Internet Café can facilitate distance learning in developing countries
Internet cafés are located world-wide, earlier people used them while traveling to access webmail and instant messaging services to keep in touch with family and friends. Now-a-days internet cafés are use for searching, blogging, chatting, playing games, shopping, electronic dating, etc. Internet cafés or Cybercafés are a natural evolution of the traditional café.
Cafés started as places for information exchange and have always been used as places to read the paper, send postcards home, or social networking. While most Internet cafés are private businesses, many have been set up to help bridge the 'digital divide', providing computer access and training to those without home access. The Internet café (or cybercafé) concept has been successfully spread to developing countries mainly because it combines reasonably priced access to the Internet with some food and beverage services together with the chance to socialise with fellow users and to pick up new knowledge and ideas on computer usage.
A street survey has conducted and the outcome is "Internet use is a question of social as well as technological access. Technological access refers to the infrastructure and the physical availability of computer hardware and software, while social access refers to the mix of professional knowledge, economic resources and technical skills required for the use of the technology". In addition "the use of the Internet in muslim country like Pakistan in general and of Internet cafés in particular is dominated by young and relatively middle-class, mostly educated and predominantly male citizens of the urban and rural areas. However women feel unsafe or shy in prescence of men whenever they have visited any internet cafe as mostly the owner(s) or receptionists are men which is creating an imbalance of e-technologies usage between the genders. The survey showed a ratio of about 70:30". At this point I strongly recommend the government of muslim countries to facilitate separate arrangements for ladies and support women entrepreneur.
Internet cafés can act as Internet training schools, places for learning and they have a significant potential to extend this training to a broader area of knowledge with increased competence and contribution from the Internet café staff along with govt. facilitators(teaching staff). Today, the users are, in general, well educated and employed. The main reason is the communicating language which is English. Here I would like to mention the efforts of a youngster(Whose name is not mentioned here for security reason). He is running free e-courses through his website and all the lessons are in Urdu language(image format). For the Internet cafés to become more attractive for less educated people, training courses, combined with practical use, should be made available through govt. intervention.
In short there are some mechanisms which identify the potential of Internet cafés to be a skill and education supportive venues are:
• Internet cafés provide access to people who cannot afford to have computers and Internet connections at home. This is especially important and highly visible in urban areas of developing countries like Pakistan.
• Internet cafés offer by far the largest number of computers accessible to the public compared to the other models like libraries, school or universities. They are the provider of better equipment or faster connections to enable different and more advanced usage.
• Internet cafés offer formal training and beginner courses for people who lack the skills to use computers and the Internet. Besides this, help and support can be arranged informally from the staff or other users if problems occur.
• Internet cafés are addressing special target groups, which are normally under represented in the Internet user statistics, e.g., retired people or people with low income.
• Internet cafés also have an important function in socializing the new tools and technologies by displaying them and their use to the public and, therefore, motivating further use.
Cafés started as places for information exchange and have always been used as places to read the paper, send postcards home, or social networking. While most Internet cafés are private businesses, many have been set up to help bridge the 'digital divide', providing computer access and training to those without home access. The Internet café (or cybercafé) concept has been successfully spread to developing countries mainly because it combines reasonably priced access to the Internet with some food and beverage services together with the chance to socialise with fellow users and to pick up new knowledge and ideas on computer usage.
A street survey has conducted and the outcome is "Internet use is a question of social as well as technological access. Technological access refers to the infrastructure and the physical availability of computer hardware and software, while social access refers to the mix of professional knowledge, economic resources and technical skills required for the use of the technology". In addition "the use of the Internet in muslim country like Pakistan in general and of Internet cafés in particular is dominated by young and relatively middle-class, mostly educated and predominantly male citizens of the urban and rural areas. However women feel unsafe or shy in prescence of men whenever they have visited any internet cafe as mostly the owner(s) or receptionists are men which is creating an imbalance of e-technologies usage between the genders. The survey showed a ratio of about 70:30". At this point I strongly recommend the government of muslim countries to facilitate separate arrangements for ladies and support women entrepreneur.
Internet cafés can act as Internet training schools, places for learning and they have a significant potential to extend this training to a broader area of knowledge with increased competence and contribution from the Internet café staff along with govt. facilitators(teaching staff). Today, the users are, in general, well educated and employed. The main reason is the communicating language which is English. Here I would like to mention the efforts of a youngster(Whose name is not mentioned here for security reason). He is running free e-courses through his website and all the lessons are in Urdu language(image format). For the Internet cafés to become more attractive for less educated people, training courses, combined with practical use, should be made available through govt. intervention.
In short there are some mechanisms which identify the potential of Internet cafés to be a skill and education supportive venues are:
• Internet cafés provide access to people who cannot afford to have computers and Internet connections at home. This is especially important and highly visible in urban areas of developing countries like Pakistan.
• Internet cafés offer by far the largest number of computers accessible to the public compared to the other models like libraries, school or universities. They are the provider of better equipment or faster connections to enable different and more advanced usage.
• Internet cafés offer formal training and beginner courses for people who lack the skills to use computers and the Internet. Besides this, help and support can be arranged informally from the staff or other users if problems occur.
• Internet cafés are addressing special target groups, which are normally under represented in the Internet user statistics, e.g., retired people or people with low income.
• Internet cafés also have an important function in socializing the new tools and technologies by displaying them and their use to the public and, therefore, motivating further use.
