Alex Little

I attended my first English lesson in about 20 years this morning when I visited the Maiwayni School in Mekelle to see their trial of the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project. OLPC trials are being run at a few other schools in Ethiopia, but this is the first in the Tigray region. It’s a model school for the area and has very good facilities for it’s 600+ students and staff.

Around 100 students of grades 6 and 7 were given the XO laptops just over 2 weeks ago. Teachers were given a one day workshop in how to use the laptops and how they can use them in their teaching. Technical support for the laptops is provided by MIT (probably not the one you’re thinking of, but the more local Mekelle Institute of Technology), though so far they’ve had few technical problems. Students can charge the laptops up at home if they have electricity (and the electricy is on), or there are charging facilities at school – unfortunately not solar power (Matt, if you’re after a project, then come over and fix up a solar panel for them!).

I didn’t get chance to talk to the students/teachers/parents to find out what they felt about having the laptops, although the head and deputy head seemed very keen and happy they were chosen to be the trial school.

Before going into the class, the headmaster (Tsegay) gave us chance to have a little play around. At first I found the interface was a little tricky to navigate, but once I’d got the hang of it, it was fine. As well as the games and cut down Wikipedia, all the grade 6 and 7 text books (mainly in Amharic and Tigrinya) have been scanned in and pre-loaded as ebooks. During the English lesson, all the students (around 55 in total) had grade 7 English ebook opened at the right point – I was half expecting most of the children at the back to be playing with the games!

Most of the students seemed to be taking an active part in the lesson, even if it meant having their hand up for a while before the teacher had chance to get to them. The use of the XO laptop in the lesson we observed was restricted to using it as an alternative to a paper textbook – I didn’t get the feeling the lesson would have been much different if all the students had had a paper textbook in front of them. However, it is still very early days for this school and the students have only had the laptops for a couple of weeks to get to grips with them, at least the students here each had a copy of the ebook – unlike many schools where there aren’t enough paper textbooks to go around. Also, it will probably take some time (and more workshops) for the teachers to gain experience in how to make best use of their new IT facilities.

It will be interesting to see how things have changed if I can get to visit the school again in a few months time.

Finally have a personal PO box number (have been waiting a while to get a lock for the box). It is:

VSO Mail – Alex Little
Mekelle University
PO Box 3060
Mekelle
Tigray,
Ethiopia

This one might be a little more reliable than the work PO box I posted up a week or so ago.

Had probably the freshed meat I’ve ever eaten on Saturday night. Marcel and I arrived at Thashika’s house about 2 mins after Tserai had slaughtered a goat, he’d just cut it’s throat and was draining the blood ready to skin and gut it. Very interesting to watch, if a touch gory, especially as it’s something I’ve never seen before and (not being vegetarian) am glad, in a strange way, that I have seen it. I didn’t have my camera so you’re lucky there are no accompanying photos on this posting.

Their cat was very excited about it all, and very happy to be given the goats head to play with/eat afterwards. The goat (a kid) had cost 160 birr, about 10 UK pounds, or the equivalent of 8 packets of pringles from the local supermarket. If a good job is made of removing the skin, i.e. intact with no puncture holes from the knife and with the hooves still attached, then the skin can be sold on again for about 30 birr.

After being here for nearly 2 months, I’ve finally done something touristy! We headed up to Gheralta to go for a walk up into the hills and to visit a couple of the churches. Gheralta is about a 2 hour drive from Mekelle and a tricky to get to on public transport, so we went in a Red Cross 4×4 which explains the ‘no weapons’ sticker in the window.

The walk up to the churches was really fantastic, very steep uphill all the way – followed all the way by about 20 kids (only one was our actual guide). At the top we attempted to negotiate getting into the churches, but there was some (deliberate?) confusion about the key which they wanted extra money for. The official Tigray Tourist Commision price is 50 birr per ticket, at first the priest wanted to charge extra for the key, which we then refused, and suddenly no-one knew where the key was (it was hanging around the priests neck… hmmm…). Anyway we had a look at the entrances to both Maryam Korkor and Daniel Korkor. The hobbit-sized entrance to Daniel Korkor is around the other side of the mountain, along a ledge with a 500m drop to one side.

The ledge around to the entrance:

Church door (Although I may be wearing the same clothes I’m wearing in the other photos I’ve posted up – I can assure you that they have been washed):

The view down – if you look very closely you may be able to see the white speck that’s our 4×4 – about 1/3 of the way from left side of photo and just below the road:

Was a shame that we didn’t get into the church, but think it can often be a bit hit and miss as to whether they allow you in or not. Having a Tigrinya speaking guide (not just a 10 year old), probably would have significantly increased our chances – although still not guaranteed if the priest has decided he’s had enough for the day.

Lunch was at the nearby Gheralta Lodge, which, at 70 birr (about 7 USD) for 4 course set menu with a couple of beers, has been the most expensive meal I’ve had in Ethiopia so far.

On the way back we stopped at another rock church (this time one just off the main road, so no long uphill walk), which we were actually allowed to get into, and they didn’t try overcharging either.

It was great to finally get to look inside one of the rock churches and see the sights tourists come to Ethiopia for! This weekend I’m heading over to Axum, a historical town about 7 hours bus trip away from Mekelle, also allegedly home to the arc of the covenant (though only one priest is ever allowed to see it)- so should have some more good pics to post up early next week

It’s just my work one, but is fine to send things to – and I’ll be very grateful for anything sent over, cds/dvds/reading material/chocolate etc!

