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Open Economies - The role of software in bridging the Digital Divide

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The role of software in bridging the Digital Divide

  • To: openeconomies(at)cyber.law.harvard.edu
  • Subject: The role of software in bridging the Digital Divide
  • From: Iqbal Mohomed <iqbal_iia(at)yahoo.com>
  • Date: Sat, 12 Jan 2002 18:43:38 -0800 (PST)
  • In-reply-to: <v03007800b866557654a8@[10.0.1.2]>
Hello all,

Great job reviving the discussion thread Mike! I am
currently working on my M.Sc thesis at the University
of Toronto (Game Theory applied to Networks) so you
can imagine my schedule. For some time, my sister
(Khairunissa Mohomed) has been tutoring community high
school students through the Aga Khan Settlement
Education Program. In the last few months, I joined
her but concentrate on teaching mathematics. Most of
my students are refugees or new immigrants from
Central Asia. I wanted to share with all of you a few
relevant insights.

First, many of my students had trouble doing mental
mathematics. I am alluding to simple calculations such
as addition and multiplication. To resolve this, I
took away everyone’s calculator for a few days and
taught them all the shortcut techniques that I use. I
used to have a dogma that rote is bad. However, I even
made everyone memorize the multiplication tables.
After this, I observed a major improvement but I could
still see that the students were having trouble
comprehending the “meaning” of multiplication, etc.
The solution that I have come up with is to let the
kids play with interactive learning software. If the
multimedia is up to “spiff”, I feel that teenagers and
even adults get intrigued. “Learning Software” is
generally targeted towards young children but I think
that a lot of other people can derive benefit.

Second, I am currently taking a graduate course in
Bioinformatics. Coming from a pure
Mathematics/Economics/Computer Science background, I
can’t tell a cell from a protein. I surfed the web for
tutorials on molecular biology and the results were
interesting. 

- A lot of web sites had incorrect and out of date
information.
- Some web sites such as
http://www.nhgri.nih.gov/educationkit/ had awesome
multimedia presentations. The bulk of the information
was provided through streaming Real Video and
Macromedia Flash technology. Both work great in
today’s bandwidth constrained Internet. It is my
conviction that we already have the technology to
provide effective learning solutions. (As you guessed,
I don’t think we are in an Internet learning utopia
yet. I have my thoughts. Does anyone else? )
- The best software that I found was written in
Macromedia Flash/Director but not freely available. I
perused the demo version that included 2 out of 6
chapters. I felt that it was worth it to ante up the
40 dollars (in US funds ... 60 CDN). However, the
ordering procedures required making a deposit in a
European bank and I soon gave up. 

As an economist, I find it hard to say that
intellectual property should be given away for free.
However, it must be noted that the economics of
digital assets is very different since cost of
replication is virtually zero. The standard argument
in economics is that if IP is not protected, very few
people would be filling to incur the expense for its
creation. I think that some economic theory needs to
be rewritten to come to grips with this issue. Perhaps
when I do my PhD ;-)

This leads me to my third and final issue for today. I
came across an awesome website at
http://archnet.org/lobby.tcl, which focuses on
architecture, urban designs, etc. in the Muslim world.
I believe MIT is involved with this. I think the site
provides an excellent template for others to emulate.

The need to eliminate the great divide – digital or
otherwise – has never been more important. The world
grows smaller every single day and it is only through
mutual caring, understanding and dialogue can we build
a better future for all.

Regards,
Iqbal Mohomed
www.mohomed.com


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