Feature

Ovijaan Bus visits
Comilla and Noakhali

Amina Najeeba Khan

FOR the last couple of weeks, the first mobile internet café, the Ovijaan Bus by Nokia has been traveling all over the country, going from place to place holding discussion sessions with students. This week, the Ovijaan bus covered Comilla. The discussion sessions held by the Nokia representatives showed that although most of the students had an overall idea of what the internet was, all of them had not really experienced it. Neither did they have email accounts, which in today's world is an essentiality. Without email accounts, we don't really have our own identities in the world of the internet.

The group discussion in Comilla was quite an animated discussion, with enthusiastic participants eager to share what little information they had regarding the internet. For many, the internet is a pool of information.

Not all of us can afford to visit the whole world and get to really experience the various cultures of different countries. But using the internet, we can come extremely close to doing just that. Using the internet, ''Even if we can't visit the places, we can know about the places. We try to find many new things and know about many new cultures,'' exclaimed Nipa, a student of class 9. The overall response was that the internet allowed them to be a part of the different countries of the world by allowing them to see what's going on where and when.

When comparing the internet with mobiles, ''Using mobiles we can only hear, but in the internet we can see the pictures, videos of people, can know about things all over the world, can even watch games, feels like the world is in the palm of our hands" said Snigdha of class 8 of Government Laboratory High School, Comilla. For them, seeing was believing, it was preferable to talking on the phone. One student especially spoke about making pen friends using the internet. Her observation was that, using the internet, they can video chat with their pen friends and really get to find out what their homes are like, what kind of families they come from and things like that. We can find many new friends and know about the lives of our old friends who live far away '' said Shabnoor of Class 9.

One rather amusing comment was made by Shahana Sultana of Comilla, ''Most parents want to get their girls married to guys living abroad. Before the era of the internet, we had to wait till the pictures came to us to see if the guys were dark or fair, tall or short, fat or thin, or had pimples. Now we can do all that instantly using the internet. No need for the long wait.''

To make ourselves better, to prove ourselves as a worthy nation, the internet can play an important role. It can show us the ways of the developed countries of the world and we, as a developing nation, can learn from them to better ourselves.

Such was the opinion in both Comilla and Noakhali. ''The internet can make the whole world one big family. We can find a lot of useful information in the internet,'' said one boy of class 6.

''It's like a fish net set over the whole world, connecting country with country'' said Rafiq, during a group discussion session in Comilla. One other use of the internet that the group in Comilla made note of was that, doctors in our country do not really know the treatment for each and every disease. For such diseases, we need to consult doctors all over the world who are familiar with these diseases, who can tell us what to do in such situations. For that, we need the internet, to look at the treatments done for those diseases as well as personally contact those doctors if need be. Another aspiring architect / interior designer remarked that through the internet, we can copy the patterns and designs of the houses they make abroad and we can make those here.

With regard to the internet helping make digital Bangladesh, all were of the opinion that the internet played a very significant role in that. But in order for it to be of great use in that respect, people have to know how to use the internet. ''We have to make a way to let people learn how to use the internet,'' said Mahin from Noakhali. We have to make the greatest use of the internet if we really want to call ourselves a digital nation. But most of all, we have to use the internet to increase the literacy rate of our country. Like one student referred to the experience of the internet, ''dana mele pakhi urar moton.''

For girls like Shahana, the internet allows for a different, more interesting chapter in their lives. Such was the observation made by Nokia during the group discussion of the Ovijaan Bus held in Noakhali. For the last couple of weeks, the first mobile internet café, the Ovijaan Bus by Nokia has been travelling all over the country, going from place to place holding discussion sessions with students at these places. This week, the Ovijaan Bus covered Noakhali.

The discussion sessions held by the Nokia representatives in Noakhali showed that despite having experienced it firsthand, most of the students had an overall idea of what the internet was.