Alex Little
Mekelle University
FBE Campus
Computer Science Department
PO box 451
Mekelle
TIGRAY
ETHIOPIA

I’m still in the process of getting a personal PO box, but just waiting for a lock for the box to arrive, so wary about anything being sent there until this is sorted.

In the elearning project here, I still have a lot of questions in my mind as to the best course of action to take for some aspects. I’m sure anyone who has tried to implement an elearning system in their institution will have asked themselves very similar questions!

Take, for example, the uploading of the course manuals into Moodle. Some considerable time has been spent copying and pasting the course manuals (from Word or pdf format) into the eXe eLearning XHTML editor (http://exelearning.org), exporting this as a SCORM package then uploading into Moodle. Due to the time already spent in doing this, I’m very reluctant to not then make use of the packages that have been created. However, I have doubts in my mind as to whether this is a valuable and sustainable approach to continue to take.

This is similar in approach to that taken by OU to get their materials into Moodle for OpenLearn – having the course manuals converted into OUXML format, then uploaded into Moodle.

I feel a better approach to take in this project would be to concentrate on getting teachers to create online activities in Moodle and not to spend so much time in converting the raw course content into another format. The students will be given the course manuals in paper format regardless of whether they’re online too – none of the students here would have reliable enough internet or computer access to rely on online access only.

The online activities can then just be created for the corresponding week in their study schedule, avoiding the huge time expenditure in the cut’n'paste approach which, in my mind, won’t be of any real benefit to the students. It also avoids all the reformatting that’s needed when cut’n'pasting.

Maybe just a Freudian slip, but I’ve been told we’re having a ‘brainwashing session’ about the next steps of the project later this morning. Hopefully this will be after I get some breakfast, up at the staff lounge earlier, I was told I couldn’t have any food because they didn’t have any plates…

Unfortunately the faculty trip, due for this weekend, up to the Tekeze dam and Axum was canceled – something to do with the cost and lack of numbers. So instead a few interesting nights out in Mekelle.

Whilst we were out in Allegro bar having a few games of pool, several people behind us (7 or 8 of the new Uni students) started shouting about black power. After a few minutes of this one of them came over to say that it wasn’t because there were white people around, just that they were excited about the prospect of Obama getting in as president! Not having any TV, or a radio which can receive BBC world service, I feel quite out of touch with what’s going on outside of Mekelle, so I’d not realised the election was coming up so soon. Not even sure I know much about what’s going on in Mekelle for that matter, apart from the odd report of people being eaten by hyaenas.

On Saturday we went up to Wukro, a local town about a hours bus-ride away, to have a look at the agricultural college there. Reinhard (a German guy) has been working there for nearly 5 years and took us on a little tour. They must have some of the best cared for cows up there, which look like they actually have bit of meat on them. All the cows we see in and around Mekelle are extremely thin, which explains why most the meat here is very tough. The college make cheese to sell on, and we ended up buying about 4 kilos – this was between 6 of us and should last a while in the fridge.

Although the bus ride is only an hour, a couple of locals were travel sick – the bus doesn’t actually stop, the conductor just hands round plastic bags which are then thrown out of the window (presuming most of it isn’t already on the floor of the bus!). This seems to be quite common and is probably because many people here aren’t used to traveling long distances by bus – the roads aren’t exactly smooth (though the road to Wukro is tarmac all the way) and the buses could do with new suspension fitting.

Word now seems to be getting out that I’m an IT volunteer so have had several requests to help fix computers/laptops – I sorted out 3 last week and over the weekend and am due to help reinstall Windows XP on someones laptop later today. Think I’ll need to get my pricing structure sorted out!

This time we went up into the hills to the south of Mekelle, starting with a long slog uphill to reach the plateau – fortunately it was all flat or downhill after that!

We met some kids taking cattle to market, some of the whom must only have been 6 or 7:

Had some great views:

Were followed by lots of kids (who didn’t ask for money for a change!) who wanted their photos taken:

and we saw some huge cacti/succulents:

All this was in a 5 hour circular walk from the centre of Mekelle.

One of the schools in Mekelle, in fact it’s not far from my house, has just started a trial of the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) project. Apparently, it’s the first trial for OLPC in this region (Tigray), but trials are already underway in other regions of Ethiopia. The laptops have been funded by Italians (not sure if this means an Italian foundation, or the Italian government) and have just been given out to the pupils – all their parents had to come in a couple of days ago to sign for them.

I’m hoping to be able to pay them a visit, to see how the teachers and pupils are making use of the laptops. I know some of you reading this might be interested in how it’s going, so I’ll post again once I’ve visited, but if you have anything specific that you’d like to know or me to ask then please drop me a line or leave a comment below.

One teaching method that’s used in schools here is to use what’s called ‘Plasma Learning’. Some colleagues have visited schools which have only very basic facilities (perhaps not even functioning toilets), but then in each classroom there’s a big (expensive) plasma TV to broadcast lessons to students.

The idea is that students across Ethiopia all receive the same standard of lesson at the same time (these lessons are broadcast, not pre-recorded on DVD). This may help with the fact that experienced teachers are in short supply, but introduces its own problems, which are probably too numerous to mention, but I’ll give it a go… firstly there’s the question of power supply. Once the broadcast has started there’s no way to stop or pause the lesson, even if it’s obvious students are getting stuck (or they’re late), the lesson ploughs on. Naturally, it’s completely one-way, plus it’s all in English – so a fairly high level of English is needed even to understand a biology lesson for example.

Not sure how this compares to the old OU/BBC night-time broadcasts, but at least people had the option of recording them, or watching a later repeat and they were in the viewers native language.