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It's time for another lesson for the grade threes at Gaire Primary School, but this is

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no ordinary class.

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They may not realise it, but these children are leading rural Papua New Guinea into the

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digital age.

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This is the first remote government school to have computers and the internet in the

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classroom.

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The laptops that we have now with the kids, they have learning activities like mathematics.

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There's a lot of maths inside.

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There are typing lessons.

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Now the kids can actually learn how to type a word and a sentence.

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So there's heaps of learning activities.

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That's making it very important and exciting for us teachers and the kids too.

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Eventually, each class will have laptops, courtesy of the global initiative One Laptop

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per Child, which aims to connect children in developing countries to the internet.

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Gaire is also part of the Pacific Rural Internet Connectivity System, a project to connect

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rural villages to the World Wide Web through village telecentres.

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All Gaire is the luckiest village because we are exposed to the world, the global world.

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The reverend is even tapping into the net to freshen up his weekly sermon.

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Looking at the Bible and seeing the other theologians, their viewpoints of the Bible,

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they gave me help by giving me new insights.

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There are also economic benefits for this coastal village.

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Being connected has improved contact with the capital, Port Moresby, an hour away.

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I see cucumber collectors, they contact the buyers, instead of travelling to Moresby they

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just contact the buyers through email, let them know that they have this amount of cucumbers

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and they discuss prices and all that.

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Locals hope the internet will also create much needed opportunities for Gaire's young

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people.

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We have many school leavers who have come back to the village and are doing nothing,

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some young people and all that. So I think this has the potential to help them to gain

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information on land where they didn't know before.

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Click that and get it to the Internet Explorer.

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We have employment problems here, but we're hoping these new methods of learning with

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computers will help students to perhaps see the world and learn something from the outside

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world and be able to put something into their own lives when they leave school.

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If it's shown that Gaire's economy, employment, even school retention rates improve as a result

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of its new cyber status, then Papua New Guinea could well have a new template for development.

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It's not just Gaire, we are using Gaire as a pilot site, but as for Papua New Guinea,

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I think we cannot waste time. We must accept the emergence of modern technology and the

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usefulness of the technology in education processes and in the future.

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And it's just incredible. We must not waste time.

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And this generation of increasingly computer-savvy youngsters isn't wasting any time exploring

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the full potential of the new technology, taking their elders into the future with them.

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When I was a student, I never knew anything about a computer. I've never seen one. And

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even in my 30 years of teaching now, now that I'm a principal, my knowledge of computer

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is really, really basic, very, very small. So now that when I walk into grade three classroom

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and there is a teacher with the students all busy doing the activities in computer, it's

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something very, very new and I get really excited about it.

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Who do you think is smarter, the computer, you or your teacher?

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Me.