Alex Little

Have been hearing a few critical comments from some staff regarding the Certificate in Online Education and it’s content. Apparently some staff feel that learning about some of the techniques that we have been showing them is beneath them, or they already know how to perform these functions (for example use of graphics editing software). In my mind it’s just another excuse not to participate in the training. It also shows that they aren’t coming to the training with an open mind and consider that elearning is simply a technical issue, rather than a way of truly improving the quality of their course content and activities. I’m quite sure that some staff are capable of using some of the software, but in order to give them a certificate they need to prove is to us by actually demonstrating their skills with the courses they deliver to students.

Unfortunately, it still seems far too common here for staff to receive a lot of training, but never follow the training up by implementing what they have learned.

There are a wide variety of other reasons (excuses) I’ve heard as to why staff haven’t participated in the training, but there are few I believe as anything other than excuses.

More positively, except for the England v USA result, I’ve now found a few good places to watch the world cup matches. Apparently some students here have requested alterations to their exam timetables so they are able to watch all the games. I don’t think they received a particularly sympathetic response!

Otherwise, another busy week, spending much of the time with the new Institute of Technology (officially the Tigray Institute of Technology, but this results in an unfortunate acronym!), working on an action plan for the implementation of elearning into the new institute. They certainly seem to have more commitment than we received from the rest of the university over the past year. But hope that the Institute will be able to set a good example of how changes can be made in the rest of the university.

A team of staff (Joern, Selamawit, Haileleul and Oliver) from ECBP on.e arrived yesterday to begin working with the Institute and the new elearning team here. We’re planning how we can integrate our two separate training programmes for staff (elearning team and the tutors) and assisting with planning the technical/ICT infrastructure required.

Last week I finally finished my clearance for the University, meaning that I’m now free to leave. Was quite a long drawn out process – you can see in the photo how many signatures I needed in the end.

Now have only 2 weeks left in Mekelle, have a few days in Addis, then return to the UK. Will be good to catch up with everyone once I’m back

Over the last week, Mekelle has undergone a bit of a facelift, repainting, rubbish collected and flags put up, all in preparation for the celebration of 35 years of the Tigray Peoples Liberation Front (TPLF). The road near our house was never quite tarmaced in time, but no-one seems too bothered. Town has been full of federal police, with small celebrations and events happening each day this week.

But today is the big day, the fields behind the Hawelti monument are full of people, most of the town and thousands of people from Tigray and further afield have arrived for a day of speeches. People began arriving last night and stayed up overnight – a huge firework display at midnight then today there is due to be a speech from the Prime Minister.

I’ve been up there this morning already to see what was happening, there doesn’t seem to be any schedule and I’m not too keen on spending all day in the sun listening to political propaganda speeches in a language I don’t understand. Fortunately our house is close enough that I’ll hear if anything significant starts to happen and can then take walk up. I’ll update this posting if there much else to report during the rest of the day.

45 signatures from each of the 30+ university departments, plus finance, stores, personnel from all campuses and all in triplicate. That’s all I need for the clearance procedure so I can officially leave the university. Despite still having another 5 weeks left, I’ve heard from others about how unbelievably time-consuming and bureaucratic the clearance procedure here is, so thought I should make start.

I managed to find a secretary who would go round and collect most of the signatures for me (for a small fee), so far I have 30, the remaining signatures needed are for finance, stores etc, so for these I need to sign my computer over to someone else, so I can prove that there isn’t any equipment still in my name and that I don’t owe any department any money.

It looks likely that this will take much of the next week or so to be complete and I’ll be extremely relieved when I finally have everything signed off and finished.

