The Ministry of Education is currently running a seminar at the college for area secondary school teachers in order to try to get them to integrate technology into their classrooms. As part of this, every teacher who shows up is given a laptop and a USB modem. Each secondary school receives a projector and a screen for it.
Much as I am not a fan of technology for its own sake, which is what this sounds like, I might cautiously opine that this could be a good idea. Giving the computers to the teachers avoids many problems of giving computers to the school as a lab, i.e., failure of anyone to perform any maintenance ever leaving the lab a virus-riddled wreck of broken electronics, and on the off-chance of any computers remaining operational, the teachers have a tendency to hog the lab and not let students use the computers. Furthermore, if the whole projector thing works out, that would be great for teaching. It is fashionable for Americans to speak of the absolute corruption of power point, but in a classroom with 60-100 kids such that the kids in the back can't see the chalkboard well, assuming the chalkboard is even in any shape to be written on, which is not guaranteed, and the teacher has both chalk and an eraser, power point does seem the easiest solution, assuming the classroom has an outlet and there is electricity that day.
Furthermore, having internet access might actually help the teachers to access more and more factual material for teaching. Textbooks are quite often scarce and more often terrible, and while, if my students are any examples of the teachers of the future, there isn't any good sense of credible vs. non-credible sources of information, at least they all really like Wikipedia. I hate saying this, and I might hate myself for saying this, but information from Wikipedia isn't going to be any worse than information from the textbooks they have now, might in many cases be better, and will certainly be more comprehensive.
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