mikes web log

I’m involved in this very interesting project in Aston in Birmingham UK. Aston is one of the poorest areas in the UK (the 16th poorest). The community is mainly Asian from Pakistan and Bangladesh. Over the last two years we have been running a pilot where we have been putting computers with Internet access into homes. The Internet access is filtered and is exactly the same as the schools get. The objective of the pilot was to raise the ICT skills of the adults using the pupils in a local school as the adult trainers. It has been a fascinating project and the great thing is that I have really begun to have some understanding of the community…… or more likely they have begun to have some understanding of me. Each computer has about ten users. Each family seems to consist of at least five children, two parents , two grandparents and some nephews and nieces who live either next door or across the road. For whatever reason computers didn’t seem to rate highly in their lives even though they had high aspirations for their children when it comes to education. You also had the problem of home language versus English language. When the kids get home they are faced with their home language for communication and entertainment. We must thank Sky for that. They also go to Mosque school on Saturdays. They therefore had a pretty full life before the computer even arrived in their home. A bit like the ‘English family’ in the 50’s. The computer invariably now plays an important part in their lives ( are we spoiling it for them). It is usually in a central place in the house and has to have timetabled use and when things go wrong there is a great clamour to sort the problem out.

The project has just got the go ahead for an extension. We are now going to put a computer , with connectiuvity, into the house of all Year 3 children linked to three schools in Aston (210 pupils) and some year 7 (probably 90). This will enable the schools to ignore the digital divide for these pupils and begin to assess there real educational value. Maybe by Year 4 they will be typing with all ten fingers…at once!