Recently I visited one of DIL.org’s
schools outside Islamabad near Kahota. As soon as
I entered, I was really surprised to see how neat
and clean the school was, considering it was run on
charity basis. This particular school has about 7-8
rooms and has classes till 5th grade. I was taken
to each class room, and to be honest this was the
first time that so many people were so excited to
see me. In one of the class I was surprised to see
the entire class with the latest “One Laptop
Per Child” computers. Briefly looking at them
and how students were playing with it got me so excited
that I requested my host to bring me back to this
same class after my tour.
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These
students had these laptops for last few weeks and it
was remarkable to see the level of confidence and ease
with which they were using this laptop. They were considerable
good in writing English sentences using its Word program
but their actual creativity and energy was truly visible
when they were using its simple paint program as it
gave them the freedom to express themselves. As you
can see in the picture that one of the student is using
the paint tool to write “Pakistan” in Urdu
even though this paint tool is not meant for it nor
she was taught about it. I was told that one of the
students had created his own tune by playing with its
music editing software. It’s amazing to see how
quickly these children have become fluent even though
they are just in 4th grade and all of them are from
background where they had never seen a computer before. |
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Another thing that
surprised me was their level of confidence. One student
was showing me around in his laptop when he all of a
sudden tried to close his application. I tried to act
smart and warned him that he will lose all his hard
work. At this he abruptly told me that “duhh,
don’t worry it auto saves” and gave me a
look which I generally use for my friends or family
whenever they say something silly when it comes to computers.
After a quick lesson I tried to impress the children
with my flashy iPhone. To be honest like my prior experience
with few elders in Pakistan I was expecting that it
will be a knockout show and they will be confused by
its touch based interface but again I was in for a surprise.
Kids didn’t bother to act silly or confused rather
they jumped right into its application and started asking
me intelligent questions like can one make a call from
it even though I never told them that it’s a phone.
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The purpose of my
visit was to see that how IT can help these children
in such schools in rural areas of Pakistan. After my
brief visit now I’m a firm believer that such
tools can really flourish any child from any social
background. One of the main reasons for the success
of this pilot project is that the students are allowed
to take these laptops homes thus giving them the freedom
to play with it after school.
Moving forward the
biggest challenge I see with any such program are the
teachers. Unfortunately the teachers who supervise these
students can’t create exercises in classes which
can truly ignite creativity and thinking. Seeing this
gap I am trying a start a pilot program to create a
small team of volunteers who will be willing to travel
to these different schools and conduct classes with
these students on laptops/PCs with creative exercise
which can truly inspire and excite them. Our mere presence
is of great joy to them as I had noticed that almost
every kid in the class tried to take a picture of me
with the in-built camera of the laptop whenever I was
not noticing them. It was really cute to see couple
of 9 year olds struggle with their laptops to take pictures
and yet be alert enough to act normal if they sense
I will soon notice them.
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I
encourage you to all to please spread the word around
about such programs and groups like DIL and others who
are doing such great work.
If you live in Islamabad or Rawalpindi and will like
to volunteer for such visits then please feel free to
contact me at hariskh [at] gmail [dot] com hariskh@gmail.com
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Please
visit the DIL website to learn more about this program
or to make a donation visit: http://dil.org/
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