A number of Port Vila schools have recently begun to take the Internet seriously. Assisted by veteran and novice IT volunteers, they’ve invested their meagre computing resources in an undertaking designed to help teachers create a richer and more open learning environment.

As with all things, it started small. Circumstance threw a few IT professionals together and led them to collaborate to improve their own children’s education. One thing led to another, and now we’re beginning to see the first fruits of integration of technology with teaching in Vanuatu.

The story begins five months ago when four parents, all of them seasoned IT professionals, began to chat about how to improve conditions at Central School, where their children were enrolled. Before very long they were at the core of a group of over 30 parents and teachers, all devoted to taking advantage of computers and the Internet in order to improve the quality of education.

This may sound familiar. It’s not the first time in Vanuatu that parents have moved mountains one pebble at a time to supplement their school’s limited resources. Nor is it the first time that teachers have been able to indulge their personal and professional enthusiasm for their vocation by working with the community at large.

But there are a few unique aspects to this story.

First and foremost, it’s an exercise whose benefits run two ways. One of the key components in any IT-related project is to ensure that it’s supported. Especially in the early going, nothing kills an IT project more quickly than lack of support. It only takes a few moments of frustration to turn enthusiasm into ire.

George Tasso, one of Vanuatu’s more talented programmers, realised this early on. Recognising that his time and that of his colleagues was limited, he began casting around for others to assist.

He found his support in an unusual place: a young security guard working the night shift at his workplace. Keith Gordon had gone to VIT and trained as a carpenter, but like so many others in Vanuatu, had trouble finding steady work. He took the security job to pay the bills and began exploring a new passion: computers.

His excitement with technology led him to chat with Tasso, who immediately saw an opportunity to expand on the progress he and others had made at Central School. Following a conversation with the principal of a school located right next door, Tasso was able to provide an outlet for Gordon’s enthusiasm.

Today, the soft-spoken young man works nights, studies part time at USP and still finds time to provide IT support to the staff of Ecole Centre Ville. He’s already installed new software on the school’s computers, cabled them together and established wireless Internet access in the senior teachers’ lounge. Now he’s taking his first steps onto the web as he designs the school’s website, kindly donated by TVL.

Tasso’s approached is comprehensive. He knows from experience that the only way to learn computers is by getting your hands dirty. Linking young volunteers with schools is a perfect chance to support both at once. Each volunteer gets paired with a mentor, in order to ensure that every problem gets solved quickly.

To Tasso, computers are not an end in themselves. He’s not particularly interested in teaching word processing and spreadsheet skills. That’s useful, but he knows from experience that if one can grasp the basics, the particulars of a given software package take care of themselves.

Far more important that teachers learn to leverage the wealth of information and presentation formats that the Internet makes available. Tasso strongly advocates for the use of Free and Open Source Software. These tools, he explains, are part of an open environment that is far more conducive to learning than standard business applications. They reward curiousity and expose their inner workings to anyone who cares to look.

The result, he feels, represents a ‘fresh start’ for those who use it. They’re not limited by preconceptions, and it’s far easier for them to adapt the software to their particular needs. Best of all, the software is generally available free of charge, and it’s not burdened by viruses and other shortcomings to which too many of us have become accustomed.

Tasso and his colleagues are now actively supporting IT volunteers at four Port Vila schools, with another in the works. While there are no lack of young volunteers ready to assist the schools – one colleague has organised no less than twenty of them in the Freswota neighbourhood alone – Tasso is beginning to worry that he might be reaching the limit of his own ability to provide a supportive mentoring role to them all.

The question now is how to continue. What has to date been an entirely organic venture, expanding and changing to fit the needs of individual schools and their staff, is soon going to have to transform itself into something more organised.

But not too organised. The hallmark of his work’s success has to date been its ability to speak to the immediate needs of the teachers. (Tasso jokes that once-reluctant teachers are now assigning his daughter Internet research as homework, which cuts into his own computer time at home.) If the process becomes too formalised, it runs the risk of become making teachers feel straitjacketed, bound into approaches and processes that might not fit well with their own inclinations and abilities.

