computer use
the types of activities currently undertaken by the people in the homelands that we are involved with range from internet banking, through to film editing and production, cross cultural consultancies, and translations services, however as each community is comprised of different individuals with different skill levels and requirements, this will talked about in the following sections on each homeland. it is reasonable to say, however, that each community does require internet access in order to do their banking, and it looks like changes to cdep will require information to be sent by e-mail or fax fortnightly from now on. it is also difficult to say what are the requirements of computers in terms of their hardware and software before longer term computer use and experimentation has happened, although having said this, my observations are that computers are now a lot more interesting and usable due to their ability to work with audio and both moving and still images,
more about laptop computers
anyone who has bought their own computer in donydji, mapuru and gawa has opted to buy macintosh laptops, the reasons for laptops and particularly macintosh (apple) laptops include the following:
♣they can be charged when the generator is on and used when it isn’t
♣they can be more easily looked after as they can be more effectively be controlled by an individual
♣they can be easily transported from place to place, house to house, town to town, a particularly important reason for people who can be quite transient from day to day and season to season.
♣macintosh laptops come with multimedia softare already installed and drivers for most makes of digital cameras and video recorders on the market.
♣macintosh laptops have a good reputation in indigenous communities due to their use by visiting artists, anthropologists and others and due to the durability of previous models over the years.
♣macintosh computers are much less susceptible to computer viruses which is a major consideration when using the internet with limited IT and ICT experience.
we are following the developments in the one laptop per child program, a research project looking at $100 linux based, internet comapible, windup/low power laptops. more information can be found at http://laptop.org/. although the current prototypes will be unable to perform more complicated tasks such as video editing, these laptops could be very useful in an education setting, and there low power requirements might be especially attractive.