Taran Rampersad's blog
According to this Trinidad Express article:
EDUCATION Minister Dr Tim Gopeesingh says the $83 million to provide laptops for successful Secondary Entrance Assessment (SEA) pupils is not as exorbitant as some people believe.
He said the cost worked out to approximately $4,000 per computer, which had a number of special features, and Government was able to lower costs by eliminating the middle man...
Nonsense1. First of all, $4,000 a laptop is exorbitant for laptops for children - that equates to roughly $625 U.S. per laptop. The 'special features' really aren't that special - they are customizations of existing software that can be done with a few clicks of a button. There are really no 'special features'. So, remember '$625 U.S.' and check pricing for individual laptops on Amazon.com
. 'Special features'?
I suppose you don't realize that we have the specifications for the tender (available in this post). {Read more}
Yes, someone outside of Trinidad and Tobago said it:
...He believes that there is a difference between developing a product and developing a service. “A product is easier to develop; it’s technical so it’s more defined. It either works or it does not work. The minute you put a service out there, it gets consumed by the market place, it gets used and very hard to change.” Whether it may be a service or a product, it’s about reducing the risk of failure. McNulty suggested that T&T should be looking to determine whether there can be growth in sectors such as the beverage and other sectors...
Expand that to the Information Technology and related sectors within Trinidad and Tobago, and you have what so many people from Trinidad and Tobago have been saying. It just doesn't seem to mean as much when that happens. But pay a foreign consultant to say it and...
It seems that the Government of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago has decided to spend $83 million dollars (TT) on laptops for children when they don't have a proper plan for implementation within the present Trinidad and Tobago education system. It's not that children shouldn't have laptops. It's that adults should have a plan for educating children with laptops. They don't have one, or if they do it cannot stand up to a slight breeze of common sense.
But first, what we know. We know the specifications for the laptops (they can be found in this post). We know that the curriculum for subjects has not been adapted to technology use. We can infer that the majority of teachers in Trinidad and Tobago don't know how to use technology in the classroom effectively.
We should know that leveraging open source software such as Linux, Open Office and educational software could well have lowered the costs substantially. We should know that since the Ministry of Education doesn't know what educational software they are going to use because they let the vendor choose the software as shown in in the specifications for the tender in this post. We know that the original budget for these systems was around $45m and that the Trinidad and Tobago government has decided to spend $38 million more on something that they have no effective plan for. We know that the laptops will be outdated in less than 2 years by Moore's Law. {Read more}
As I mentioned in the last site update, anonymous comments are no longer permitted - but since so many people come through Facebook it was necessary to allow Facebook users to login to comment. They may now do so through the 'Connect with Facebook' button that appears in the block on the left where you log in. If you can't see it, you're either not logged in or are blind.
Users on the site can also use their Facebook profile to login to the site as well - it will reconcile the two if the same email address is used. This means that if you do, you won't have a duplicate account.
More stuff in the works for KnowTnT.com when Drupal 7 is released. ;-)
When SiliconCaribe writes about T&T lagging behind on e-services, I have to chuckle. I recall teaching my own father prior to 2005 how to use email - and he used email to try to contact various government entities. It didn't work out so well. After his death in 2005, I tried doing the same and came up with almost exactly the same results: crickets.
Where email addresses appear on government sites, they need to be not only checked but responded to. This has been lacking, though I have no evidence as of this year that demonstrates this particular problem. I will be delving into that as the year progresses.
But there does seem to be some form of a silver lining. As poorly done, poorly updated and as poorly communicative as many of the government sites are - the politicians found Facebook. Some even seem to read what others write, breaking the cycle of using social media for broadcast alone. See General Election Social Media Usage: The Missing Link.
More importantly, there seem to be more serious discussions about Trinidad and Tobago happening on Facebook - where people are kludging around the government's lack of responsiveness on websites and trying to get their say in.
Is it getting better? Maybe. But are e-Services getting better? I think it might be a good start to find what e-Services are actually available. In that there seems to be... nothing. Maybe they should start with a place for whistleblowers to submit information.
When I read 'Blow The Whistle' in the Trinidad Express, I couldn't help but notice that something was missing. Here's the hint:
...Ramlogan is now issuing a call for all whistle-blowers who want to help in the blanket audit...