It’s too early to say just yet how things will play out. But the effect of this infectious enthusiasm for learning among volunteers and teachers alike is indisputable. When I spoke with the principal of Ecole Centre Ville, he spoke in glowing terms of the entire experience.

From small things big things grow. This just one example of how access to the tools of learning enrich everyone who touches them.

I grew up in a border town, in a border generation. One side of the river was majority French, the other English. My elders held tight to decidedly parochial views about their respective cultures. The English felt the ascendancy of their language (and subsequent control over business, government and education) was an inevitable and unavoidable result of their conquest of French Canada in 1760. The French, on the other hand, used their language as a cultural badge of courage, an undying assertion that they had never been conquered in spirit.

During the 1960s and 1970s an intense and occasionally violent cultural revival swept the French-speaking province of Quebec. Language became a weapon, leveraging access to public and private services.

Many of these reforms were necessary, long past due. Pierre Trudeau, the bi-cultural, bilingual Prime Minister at the time, had agitated for social justice in his youth. He was, nonetheless, a strong federalist, and opposed growing cries for Quebec’s secession from the Canadian confederation of provinces.

Vanuatu and Canada’s respective histories reveal more than a few parallels. Though different in detail, many common themes emerge. In Vanuatu, French and English camps were pitted against one another in the run-up to Independence, with the largely English Lini camp charging full-blown toward freedom and numerous, largely French-speaking, elements advocating a go-slowly (or not at all) approach.

In the years following his victory, PM Lini was often wont to display his pique at his opponents. His Economist obituary mentions his apparent glee at sending at least one French diplomat packing.
The curious, often absurd duplication of services that characterised the British/French ‘Pandaemonium’ was a perfect example of the intransigence of cultures when they are pitted against one another. The two colonial Powers, ostensibly allies, were incapable of seeing eye to eye on even the most trivial administrative matters.

The common – and often vociferous – claims that the French actively supported Jimmy Stevens’ stillborn Republic of Vemarana only added fuel to a fire that had been guttering and smoking for years.

Notwithstanding its strengths, French’s permanent minority status here in Vanuatu has certainly allowed the perpetuation of some of the same kinds of injustice seen in Quebec in past generations. French has often received less attention than it should. The demonstrably superior education system has not received the recognition it deserves. The use of French in law, in government services and publications is often an afterthought.

Given my personal experience living on the cusp between two cultures, I am naturally sympathetic to Education Minister Charlot Salwai’s efforts to increase the French component in the core curriculum. Having benefited from a completely bilingual education, and having experienced the consequent benefits of a more nuanced, more cosmopolitan view of the world, I can only consider his plan to be a good thing.

That said, I am vividly conscious as well of the potential for division that language issues can create. In Canada in 1970, Quebec separatists conducted a series of murders, kidnappings and bombings that resulted in the imposition of martial law and the arbitrary arrest of thousands of activists, most of whom were guilty of nothing more than caring about their culture.

(On a more personal note, my fluency in both languages got me out of a few scrapes when some local yobbo wanted to pick a fight with a ‘frog’ or vice versa.)

Now, I’m not for a moment suggesting that Minister Salwai’s latest education policy proposals are going to result in fisticuffs in the school yard. It’s nonetheless true that on either side of the cultural divide a reactionary tendency exists that often makes dialogue a little more tense than it needs to be.

Canadian PM Pierre Trudeau dealt with the problem with a characteristic display of deftness. He rejected the famous contention that Canada was populated by ‘two solitudes’ incapable ever of truly communicating with one another. In its place he instated a policy of multiculturalism.

Vanuatu should take the same approach. In every important respect, it is the opposite of a monolithic cultural entity. In addition to older French and English traditions, we receive distinct inputs from other Pacific Islands and China, to say nothing of the deep and fruitful integration of the local Vietnamese community.

