Update from Countries (Argentina) Computers Alone Can't Bridge Digital Gap.

(Argentina) Computers Alone Can't Bridge Digital Gap. Marcela Valente. IPS News Agency. Online October 2005. "With these three computers and Internet access, it's as if we could reach up and touch the sky," exclaimed Analía Bonesso, the principal and teacher of all eight grades in a rural primary school in Argentina with no telephone, no radio, and only 14 students. …The unbridged distance between the provision of equipment and genuine assimilation of these new technologies on the part of the programme's beneficiaries is regularly stressed by non-governmental organisations (NGOs) working to close the digital gap by familiarising the poor, excluded sectors of society with the latest information and communications tools. … In the city of Buenos Aires, there are primary schools that are well equipped with computers, but the teachers do not know how to use them. "The parents decided to put up the money to hire a computer teacher who goes to the school twice a week," Silvina Márquez, the mother of a student at one of these schools, told IPS. This is what happens when the equipment "comes as manna", without the needed preliminary groundwork. "The state and private sector work hard to provide computers and Internet access, but the challenge that remains unfulfilled is for the community to feel a sense of 'ownership' of the equipment and to use it to meet their needs," Angélica Abdallah, director of the Argentine Telework Association, commented to IPS. …