Alex Little

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.

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.

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!)

Havana Club, Mekelle

Have now been back in Mekelle for a few days – I arrived on Monday evening, and got back into life here amazingly quickly when I think how strange it all seemed when I first arrived in Sept 2008.

I’m staying back at my old house, even have my old room back for the next month. Meeting up with everyone again has been great, it feels as if I’ve been away for such a long time, even though it’s only been around 2 months and I had expected more changes, but then I guess things don’t change here that quickly. The road that had been dug up near the house is still unfinished, in fact in an even worse state than before. Almost everyone has mentioned how fat I’ve become being back in the UK, but with the amount of eating out I’ve been doing the past few days seems unlikely I’ll lose any weight whilst here

I got straight back into work at the Uni on Tuesday morning, Jaime had been here for the week before I’d arrived and we’re ran the third of our face to face training weeks with our tutors. On Friday evening we had another meal out at the Axum hotel and had a short presentation of the tutors certificates (Basic Certificate in Online Education, accredited by Alcala University).

My to-do list for this visit seems to be getting longer by the minute, there are still a large number of technical and management issues that we need to get resolved. There is still confusion over who is responsible for the opening of one of the labs and there needs to be better coordination and management from the university. At the moment it seems that no-one at the university has overall responsibility.

On the plus side, the Engineering College (now an independent Institute of Technology), has employed 3 new staff as elearning specialists, so I will spend some time training them over the coming weeks. As they’re part of the IoT rather than the university generally, we can’t get them to support the Health Sciences college. So I can see a big divide opening between the IoT and the rest of the university in elearning infrastructure, capacity and capability.

I can see my time here flying past, I’ve already been here a week and only have 3 left, so will be back in the UK before I know it!

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‘.

Today is my last day in work at Mekelle. Feels very strange to be leaving after such a long time, but think I’m ready to go back – for a break at least. Still no running water at home, though I got a shower at a friends house last night. So there are a few things here I won’t miss!

I’ve been really pleased with the progress we’ve managed to make in developing elearning at Mekelle, especially over the last months, though I’m sure I could easily spend another 10 years here and still not get everything done that I’d like. Now I just have a few days in Mekelle getting packed up before flying to Addis for another few more days and back to UK next weekend. My next blog entry will probably be once I’m back in the UK, after I’ve had a bit of time to settle in again. Will be in touch with as many people as possible once I’m back and looking forward to seeing everyone again

Me and Getachew

After 18 months, I finally managed a visit down to Maychew – less than 3 hours by bus south of Mekelle. There have been VSO volunteers working at the Technical College there all this time, but usually I see them fairly regularly as they come up to Mekelle on way to airport or just for shopping in the ‘big city’.

Apart from the fact I’d never been before, the other reason to visit was to climb one of the hills around the town. So Mike, Getachew and I ll got up far too early for a Sunday morning (6am) for the walk up Bekura.

View of Maychew from Bekura

It took us about two and a half hours to get to the top (around 3100m), making our own path up. There is a path but its very long so we decided to take the short steep route instead.

Maychew is known for being where the Italians finally defeated the Ethiopians in 1936 and there was lots of fighting in the hills around here during the TPLF fight against the Derg in the 70′s and 80′s. Because of this you still need to be a little careful where you go walking around Maychew, there are still mines and other unexploded munitions – we saw plenty of (used) shell casings on our walk up, where the farmers had ploughed, but Bekura is considered free from mines unlike some of the other nearby hills.

Whilst in Maychew I was hoping that I’d be able to get shower – we haven’t had any running water at home for more than two weeks – our water meter was taken away by the water board for repair and still hasn’t been returned. Our enormous collection of buckets and water bottles have kept us going, but now we’re even starting to empty these out. Unfortunately, no luck getting a shower in Maychew, the water pressure was too low during the my stay – so looks like I may have to wait until I’m in Addis next week. I will make sure I definitely get a shower before I fly home

At the cave entrance

The other weekend, I had a great trip down to the Bale mountains. Fortunately we were able to borrow car (4×4) for a few days from a friends work in Addis. Bale is known for it’s trekking and horseriding, but fortunately, given that it rained almost the entire time, we hadn’t planned to do either of these activities and spent most of the time driving – our shortest days drive being about 7 hours.

The roads to and around Bale were far worse that we had expected- mainly because most them are in the process of being asphalted, so the ‘road’ that you can use is actually a track next to where the road is going to be. At one point it took us over 3 hours to do less than 100km.

Basing ourselves in Robe, we had a day up to the Sanetti Plateau (over 4000m high) to watch Ethiopian Wolves and then on to the Harenna Forest. The landscape is completely the opposite to that around Tigray – with real forest and greenery- as a result of all the rain. The next day we headed another 120km east to the Sof Omar caves. These were fantastic (see photos below), fortunately we picked up a guy from the local village who happened to be a history teacher at the local high school, so he was able to translate what the guide was telling us. Due to the rain we couldn’t get as far in to the caves as we would have liked – since crossing the river inside the cave would have been too dangerous. The teacher also had a map of the cave system (below) – 17km long – if anyone is interested I have higher quality copies of the images than I’ve uploaded below. Fortunately I’d remembered to take along my little tripod so was able to get some reasonable photos once we were inside the caves.

The next night was spent at the Dinsho lodge which the guide book describes as being like an abandoned ski lodge. It was a little tricky to find, the road builders had removed the signpost so we ended up taking someone from town to show us where to go, on arrival all was dark and locked up (living up to the guides book’s description) , so we went back into town to track down the warden.

The next morning the warden too us out for a walk to watch see Nyala (photos below again!), then back in the car for a drive to Shashemene (home of Rastafarianism apparently) for lunch and up to Lake Langano for an overnight stay by the lake, and few drinks and a swim – my camera battery had long since died by this point.

The highlight for me was certainly getting to the caves, it would have been difficult to get there without our own transport and now that I’ve seen a small part of the Bale national park, I’d certainly like to go back during a drier period for a trekking holiday.

Wolf on Sanetti Plateau

View from top of Sanetti Plateau

Harenna Forest (and a short stretch of flat road)

Inside the cave

Inside the cave

Cave system map (page 1)

Cave system map (page 2)

Nyala in the morning

Nyala in daylight

After the previous two long weekends for Christmas and New Year, we now have a third for Orthodox Christmas. Officially only Thursday 7th was a public holiday, but many people have taken Friday as holiday too. My second Christmas in less than two weeks was a fairly quiet affair, visiting my colleague Samrawit and her family for lunch, drinks and cake.