Alex Little

Student being interviewed for ETV

This morning we had another visit from the Ministry of Education, coming to find out about our Digital Campus elearning project. They’ve had quite a punishing schedule over the past few days – not helped by a mix up which left them with 1 day to complete a 2 day car journey. Nonetheless, they seemed very enthusiastic and keen to learn about our project, looking at how similar programmes and technologies could be introduced at other Ethiopian Universities.

Unexpectedly (for me), our visitors were accompanied by a reporter and journalist from ETV, so I had to provide an impromptu presentation to camera about our project, which I’m expecting to be broadcast nationwide sometime over the next few days. I hope I gave a better performance than England did last night against Algeria! I think the appearance of the TV team surprised the students working in the lab, but a couple of them were happy to be interviewed, so really pleased they’ve been able to get feedback and opinions from the students too.

In the past, I’ve worked on quite a number of research projects developing prototype software and web applications, where, due to the nature of the project (pilot/prototype/research) you never quite get the time to invest in making these systems as robust, well structured or documented as you’d like. Yet at the same time, a tension starts when there is a push to get these systems used in the real world, and they become to be treated as production level systems. No, it’s not quite that black and white, research projects need some real world testing to prove their worth and production systems will never be perfect.

With our new thin client labs and OpenSolaris server I feel we have a similar tension. On one side, these labs were a facility for us to try out new ICT policy and infrastructure for the university, for example, disabling flash devices, using university mail accounts, amongst many others. Yet at the same time, our lab is the only functioning lab available in the Engineering College. A review yesterday by the ECBP team, found that there was only one other lab (approx 30 PCs) which was functional and had relatively modern PCs (less than 5 years old) – but this lab isn’t yet networked (it’s in the computer science building – which, almost a year after being occupied by the department, still hasn’t been networked except recently for some of the staff offices). So there are 40 networked terminals available for a student population of over 2000. That’s a ratio of 1 terminal to 50 students in a college teaching engineering, technology and computing.

So we have a question of priorities, do we stick with the research goals and risk the labs not being usable due to the decision we’ve made (but then have something interesting to write up), or do we focus on providing students with a lab they are able to use effortlessly?

For me, it’s an easy decision to make. We must focus on providing a robust and reliable lab (contrary to the other labs) for the students to benefit from and not worry about the fact that they’re sharing passwords, using webmail rather than university mail accounts and the like. This doesn’t contradict some of the bigger research aspects we wanted to look into (e.g. demonstrating we can create a more robust and scalable architecture than the usual PC labs), but does mean that we very quickly needed to make compromises (such as allowing the use of flash drives) we didn’t want to have to make so soon.

Earlier this week I spent a few days working Cambridge doing some volunteer web development work for Aptivate. They are in the process of developing a new low bandwidth site for CDAC (Communicating with Disaster Affected Communities), this particular site is aimed at the victims of the Haiti earthquake and is to help ensure that aid and relief agencies are able to communicate well with local communities as they rebuild their lives. The site isn’t yet finalised, so can’t put the url up yet, but will do so once it’s ready.

As an aside, OpenLearn now has a course on “Using Voluntary work to get ahead in the job market“.

Much of the past couple of weeks have been spent making sure I’m ready to head off again to Ethiopia to work on the Digital Campus project. En route, I’m going to the eLearning Africa conference in Zambia, where I’m giving a presentation next Friday. Looking forward to getting back to Mekelle to see how everything it going there, seems like quite a lot of progress is still being made. My plan whilst I’m there is to help support the phd students and the ICT team, but also planning how the project can progress into the next academic year.

Hopefully I’ll be back blogging a bit more regularly over the coming few weeks!

Hopefully I’ll be around in Ethiopia in September later this year so I can attend ‘Barcamp Ethiopia‘.

Julia, a friend who was also working last year with VSO in Ethiopia but now returned to London, is organising the VSO London social group. Anyone, ex VSO, prospective VSO or just generally interested is welcome to attend:

6.30pm – 9.30pm, Monday 30th November, 2009; Pitcher & Piano, 40 – 42 William IV Street, Trafalgar Square, London WC2N 4DD
You are cordially invited to the second social evening of the London VSO Group!