And of course, at the heart of it all lie the dozens of distinct and varied cultures that make Vanuatu such a unique amalgam of all that’s good in Melanesia.

For whatever it’s worth: If Vanuatu were not such a cosmopolitan place, it’s doubtful I would have found it as appealing as I do. I know I’m not alone in this sentiment.

Minister Salwai should be applauded for his efforts to transpose some of the undeniable successes of the French system onto its decidedly challenged English counterpart. But as he does so, he must remain constantly, vividly aware that language reaches to the root of everyone’s identity.

To speak differently is quite literally to think differently.

Defenders of English and French alike, take note: Education should celebrate diversity, building unity through understanding. Minister Salwai’s effort to achieve this deserve everyone’s support.

“Being rich is having money. Being wealthy is having time.”

Vanuatu is rich in time, if little else. Everywhere you look, you’ll see people loitering, chatting, sitting together, wiling away the hours.

Doug Patterson’s Kranke Kona cartoon contrasts the Vanuatu way with the outside world’s hurry-up approach to life brilliantly: Two amiable men, sitting under the coconut tree, see an expat scurrying by, briefcase in hand, mobile phone pressed to his ear. They ask him why he’s in such a rush. He replies that if he works without respite every day, some day he’ll be able to slow down and enjoy life.

I sympathise more with the two brothers under the tree than I do with the expat. But the real humour lies in the juxtaposition. As enamoured as we all are with having the time to do things well, time is, nonetheless, a finite resource. And while it’s easy to say that time is money, we need to ensure that we don’t focus too much on its price and not enough on its value.

Over the next few years, computers are going to integrate themselves into the lives of ordinary ni-Vanuatu. Already it’s getting harder to find work without having computer skills.

A number of recent developments have moved us closer to having computers in the home than ever before. Cost reductions in broadband Internet combined with the availability of more robust, low-power computers are finally putting everyday Internet within reach of at least 30% of population of Vanuatu. And things are only going to get better from here.

TVL’s recent Internet cost reductions are a pre-emptive response to the government’s announcement not so long ago that the telecommunications licensing regime is being reviewed. The government’s intention is to simplify the process and to encourage competition in all areas of telecommunications, but especially where Internet services are concerned.

The idea is simple enough. Rather than running periodic beauty contests – which is how the liberalisation of the mobile phone market was handled – they’ll simply set some basic criteria, and any company who passes the bar will be issued a license. They will be subject, of course, to ongoing scrutiny by the Telecoms Regulator.

As they did with mobile services, Telecom has seen the light and is committed to compete in the marketplace, rather than in the courtroom. They have pride of place, and this gives them the opportunity to set the tone for the new market. They’ve done it decisively, chopping prices right across the board and broadening their base significantly through their wireless WiMax service.

Expect prices to drop even further when Digicel and other newcomers try to carve out a niche for themselves.

You can now get broadband service at prices that are more affordable than ever before. The basic monthly fee is still steep by local standards, but could easily be supported if it were shared between a few families by attaching a wireless access point to the Telecom device, for example.

In order for Internet to be useful, though, people need computers of their own. More to the point, they need computers that aren’t too expensive to own. This means that not only does the purchase price need to come down, but power consumption and reliability need to improve as well.

Happily, such devices exist. Local families can avail themselves of a number of options. First off, standard computer systems across the board are becoming less expensive, and advances in laptop technology are making themselves felt in desktop computers, too. One can buy a decent quality energy-efficient desktop system these days for significantly less than 100,000 vatu.

Still too rich for you? Consider the latest offering from computer maker Asus. Called the Eee PC, this desktop retails for between 60-80,000 vatu. It requires very little power to operate.

Their laptop version will soon be available locally. It can run a full day on a single charge. The screen and keyboard are tiny, but that makes it perfect for children. It’s also a fair bit stronger and less likely to break down than ordinary laptops, because it doesn’t have any moving parts.

