Alex Little

On Wednesday we will be holding the orientation workshop for the Digital Campus project, so there is much to be getting on with in preparation for this. The workshop is just to introduce the selected teachers to the training course, answer their queries and, most importantly, arrange the schedule for the training over the coming semester.

All seems to be progressing well, with a few minor hiccups. We had some banner made and put up around the campuses to promote the workshop (see photo). I also wanted to get the syllabus/brochure colour copied, but then I found out how much this was going to cost – 25 copies of 12 page brochure at 5 birr per page – makes 1500 birr (approx 150 USD), so not exactly good use of money.

Speaking of money, a transfer arrived into my bank from Alcala Uni, so I’m now able to purchase the monitors, keyboards etc and also pay the first installment for the tables we’re having made. Understandably, the university was a little wary about transferring money into a personal bank account of some random person in Africa – I’ve been told they thought the money may end up with Somalian pirates!

The networking of the lab is almost complete, we just need the electrical work completed so the switches etc can be tested properly. We also need to find someone who can sign for the switches from the store and take ongoing responsibility for them – this isn’t as easy as it may first sound. ICT think the colleges should sign and take responsibility, then the colleges think it should be ICT’s job – bit of a catch 22.

We did have a minor disaster this week with one of the servers – a power supply failure. On Wednesday morning it looked as if ETC had completed the work on the DNS server, to make our elearning server available off campus using the domain name. But just as i was checking this, there was a power fluctuation and although the server is plugged into a UPS, the server power supply failed. I was a little unsure that the power supply was the only problem, until we tested with the supply from another (identical) server. It will now be out of action for a long time, until new one can be purchased (imported) – no 24/7 callout cover contracts here. So I’m now in the process of moving the site over to another server so it’s available until the server is fixed.

Fingers crossed that all will go well at the orientation workshop.

Just over a week ago the new intake of volunteers arrived in their placement, so the arrival of Martin, my new housemate has doubled the number of VSO volunteers in Mekelle – ok, Marcel is also still in his placement, but is currently back home in Australia for a break.

So have spent the last week or so trying to introduce Martin to life in Mekelle – seems to be going well so far. We had ‘fun’ last weekend trying to get a wardrobe from the VSO furniture store last weekend. Firstly we’d been given the wrong address, which explained why the keys we’d got didn’t fit. When we got into the store, to be able to remove a wardrobe, almost all the other furniture had to be moved/rearranged first. After we’d finally extracted the wardrobe from the store it wouldn’t fit through the door in the compound gate. No problem you may think – open the gates – but they’d been concreted shut. So after taking the wardrobe to pieces we finally got it out into a pick-up to take back to our house.

This weekend, Mike, one of the new volunteers at Maychew Technical College came to visit us in Mekelle to shop for all those things he can’t buy there. He’s come as a n IT advisor at the college, so I’ve invited him to come and have a look at what we’re doing at the Uni here. Would also be good for me to go and see what they’re up to down in Maychew.

Work has been slowly progressing in the labs – our new Cisco switches have now arrived – after the supplier tried to make a bit of extra money for himself by giving us DLink hubs and assuming we’d either not notice or not know any better. The electrical works still needs to be finished in the lab before we can test the new network. I’ve had to ask them to redo some of the work to align the sockets on the wall – the photo shows the current state. Although it may feel a little petty to complain about things like this, my feeling is that if it’s allowed to pass this time, it sets a precedent of what is acceptable quality, when actually it takes very little effort to get right in the first place.

The Computer Science department is still in the process of moving, but there’s not a hope of everything being ready for the new semester which starts next week. Although the new dept still has no network installed and is unlikely to do so for several weeks (and be connected to the rest of the campus network), I arranged to run some training for the lab technicians last Thursday. So half an hour after we were meant to have started, no one had appeared. Whilst on the phone to the department head, one of the technicians arrived. The others technicians weren’t going to be able to come, so I thought I’d continue anyway. We then found that the only lab we had a key for didn’t have any electricity supply to the sockets. The lights were on, but the electrical work hadn’t been finished. I then abandoned the training – maybe more will turn up next time.

I did however make some progress in other areas. I’ve been trying to get ETC to put a record in their DNS database for our e-learning website – but have had little luck being put through to the right person. On Thursday afternoon, Habtom (assistant head of ICT dept) and I went to see the head of ETC in Tigray. So, on Friday afternoon we finally managed to get the correct phone number for the head of the DNS servers in Addis, and we’re making progress. Originally, in Mekelle, they wanted to charge us 1000 birr for the entry, despite my explanation that it was only a subdomain we wanted not, a full new domain. Fortunately the, more technically aware, person in Addis isn’t going to charge us this and even suggested that he’d help us get our own public DNS server set up at the Uni here. So Friday ended with some good news – just need to make sure I follow it up this week.