Geisha Kow­lessar

With the new school term com­menc­ing soon, Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Tim Gopeesingh has as­sured that the oth­er batch of lap­tops, some 10,300, are ex­pect­ed to be made avail­able by Jan­u­ary 2011. Gopeesingh said all the fund­ing has al­ready been ap­proved and al­lo­cat­ed for the lap­tops which would then be dis­trib­uted to stu­dents. The lap­top ini­tia­tive was an elec­tion promise by the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment led by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar. Chiev­elle Brito, a Form One stu­dent of the Suc­cess/Laven­tille Sec­ondary School be­came the first stu­dent to re­ceive a lap­top from the Prime Min­is­ter. Say­ing that more than 2,000 teach­ers were al­ready trained to use the com­put­ers, Gopeesingh said the $83 mil­lion was mon­ey well spent. He said a com­pre­hen­sive mon­i­tor­ing and eval­u­a­tion sys­tem was al­so im­ple­ment­ed to de­ter­mine the ef­fec­tive­ness of the de­vices. Thus far, Gopeesingh said there have been no re­ports of "hic­cups" with the lap­tops that were al­ready dis­trib­uted. "So far we have not got­ten any ad­verse re­ports and it seems that the lap­tops have been put to good use by the stu­dents," he said.

Mon­ey well spent

"We know it's an im­por­tant tool that would as­sist them in their stud­ies and it's mon­ey well spent.

"We have a mon­i­tor­ing and eval­u­a­tion com­mit­tee and eval­u­a­tion is ex­pect­ed to be­gin short­ly," Gopeesingh as­sured. Echo­ing the min­is­ter's sen­ti­ments, Zena Ra­matali, pres­i­dent of the Na­tion­al Par­ent Teacher As­so­ci­a­tion (NPTA) said mon­i­tor­ing of the lap­tops was cru­cial as stu­dents could be eas­i­ly swayed to use it for non-aca­d­e­m­ic pur­pos­es. Cit­ing an ex­am­ple, Ra­matali said she re­cent­ly scold­ed a pupil who was caught play­ing games on his lap­top. "I was on the bus and I had cause to speak to a young man af­ter I saw him play­ing games on his lap­top, and these are some of the things that we must try to avoid. "And that's where the role of the par­ent comes in be­cause it is cru­cial that stu­dents are be­ing mon­i­tored while at home and out of school as well," she said. Ra­matali said it was on­ly "fair" that par­ents be made to pay $4,000 in the event of the lap­top be­ing stolen as stat­ed in a clause of the con­tract. "It is time that par­ents be held ac­count­able for the be­hav­iour of their chil­dren. If there is a case where it was a gen­uine ac­ci­dent then that fac­tor should be tak­en in­to con­sid­er­a­tion. "But if it was a case of care­less­ness then it's the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of the par­ents and they ought to pay as stat­ed in the con­tract," Ra­matali said.

Job: No neg­a­tive re­ports

Pres­i­dent of the T&T Uni­fied Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) Rous­tan Job called on greater col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween the as­so­ci­a­tion and the min­istry. Say­ing there has been no neg­a­tive re­ports since the lap­tops were dis­trib­uted. Job said TTUTA in­tend­ed to con­duct a ran­dom sur­vey to de­ter­mine the ef­fec­tive­ness and ef­fi­cien­cy of the lap­tops. "The lap­tops are here and we must let good sense pre­vail. At the start of the new school term we will be con­duct­ing a ran­dom sur­vey to de­ter­mine how well the lap­tops were work­ing and how well they have been in­te­grat­ed in­to the school sys­tem," Job said. He said one of the "is­sues" raised with the min­istry be­fore the dis­tri­b­u­tion was to have schools prop­er­ly out­fit­ted with elec­tri­cal wiring. "That was def­i­nite­ly an is­sue be­cause there may be some schools which may not have the elec­tri­cal ca­pac­i­ty and some up­grad­ing might have been need­ed. "And we did warn the Gov­ern­ment about up­grad­ing some of the elec­tri­cal ca­pac­i­ty of some schools which may need up­grad­ing," Job said. Say­ing that TTUTA was "nev­er against" the dis­tri­b­u­tion of the lap­tops, Job said the or­gan­i­sa­tion was in­stead con­cerned by the "man­ner in which the min­istry" op­er­at­ed. "It's re­al­ly a ques­tion of how the min­istry did things. Train­ing teach­ers is just the tip of the ice­berg. "We don't want it to be a case where things are be­ing done just for po­lit­i­cal mileage. We must have stronger ties and greater col­lab­o­ra­tion," Job added.