On all the major holidays here, the telecoms company sends various greetings to all mobile phones, we also occasionally receive them from other (government) institutions. Here are 3 texts I received over the last few days:

“New Year, New Life! Test for HIV, test with your partner, get your children tested and brighten the future of your family! Free testing. Happy New Year”

“The Ethiopian Telecommunications Corporation wishes all Ethiopians a happy and joyful festivity of the Ethiopian New Year 2002″

“Wish you a happy and prosperous new year. Compliance to laws including the laws governing tax and customs is basis for a sustainable growth”

What was once a computer lab for students has been turned into a branch of the Commercial Bank of Ethiopia:

The chance of it turning into a trendy wine bar at any time in the near future is quite remote.

Have had quite a busy last couple of weeks, hence the lack of postings, so time for bit of a catch up…

Firstly a weekend up in London and heading over to the Kingsnorth protest for the day on the Saturday, though all very peaceful & sedate compared to some of the other protests there. (photos).

Then one of my friends who I met in Ethiopia managed to get herself onto the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square last Thursday lunchtime to protest against female genital mutilation. She’d only got on at short notice, so a few of use who’d been in Ethiopia together helped out painting t shirts and buying essential equipment (fake blood, string etc). I got plenty of photos, but Julia also managed to get a mention in the slightly more widely read publications of the Sunday Times and the Mail on Sunday.

Finally, I’ve also had several meetings so start off a new elearning project at Mekelle University. The Spanish government (with University of Alcala, Madrid and Lund University, Sweden) are funding a pilot project building 2 new computer labs for the health science and engineering departments. I’ve been asked to manage some of the technical aspects of the project. Rather than building 2 new labs with Windows PCs, servers etc, we’ll be testing out using Sun Ray terminals instead. This should allow the IT dept to make better use of their existing servers, ad reduce the amount of time spent rebuilding and fixing virus-ridden Windows machines. But, there’s a lot to be done and organise if we’re to be ready for the start of the next semester in October.

Still no firm return date for me going back to Mekelle, but fingers crossed it will be soon!

After a little time away from programming and active web development, I thought I’d get back into things by giving myself a little project to create a Google maps and Upcoming mashup.

At the moment it’s fairly basic as I’ve only spent a few hours working on it, but seems to be working well. I’ve deliberately tried to keep the number of options and fields down to a minimum (I know there are far more options and functions I could add).

Enter some search text in the ‘What?’ field, then a location in the ‘Where?’, finally select ‘When?’. All the events matching your search (within a 50mile radius of the location) will be shown on the map. Click on the marker to get more info about the event.

Neither the ‘what?’ or ‘where?’ field are required, either or both may be left blank. If the ‘what?’ is omitted then all events in the area are shown and if the ‘where?’ is omitted then the centre of the current view of the map is used.

All the events are from Upcoming and you can use their interface to add your own event, to then appear on the map.

For the technically minded, the site uses the Google Maps API (including for geocoding the location) and the Upcoming API.

If you know of any other feeds I could use for adding events to the map, then please let me know so I can try adding them.

I’d also be grateful for any feedback, problems or suggestions – just leave a comment below.

After over 7½ years at the OU, today is my last day. Still hasn’t quite yet sunk in that I’m leaving, or that in only 2 weeks time I’ll be beginning my placement in Ethiopia.

I’ve really enjoyed working here, in IET, KMi and on the OpenLearn team, have learnt loads and have met lots of great people.

Also thanks for all your generosity in donating to VSO to help with the work they’re doing – very close to reaching my fundraising target now

I’ll be making sure that I keep my blog up to date so you’ll be able to keep track of how things are going, so keep in touch and there’s an open invitation if you fancy a holiday in Ethiopia!

Just been to visit the “IT Volunteers in Ethiopia” group that I set up the other week, only to find that I get the message “The owner of this group has banned you from this group. “:

So apparently I’ve banned myself from the group :-/ (not quite sure how I would’ve managed that- or why!)

Then if I try to return to the groups homepage, I get “Forbidden Your client does not have permission to get URL / from this server”:

*but* if I then log out of my Google account, I’m able to see the group and I have permission to get to the Groups homepage…