TBSC Consulting offers FREE ICT services and support to developing countries and disadvantaged regions.

PRESS RELEASE - 22/04/2002 from: TBSC - CONSULTING

NEW SERVICES:

(1) Our web site can now be downloaded for off-line viewing
(2) You can set up your computer in a Virtual Network, so we can help you wherever in the world you are (see our web site)

TBSC - CONSULTING

A practical "non-commercial" initiative to help to overcome the so-called "digital divide" at the grass-roots level.

The Internet has made an impact world wide over the last 7 to 10 years and changed the lives of many people forever. On the other hand: it has also widened the already existing gap between those who take part in this form of "revolution" and those who don't take part.

More than a century ago there was the so-called "industrial" revolution - now we are talking about an "information" revolution. Information is nowadays considered as a contributing factor of production; the lack of access to information puts further behind those who have no access to the necessary tools / infrastructure which most of us take for granted.

Doing research on the Internet we have found thousands of items dealing with the so-called "digital divide".

However - there are not many web sites dealing with the ACTUAL problem at the grass-roots level, because the underlying very basic problems are difficult to grasp for those who have not actually gone through the developments over the last three to four decades by taking a "hands-on" approach.

We are helping to change this ....

What is actually the "grass-roots" level ? It is the situation many educational institution are in when dealing with the subject of ICT (and it concerns students and teachers). World wide we are teaching about packaged software from some vendors, however we are not teaching for example sufficiently about "data processing" itself to retrieve useful information for decision making processes of all kind.

These foundations have to be laid first and should be part of the curricula between age 12 to 18. Teaching the foundations has nothing to do with the further development of operating systems for our PCs, with the latest version of packaged commercial software etc. - too much emphasis is put on the tools itself.

It is often sufficient to have the hardware technology of the mid eighties up the mid nineties available in our classrooms to make it work. CAD - Computer Aided Design is a good example - there are great DOS based packages available on the Internet (freeware) to get going and to learn the foundations. If the student has gained them then he will progress and learn over time more about the more modern software packages available.

Esp. in disadvantaged areas and developing countries we have the situation that through the initiative of teachers computer class rooms have been built up with gear from the mid eighties up to the mid nineties and put to great educational use (often with hardware which was discarded by businesses etc.). For most of these educational institutions the financial restrictions are forcing them to stick with this older gear.

However - if there is at least one access point to the Internet at a school, then we believe many of the other hurdles can be overcome.

Worldwide we have tens of thousands of classrooms full with computer equipment which does not run a graphical user interface, but otherwise anything else can be done with the gear.

For all of them we have set up the following web site:

http://www.tbsc-consulting.int.tc
or:
http://www.tbsc-consulting.de.vu

where we offer support over the Internet - TOTALLY FREE of course - to all those schools in the world who have not the latest equipment, but want to lay the best foundations for their students.

PLEASE: report about this web site. This is the only way to reach hundreds, if not thousands of schools world wide and let them know what we are offering:

Resources, exchange facilities, answering questions - and: we are building up the connections with the big guys in the computer industry to help us in some areas - see our page:

http://tbsc-consulting.int.tc/database.html

If you find our project a good idea, then please forward this e-mail to anyone you know (Government agencies, school associations, schools direct etc.) to build up a network.

Thank you for supporting this project - God bless you !

Joe M., Systems Analyst BDO

If you want to know more about this "non-commercial" project then please write to me in person (my name is Joe - I am the initiator of the project):

tbsc...@altavista.it

cc to

tbsc...@newyork.com