We had a good time in September – about thirty of us turned up. This time we want more!

As you may recall, the group is open to all, returned volunteers, friends and family, potential new volunteers, VSO staff – literally anyone with any involvement with VSO or an interest in development.

We want to have another “just” social evening, to get us feeling like a group, but would like our meeting in the new year to be more formal with some sort of theme/structure – as ever, we’re keen that YOU help shape how the group proceeds, so we will be canvassing your opinion on this. Thoughts to consider:

How often would you attend?
What would you like to come along to – what would be really nice to get involved with?
What can you bring to this?
Where would you like to meet – do you have venue ideas?

Here is the link to the VSO site, which will keep you updated with activities –
http://community.vsointernational.org/groups/vso-london-supporter-group-uk

We very much hope to see you at our second drinks evening on Monday 30th November. Please bring along friends or anyone else – the more the merrier. Please also distribute this notice to your own networks.

Look forward to seeing you there!

Last week, I was asked to go and visit the Mums for Mums centre to help them to help them out with the redevelopment of their website. Mums for Mums is a local NGO which helps women into work by giving them training and childcare, plus much more. They’ve recently won a grant of 100,000 USD from the Stars foundation to expand their activities. This is a huge amount of money for a relatively small NGO in Ethiopia.

They’d like to revamp their existing website so they can better advertise the work and projects they’re able to undertake with the new funds. The current site was built by a VSO volunteer when she was working in Mekelle a few years ago – she worked at the Computer Science department at the University and started the elearning project that I worked on last year. As she has now left Ethiopia, I feel it would be more appropriate if the office staff could keep the site up to date themselves, rather than depending on someone abroad to do this for them.

My first task in this work is to write a proposal they can send to Stars, so at least they can show they’ve started thinking and planning how their website will be renovated.

Updating the site to use a content management system (not sure which one we’ll use yet) and training the staff will be straightforward enough. The more complex facility that they’d like is the ability for people to donate money online, as they receive many offers of donations, often from people in the UK. Currently there are two ways in which money can be donated. Either by transferring money directly into the Mums for Mums bank account in Mekelle, or by donating through a partner charity (Friends of Ethiopian Children in Need – FECIN) in the UK.

Neither of these methods are ideal, transferring money directly by international transfer is expensive (approx 40 GBP per transfer) and so is only appropriate for very large donations. Using a partner charity in the UK means they are dependent on this other charity.

We had a discussion about how we can find a solution for this, but is difficult as Mums for Mums is not a registered charity in the UK and so can’t use (for example) the JustGiving website. Registering as a UK charity may be a solution, but they’ll need representation in the UK, plus all the associated paperwork.

If anyone has any suggestions as to how we could find a good solution to this problem would be gratefully received. There must be many other NGOs around the world who receive donations from the UK without being registered as a UK charity, so we’d be interested to hear any possible solutions. Please either leave a comment below or email me directly (alex@alexlittle.net)

As I’m sure many of you will be aware, it is 25 years since the reports of famine in Ethiopia appeared on the BBC. But a quarter of a century later (and who knows how many millions in aid) there are new reports about potential famine in these same areas affected all those years ago. The BBC has recently broadcast from Mekelle about the situation (here and here), and Oxfam are again raising money to try to prevent famine occurring again across east Africa. There’s also a report on the Guardian website about the impact of the images sent back from Ethiopia 25 years ago.

From my point of view, working at the Uni in a well-off regional capital, I see little or no sign of the food shortages which are being reported back in the UK. I’m certainly not saying that problems don’t exist, I know that I’m in a privileged position, given my location, job and income – but for me, it’s hard to know how bad the situation is, or is becoming. It’s also likely to be affecting more remote rural areas far worse than where I’m based. There are no reports in the local media about the situation (in either the local language or English language newspapers), so my main sources of information about the problems are from outside Ethiopia, usually BBC & UK newspaper websites or from those I know who work with medical organisations/NGOs and spend more time out in the rural areas. As far as I’m aware the situation at the moment is certainly just about potential famine, and the number of people needing extra food aid (on top of the food aid normally given out) is 6.2 million – which is actually the same as last year.

