Education Thought you lot would be interested to know...

Japan seems to have managed it nicely. It is possible to maintain your culture while integrating technology into it. Technology is as dress or language. It is shaped by culture as much as it shapes it.

 

Fair point and nicely put.

 

HI All, and just another update, this time for 2012.

So I have been back, I have developed a bit more skill with the language (not !kung, but Swahili, the most widely spoken Bantu language in the world, and variations of which are spoken by over 400 million people worldwide) and have established my place in the community.

I have been back in the UK for some family responsibilities, and am gearing up this week to get back on the plane and back to my home up the mountain.

SO as above, the kit has now arrived. I have full licenses for everything, and when I return next week, the computer centre will be closed for about a month while I "upgrade" the systems and put the next phase of my trip into place there.

Stage 1, is my ESX host and Server 2008 R2 Domain controller and Terminal Server. I will be virtualising it all, with redundancy, onto 6 10K SAS drives, with a total usable vollume of 250GB~ in a RAID 5 array. This leaves me with 3 spare drives for failover should I run into any problems (probably WHEN i run into prblems than IF).

Once in place, then all the XP machines will be re-installed with ubuntu 11.10, which I have been running and testing as a base OS for my "thin clients" for around six months, and decided on this to help keep the environments I can offer as varied yet simple as possible. Each machine will essentially be a thin client to the TS, and so I will be able to rollout Ubuntu, WIndows 2000/XP and Windows 7 desktops to teach and use for up to 20 clients at a time (with fully legit user and device CALS for Server 2008 R2 and Office 2010).

Then, the fun part, which is beginning to use what we have on offer. Currently the centre has been a central pooint of reference for the villagers, and has offered secretarial services (photocopying etc) as well as internet access, and basic PC use courses, avialable for anybody who wishes to learn. Prices are extremely cheap, and aim to cover costs alone, but still, without subsidisation there is no way we could continue.

I do have some spare rooms in the centre, and so when I get back, stage 2 will be to seperate the public internet cafe room, for which we also have a pool table and dart board arriving in June, and the teaching/workshop room. THis already has its own VLAN, with static routes for what I need (printers my laptop etc etc) but will from now be a "bookable" room with support that we can loan out to conferences and teaching seminars, with accomodation in house. The room will likely comprise of workbenches and workstations, all widely configurable as above, to provide varying teaching platforms for all that may use it. Partnering with an established NGO in Moshi, has opened the door to us being able to rent out these facilities to groups of teachers and training staff, and because of my experience and expertise (lol) we can offer advanced network analysis training and workshops, and I'm confident and proud to say that it will be the first such non-government sponsored centre of it's kind, and certainly the first in rural tanzania outside the bigger cities of Dar Es Salaam and Dodoma.

All exciting stuff, and knowing my way around and how to communicate with your average East-African, makes this journey now more of a commute than a disappear to africa type jaunt.

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As far as my previous progress is concerned, I am about to blwo my own whistle here, but here is what iI have acheived in the last 18 months with less than £2000 (including my flights) and nothing newer than a pentium 4 bar my own workstation and laptop.

2 students trained in Fruityloops and Reason4, both of which are now sponsored thorugh friends of our charity and are studying music production and technology at Dar Es Salaam institute. The eldest, Nelson (NellyG) has a recording contract for later in the year, and will be performing with his friend and colleague at the next kilimanjaro music awards. He came to me, wanting to know how to use the computer to record his music, and now he is doing exactly that and is top of his class.

Some of my village "basic PC use" students have gone on to Arusha technical college to study PC repair and Maintenance. Of the 15 students enrolled this year from all over the country, 3 of them are from Mshiri, and before meeting me had no idea what internet Explorer was, or the difference between left or right clicking.

There are many more stories of my time there, some good, some shocking, but overall, and for the first time in my life, I am extremely proud of my work, and encourage everyone and anyone to at least consider their own consumption and use of technology, and try to realise what you could be doing with that if you put your mind to it... the things I have seen people do with a 2G basic internet nokia handset from 2001, would make some of you iPhone users weep with envy.

The future of tanzania is what I am aiming to change, and not to my standards or to those of anybody from my own world, but I want to help those who wish to change, by enabling them to make those choices for themselves, rather than by how much money they have. Your average Est African is just like you or me, not mud-hut-dwelling freaks who can't talk properly, but real people, with reall ambition, and hopefully now, an opportunity for them to develop skills and choices for their own future, choices that we here have had and squandere, or merelly take for granted.

Elimu ni uhai... education is life... http://www.kiliproject.org