Give up? OK, I'll help. It's an article that goes in depth about what a group is investigating that notes that they are looking for whistle-blowers...
And it doesn't tell people how to blow their whistles, which makes it as effective as getting an anonymous note that 'someone likes you'.
whether they have a pipe that is leaking, as Petrotrin 'acknowledged' about the present situation in the Gulf of Paria:
...Meanwhile, Minister of Energy Carolyn Seepersad-Bachan, in a post-Cabinet news conference yesterday, said she spoke with Petrotrin officials who acknowledged that it was their pipeline that was spilling the oil. Seepersad-Bachan said the oil had spread because of the rains and that clean-up work had been started. She said government officials would have to speak with farmers and those affected regarding compensation. Asked whether Petrotrin would have to do assessments on underground lines, Seepersad-Bachan said this would be done and a report submitted...
So I suppose the government has to ask Petrotrin every day, from now on, if they have a leaking pipe.
I write this now from another country and another perspective - having returned to the United States after finally admitting to myself that personal progress in Trinidad and Tobago was no longer possible for me just as it isn't possible for so many worthwhile minds in Trinidad and Tobago.
It seemed odd that the day before I left I met an economist presenting a paper to the Prime Minister about the necessity of R&D in the technology sector. This was compounded by meeting a young woman who today is involved in the death of a grandfather 40 days later, an opera singer who I was later to find out was a Miss T&T. She, too, will leave and return to her life.
There were quite a few reasons for me to leave. Some are personal and of those I will not write here. Others are directly related to Trinidad and Tobago. Others are issues of relativity in the rate of change of development of Trinidad and Tobago. All of that said, there remains a tie to Trinidad and Tobago and so I will continue to write here on KnowTnT.com. Further, I have 9 years of notes on problems I faced in Trinidad and Tobago - 9 years of notes that I will be sharing in various posts here on this site that come from personal experience. I imagine quite a few people that have crossed paths with me will be upset, but that is not the point.
The point is to turn on the light and watch the cockroaches scatter. To make people aware of the problems that are faced every day, of solutions that may not be readily apparent and to open things up to discussion.
The media has been flooded with politics regarded flooding. The new Prime Minister has been flying around in a helicopter and taking tours of the flooded areas - inflicting her whims on the local elected representatives as she sees fit to the chagrin of just about anyone who wants to be chagrined. The rains come, Acts of God as any Insurance company would have in their legal documents, but I'll note that there doesn't seem to be a large proportion of people going to their respective places of worship and discussing rain with their Creator. Maybe that helicopter is getting in the way.
I've driven through quite a bit of flooding - especially in areas that have been under the control of the UNC for quite some time. And from my own experience, there is some truth to what Patrick Manning, former Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago (and perhaps the man to usurp the usurper in the PNM) once said. Paraphrased, bad planning causes flooding. And in areas that I have been to - that I have intimate knowledge of - such lack of planning has been encouraged by UNC representatives who seem quite content to get votes at the cost of poor planning. You know who you are. {Read more}
Over last weekend and this week, I've been in discussion with someone who claimed that there was a libelous comment on the site - one which they found potentially damaging. Of course, it was posted anonymously - and I had to take pains to explain the difference between a comment and a blog. Still, it would seem that Trinidad and Tobago is coming up to speed on Internet culture despite itself.
After some due diligence, I removed the offending comment. This required making sure that the person claiming libel was an actual human being. It involved speaking with lawyers. Ultimately, there was little of a case that could be brought against the site despite some aggressive posturing - but in my unwritten philosophy there is a need to be fair. And in being fair, it becomes necessary for people to face their accusers. And in this, the site has not permitted for that mainly because I left anonymous comments open until they were abused.
They've been abused. Anonymous commenting on the site is now no longer available.
While this may be an inconvenience for some (though not the people who think Facebook is the Internet and think their comments aren't worth putting on the site itself), it is necessary. And one of the things I plan to have working on the site within the next month or two is the Facebook connection between the site and Facebook so that people can log in to this site with their Facebook IDs. The problem in the past with this has been the interface that Facebook provides apparently changing.
But for now, no more comment cowards will be permitted.
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