I’ve written several times before about the One Laptop Per Child project. It’s spreading throughout the Pacific now, through the cooperation of the SPC and national governments and NGOs. The first few dozen units have already arrived in Vanuatu, and are being evaluated by Wan Smolbag Theatre.

The Ministry of Education is also embarking on a pilot project to test these robust, low-power laptops in two schools. Further investment and development will be contingent on how they perform in the field.

One of the interesting side-effects of the revolution in mobile telephone services is how they’ve been integrated into that uniquely Vanuatu fashion of idling away the time. I see youth everywhere sitting alone or in small groups, plugging away at their mobile’s keypad.

Some may see this as wastrel behaviour, ‘SPR[*] nomo’ as people like to say. I disagree. Playing games on a mobile phone engages the mind and the imagination in new and interesting ways. And given the increasing sophistication of these devices, there’s actually a lot of learning to be had. More and more these days, the distinction between laptop computer and mobile phone is vanishing. Apple’s iPhone, for example, is a full-fledged computing device that happens to fit into a shirt pocket.

I look forward to the day when youth throughout the nation have the opportunity to while away the hours sitting together under the nambanga, heads clustered around a computer screen.

This isn’t unambiguously good. As we integrate these new influences into our lives, we’ll also be confronted with a lot of material that’s foreign – and sometimes quite offensive – to our conception of how the world should be.

Civil society and government will have a necessary and important role to play in helping to ensure that our children’s time is ‘wasted’ as constructively as possible. It’s encouraging to see them already taking the lead.

But we don’t have to send our kids to school to learn how to use a computer. All we need to do is to give them access to one, and time enough to explore.

I’m of an age to remember when the pupils were the only ones who really knew how the computer systems worked. It was a time when ‘hacking’ was a positive term, and those happy few who had access to their systems became the people who have driven this whole technological revolution.

In my experience – and I have applied this method countless times – all you need to do is identify the bright, curious ones and give them time in front of the keyboard. The rest takes care of itself. A cultural effect sets in, in which bragging rights go to the most innovative, and the whole process takes on its own momentum. Every single one of my apprentices (only one of whom had any tertiary education) has gainful employment in IT.

Courses are all well and good. They serve a definite purpose. Teacher training serves an important role, too. But what we need most of all is that which we’re richest in: Time.

Let’s invest Vanuatu’s most abundant resource into its most valuable asset, and give all of our children time to explore their world inside their very own computer screen.

Unfortunately, health, happiness and social justice can’t always be judged using objective economic measures. How does one measure crimes that don’t happen, meals that don’t get missed, sick days not taken?

Economic indicators do serve a number of useful purposes, of course. The Pacific Economic Survey – I wrote about it here – includes some extremely useful and instructive data concerning the effects of market liberalisation on communications. It also pointed out some inherent weaknesses in Vanuatu and elsewhere in the region, particularly with regards to technical know-how.

People in Vanuatu could teach many an economist a thing or two about what makes for a meaningful and contented life. But isolation is part of what has made life in Vanuatu simpler and more relaxed, and as that isolation erodes, we find ourselves facing significant technical challenges, some of which have a steep learning curve.

The small group of individuals who have taken leadership in opening the telecommunications market in Vanuatu have been remarkably successful thus far. People close to the process agree that the settlement agreement and the new licenses are extremely well framed. They have learned by the example of those countries who went before, and have created a comprehensive and detailed framework with very little ambiguity. This allows Digicel, Telecom Vanuatu and future entrants to focus on doing business rather than bogging themselves down in legalese, negotiation and other distractions.

But there remains much to be decided, and much to be done:

RADIO FREQUENCY MANAGEMENT

It’s possible that the negotiators have underestimated the scope and the amount of special knowledge involved in managing the radio spectrum. From a technical viewpoint, radio is not just the thing sitting on your kitchen table. Television, FM and AM radio, mobile telephones, wireless Internet (institutional and personal), satellite communications, aviation, shipping, the military, meteorological and emergency services – all these things and a good many others need to be considered when managing the radio spectrum. It’s a decidedly non-trivial undertaking that requires a strong understanding of physics, electronics and environmental science as well as international law and regulation. Finally, a bit of good business sense and a dose of political sensitivity would be useful as well.

