ICT Hardware
Gerry George
opportune to take a close look at "green" technology - not because it
is currently vogue, but because energy consumption (plus cost and
availability) may be an issue. So from the ground up, we should
consider energy efficiency as part of the basic requirements.
Consequently I would recommend the use of thin clients for the
establishment of school labs. One good example is the products from
nComputing (ncomputing.com), whose terminal devices use as little as
10 watts and attach directly to a monitor. It also serves to reduce
operating and maintenance costs, as it is a completely solid state
device with no moving parts involved.
Another candidate is Userful (userful.com), although they may require
a greater level of hardware deployment.
Also related to this issue is the use of software to support all of
the initiatives. I think also a very close look should be taken at
Open Source software solutions. Advantages are to similarly reduce
acquisition and deployment costs, but even more compelling, is the
opportunity to create an ICT eco-system within the country for
providing support, modification, training, etc around such software,
allowing for rapid expansion and re-deployment in new areas, thus
supporting the expansion of initiatives, without a significant cost
and/or licensing issues. While in some instances, the start-up costs
may be greater (additional levels of training and support/
implementation), the long-term benefits will far outweigh the
immediate savings in time.
It is likely that with all of the international assistance - financial
and otherwise - being pledged, we may consider that the costs for
hardware and software may not be an issue. However, we need to
consider a sustainable approach which will allow the people of Haiti
to be able to continue on their own and at some point to wean
themselves from the teat of international aid, thereby allowing their
people to develop grow with dignity and pride.
Gerry George
Anil Ramnanan
Solutions should be able to make use of limited bandwidth for
communication and provide facilities for offline access to content.
Anil Ramnanan
Michael Annamunthodo
From: Gerry George <george...@gmail.com>
To: Haiti Education <haiti-e...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Wed, January 20, 2010 9:50:49 AM
Subject: ICT Hardware
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