Learning About Office Productivity Tools in the Jungle

For my second trip to Thailand a few years ago, I decided to tour the countryside and visit the areas surrounding Chaing Mai. Located near the borders of Laos and Myanmar, this northern part of Thailand is mountainous and home to a number of hill tribes living in dense rain forests. One village in particular was quite proud of its new school built in the middle of the jungle. Soon after our arrival, village elders were notified that we were visiting educators and they immediately invited us to see the new school and its computer lab. Many of us were in disbelief that a computer exist in the village given its primitive agricultural characteristics, remoteness, and the lack of infrastructure. Days before departing for the village, we were warned that the village has electricity for only a few hours a day and there are times when there are none. Extreme political rivalries have led to regional instabilities and a decline of governmental authorities as various forces in the region struggle to maintain peace with each other (Li at al., 2023).

The computer lab we were proudly shown did not seem to differ from others. It had about 20 workstations in four long tables all facing towards the front of the room. Upon closer look, I noticed the machines were relics of the past as evidenced by the use of floppy disc drives and two labels affixed on the machines. Once says, "Property of ZXY School District" and the other says, "Pentium Inside". The Intel Pentium processor dominated the 1990s and decades later, these machines continue to be the basis of computer technology in educational institutions of developing countries (Asfandiyorovich et al., 2021). There was electricity at the time of our visit and when I turned one workstation on, I was met with another surprise. The machines did not have anything Microsoft. For an operating system, it had Linux which is a robust open-source option available for free (Kidwai et al., 2021). None of the machines were connected to the internet. The supervising instructor shared that these machines are for  students learning how to use office productivity tools for word processing, spreadsheets and presentations using LibreOffice.

I left the area conflicted. The machines in use by the villagers resemble those removed from our American middle school 15 years ago. They were deemed obsolete and staff were quick to cart them off as e-waste only to be replaced by the latest model. Perhaps more perplexing are the artifacts produced by the village students. I reviewed the printed essays they wrote, the spreadsheet they compiled and the presentation slides they built. And when compared to the artifacts created by my students here in pur modern American computer labs, there is very little difference in quality. Our students might as well have used those older machines to create what they produce now. Using an automotive analogy, I wonder if our students here in the states are driving Porches at 20 miles per hour?

References

Asfandiyorovich, F. M., & Oltinbekovich, N. O. (2021). Use of computer imitation models in teaching quantum electronics. European Journal of Humanities and Educational Advancements, 2(10), 86-89.

Kidwai, A., Arya, C., Singh, P., Diwakar, M., Singh, S., Sharma, K., & Kumar, N. (2021). A comparative study on shells in Linux: A review. Materials Today: Proceedings, 37, 2612-2616.

Li, Y., Feng, J., & Zheng, A. (2023). Study on peace-building in southeast asia from the perspective of normative localization——based on the comparison between myanmar and cambodia. Rajabhat Chiang Mai Research Journal 24(1), 1-20. 

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