Editorial: Schoolbooks on the Web

Sat, 07/05/2008 12:21 PM | Opinion

From August this year, school textbooks will be available for students through the Internet. This is a commendable idea.

When students can download their textbooks from one of the following Web addresses: http://bse.depdiknas.go.id , www.depdiknas.go.id , www.pusbuk.or.id and www.sibi.or.id, this is a sign of progress.

Everyone agrees that the National Education Ministry is facing an uphill battle to achieve its objectives. To create equal opportunities for school students in the largest archipelagic country in the world represents an enormous challenge. Students will soon be able to download 49 textbooks, at least in theory. The number will soon be increased to around 300.

The book shortage is only one of the problems confronting national education. The same goes for teachers and even school buildings.

More than 40 years ago we used to send teachers to work in Malaysia. Now, there are primary schools in remote regions with only one teacher. This is not encouraging for a country whose quality of education was once an example to its neighbors.

The ministry's move is both visionary and a breakthrough. In the past publishing textbooks for schools, a lucrative industry when there are more than 40 million school students, was often marred by corruption, which sent book prices soaring and made the cost of education more expensive.

With only one year of shelf life for many educational books, parents found it hard financially to buy new books for each of their children, every year.

Now the government has extended the shelf life of textbooks to five years and has put them in digital form on the Internet.

The problem, more than two years after its introduction, is that students are still having problems downloading the textbooks, especially those living off the island of Java.

Lack of access to Internet connections -- a communications infrastructure problem -- is one reason. This may be linked to a limited development budget in some regions.

In Central Kalimantan, some students have to travel 125 kilometers to find the nearest Internet cafe, as reported by Kompas last week.

Or, if there is a connection, it takes ages to download big documents. One teacher said one book can contain more than 500 megabytes of data. This has prompted teachers to propose to the ministry that it should be possible to download books chapter by chapter.

It is sad that such a good idea should be held back by such obstacles. Our information technology connection quality is in a sorry state compared to Singapore, Malaysia or Thailand.

The Singapore government has a plan to wire the whole island in the near future.

In India, farmers make use of the Internet to check everything from agricultural prices, to the weather and market trends.

Or we can look south to Australia where, remote learning (by radio) was introduced successfully in the 1970s, even before the Internet age. The country has much in common with Indonesia, as far as vast distances and remote areas are concerned.

This shows that there are ample examples of good practice around us.

Part of the problem in Indonesia lies in the monopoly-like practices of telecommunications companies. If they could open up, things would definitely be better.

We can get around poor infrastructure, thanks to technological innovation. Some big private companies are doing just that. They have state-of-the-art IT because the technology is there.

It is now possible to go virtual without using wires.

This is one possibility that the ministry can explore.

Another one, which could lower costs, is to insert textbook data into tiny memory chips that cost only US$8 (about Rp 80,000) each.

The memory chips, in turn could be downloaded by students onto CDs, which will be cheaper still. All of this can be done without Internet connections.

Or the ministry can cooperate with cellphone companies. Each school student or teacher with a cellphone could get a free memory chip. Today, the country has more than 80 million cellphone users.

This would go well with the One Laptop For Every Child concept that will soon be coming to Indonesia.

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