad they will have to be tossed anyway. Perhaps this is a way to get the latest Open Source software available to train the students on everything from literacy to mathematics to even, possibly, computers. And if an iMac goes bad, they can replace the machine with a cheap PC.

New computers are fairly cheap, and are probably more useful and cost effective in the long term. I mentioned this in Used Computers And The Developing World (December 12th, 2003), and I have to balance those observations with The Problem of Not Having Enough Computers.

As expected, I came back with more questions than answers. The trick, of course, is answering those questions. But looking back on what I wrote in the past, there's one option which fits for these older systems. And that option is Linux. So the real question is - how to get someone trained to deal with Linux for the school?