internet

I live in a rural village in Sri Lanka. My village has electricity. No one is connected to the Internet in the village nor are any of the schools. There are a few people in the village who have fixed line phones and who can access the Internet.Many people in the village have mobile phones. There is a communication center in the nearest town where you can get on line for a fee and send or receive emails and bearing in mind the slow download speeds have access to the world wide web, though quite limited.

I believe in time we can start setting up Internet facilities in schools and get the youth in the villages to take up this medium and have access to the same information that any other student in any country has.

We cannot begin to start in this venture until the basic knowledge of English is improved so that this information that is available can be useful to them. This is the priority, as once this is done, the Internet costs and set up costs will come down and the hoped for access can be achieved.The youth are the future of the country. They have been able to take on the Internet like ducks to water once their knowledge of English is at an acceptable level. This is evidenced by the incredibly sophisticated blogs that some of the young people in Sri Lanka have managed to create. It is sad however that there appears to be a dearth of older people writing blogs in Sri Lanka as evidenced by some of the writings that appear to be more youth centric! as opposed to experience centric!

The teaching of English should be the priority. There are not enough teachers of English and firstly this should be addressed. I am willing to get involved in my local school in Giritale where even the parents are very disgruntled at the paucity of their children's education in all subjects.