Alex Little

Ethiopian Telecoms Company (ETC) started to provide a pre-paid mobile internet service several months ago, though as I (usually) have a good connection at work, I’ve never really considered purchasing a dongle and setting up an account for myself. However, my housemate Martin, with not having a computer, let alone internet connection through work, recently set himself up with CDMA.

The dongle comes with a driver/installation CD for Windows, so this morning I thought I’d have a go getting it set up on my laptop running Ubuntu 9.04. Getting it all set up proved to be much more straightforward than I had anticipated. Here’s what I needed to do:

1. Install wvdial (I have Ubuntu 9.04 Netbook remix, so if you have the normal desktop version this step may not be necessary): sudo apt-get install wvdial

2. Plug the CDMA dongle into a USB port

3. At the terminal enter: sudo wvdialconf

4. Then enter: sudo gedit /etc/wvdial.conf

5. In the text editor change the block that reads:

; Phone =
; Password =
; Username =

to be:

Phone = #777
Password = etc
Username = etc

Then save and close the editor. Note that the username and password should be in lower case.

6. At the terminal enter: sudo wvdial

7. Without closing the terminal open the browser and you should be connected.

Now that it’s working I have the opportunity to spend huge amounts of money using the internet whilst at home. I’m not sure of the exact tariff, but given our usage so far it seems to be around 0.5 birr per minute (approx 2p).

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.

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.