INTERNET GOVERNANCE

There are innumerable technical, political and social issues regarding Internet use that need to be judiciously addressed – and sometimes judiciously not addressed – by the new regulatory body. The most pressing issue right now is ensuring a level playing field for all those concerned. That requires a high level of technical savvy, especially where enforcement is concerned. We can write good laws and regulations, but if nobody checks to see if the rules are being followed, then we’d just as soon not have bothered.

Network Neutrality is key. Verifying that a carrier isn’t artificially degrading the service of a competitor requires only a few simple tools. But interpreting the output of these tools accurately demands in-depth understanding and much practice.

Likewise the role of consumer watchdog. It requires long experience in the world of business along with a good dollop of discretion. Much of the time, regulators prefer to let the market sort itself out: Let the people vote with their pocketbooks.

There have always been tensions between local and national social conventions and the Internet as a whole. There’s enough content there to offend and even threaten everyone. Countries have reacted differently to this. China, for example, runs everything through a filter dubbed ‘the Great Firewall of China’. Some Middle-Eastern countries allow only extremely limited access to it. The US and many European nations take the opposite tack, doing their best to balance freedom of expression and personal privacy.

The only common thread to their respective and collective efforts is that nobody has successfully managed to change the Internet. Like the ocean, the Internet does what it does, providing us with endless topics for discussion and few opportunities for input. Regardless, politicians and regulators will face calls to define how the Internet is used by businesses and individuals. Discerning the line between what’s desirable and what’s possible will require equal parts perspicacity and tact.

UNIVERSAL ACCESS

As part of the market liberalisation process, the Government set up the Universal Access Fund. This pot of cash, currently worth several million dollars, will be used to ensure that even unprofitable areas of the country can be serviced. Digicel and TVL have both agreed to pay a percentage of their annual net profits into the fund to ensure that it’s never empty.

When they signed their license agreement, Digicel committed a cash bond to make mobile services accessible to 85% of Vanuatu’s people within 18 months. It’s an ambitious undertaking, one that others said simply could not be done. But with over 50 towers dotted across the islands of Vanuatu, Digicel seems intent on achieving – and possibly exceeding – that goal.

As far as mobile phone service is concerned, universal access isn’t a huge problem. The move to digital technologies, where everything is just data, and low-cost software does most of the heavy lifting, will soon mean that virtually every kind of service available in Sydney will be available in Vila, and in most of the islands as well.

This goes a long way to closing the gulf that exists between technological haves and have-nots, but it raises some questions as well. If everything is digital, who is a carrier? TVL and Digicel clearly fit the bill, but what about the company that sets up Skype services in Malekula? Should they too be paying into the fund? If so, how? Would it be sufficient to simply tack on another percent or two to the company’s VAT remittance?

There’s the issue of who gets the money, too. Micro-businesses are likely the best way to traverse the Melanesian Last Mile, but relying on market forces alone puts most ni-Vanuatu at a huge disadvantage. Many local credit facilities are punitive at best, and kastom land doesn’t count as collateral. But installing and maintaining even a small digital network in the islands is no mean feat. Selecting candidates with the right balance of local knowledge, technical experience and business acumen will require selectors with a strong background in each of those areas. Such people are as rare as hen’s teeth and consequently always in demand.

Australia’s Pacific Economic Survey suggests that we shore up the technical knowledge deficit with outside experts based in a regional body. Such a resource will be useful, but the challenges we face require a level of in-depth, detailed local knowledge that cannot be found anywhere but here. Our investment in developing this brand of uncommon sense among ni-Vanuatu will ultimately determine our future success or failure.