Crackbook
Finally has been great to see the new computer labs in full use. On Tuesday I went over to the lab at Ayder, to find it not only open, but full of students (all 45 terminals in use), so this was very pleasing to see. The only downside was that students were almost exclusively using Facebook (except for the girl looking at the wikipedia page on Enrique Iglesias) rather than anything to do with the courses our tutor have produced.
I suspect that this is only to be expected, students rarely get to use a computer so the first thing they want to do is check their emails and facebook status. I still can’t really figure out exactly what the appeal is of spending so much time on facebook – but maybe that’s just me. There is talk at the university of blocking facebook and some of the other social networking sites simply because of the bandwidth they consume, but then last year there was also talk of doing the same with some webmail services (specifically Yahoo).
The use of the labs in this way isn’t really too concerning for the project – as least it demonstrates the demand is there and better than the labs being empty or locked. Surely students can’t spend 24/7 on facebook (or can they?) and eventually perhaps they’ll move onto something more constructive? Or do we need to get the course content and learning activities into facebook?
We have noticed that many students are sharing accounts/passwords – giving them to their friends. Seems there’s little we can do about this apart from trying to educate students that their documents and work are at risk of being deleted/copied etc if they give out their account details. Or we introduce fingerprint or iris scanning!
Over the past couple of days I’ve been started the training programme for the three new elearning staff, all going well so far. They’ll receive some training from ECBP (Engineering Capacity Building Programme, Ethiopia, funded by GTZ) so we’re looking at ways in which we can coordinate the Digital Campus training programme with theirs.
Our internet connection has been quite poor since I returned – off for 2 days last week then another 2 full days this week. There is an incredible difference in the number of students in the labs between when the internet is on and when it’s off.
Am now trying to decide where the best place will be to watch the England match on Saturday, choice is basically between either the Axum hotel (free entry but expensive drinks), or a DSTV house (very cheap entry and better atmosphere, but no drinks!)