Since coming to Ethiopia last year, I’ve always been wary about bringing up the subject of the 1984/85 famine. Most people I meet or work with are under 30 and so either weren’t born or were extremely young at the time. Also, those Ethiopians who have been abroad say that all anybody else in the world seems to know about Ethiopia is famine and long distance running and I don’t want to perpetuate the feeling that that’s all anyone knows or cares about Ethiopia.

Yesterday, Martin and I met up with Mike Wooldridge, the BBC journalist who has been sending back the recent reports, but was also one of the reporters here in Ethiopia reporting on the 1984/85 famine. He’s an ex VSO volunteer and his daughter was a VSO volunteer at the Teacher Training College here in Mekelle a few years ago. It was really interesting getting the chance to meet Mike, finding out about the changes that have taken place in Mekelle and Ethiopia generally over the last 25 years and also being able to show him around the University to demonstrate the work that VSO is currently doing.

A few months ago (March 09) I surveyed all the computer science students to find out about their access to computers, how much they used the University computers, whether they had access to a computer outside those provided by the department, their skills in completing basic computing tasks and whether they felt elearning/online activities would be helpful in their studies.

After a delay of far too long, I’ve finally now had chance to write up the results – I can already think of ways that the survey could have been improved – re-wording of questions etc – so it may not be wonderfully scientific, but it does give an indication of the some of the issues involved. The full report (pdf) can be downloaded, but while you’re waiting for that to download here is the summary (all comments/feedback welcome):

In March 2009 all of the students in the computer science department were asked to complete a survey
relating to their access to computers, basic computing skills and attitudes towards elearning and online
activities. 64% of students (227) responded to the survey.
The key findings from the survey were:

• 19% have access to a computer outside the computer science department
• 21% never access the internet
• 52% found access to a computer was a major problem or not possible at all
• The main access difficulties expressed include: lack of computers, computer labs not open
  often enough and lack of or slow internet connection
• Low levels of basic computing skills
• 84% feel that online activities would be quite or very useful additions to their studies

From these key findings a number of recommendations can be made to improve the computing
facilities for students:

1. Review of the computer lab set­up and configuration
2. Increase in lab opening times
3. Increase number of computers available
4. Increase internet capacity
5. Basic computer skills training
6. Require courses to use the elearning system

The results from this survey can be used as a baseline for future surveys to measure the impact of
initiatives to improve student computer access (such as replacement or new computers and labs) and
whether the recommendations have had the desired effect.

It should be noted that since some of these recommendations were written (back in April), work has already begun in ordering new computers for the student computer labs and in requesting increased bandwidth from ETC.

Although there seems to be plenty of talk on the new broadband internet connection for East Africa, for me it only means that Ethiopia will get yet further behind it’s neighbours. Being an undersea cable, it’s natural that coastal countries would be first to benefit, but there has been little (no?) mention of Ethiopia being connected, despite other landlocked countries (Uganda, Rwanda etc) being talked about. The BBC article talks about the expense and slow speed of internet access in Kenya, but if those connection speeds were available at those prices in Ethiopia – that would represent a huge step forward. The new faster connections are a great for some countries, but remember there is still a long way to go in improving internet access across the region.

A recent article in the Guardian this week discusses the problems of (computer) viruses and the chaos they can cause in Africa. Alan Mercer, one of my fellow VSO IT volunteers was interviewed for the article. It’s interesting reading, and has generated plenty of comments worth reading (even though I may not agree with all of them!).

It’s easy to spot the comments written by people who obviously haven’t worked in developing countries, yes, we all know that there are (theoretically) technical solutions to many of the problems, use linux, run XYZ piece of software from your USB stick etc. But in my experience here, as one of the comments states, it certainly is ‘much more complicated than that’.