good (and bad) hair day tails

So they still think an ICT class at school will produce coding geek???

2011-11-29T11:43:00.000+02:00

So I got wind of a story - ** IT teaching in need of 'reform' **

The teaching of computer science needs to be reformed to make it more relevant to modern needs, says the UK government < http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-15923113 >

Old foggies ... they still have it wrong. Do you really think that an ICT class at secondary school offering M$FT C# will do anything more than give Anders Hejlsberg's ego a boost?

I don't think so - simply because kids who wanna be geeks would rather be doing stuff with current programming languages - C# is essentially a Java rip off - and there's way cooler programming language out there dealing with contemporary distributed framework issues. And there's no way they'll be doing game development in a classroom of a mediocre country school!

Android platform and imminent Linux alternatives, free from the M$FT litigation dazzle, will soon represent the coding environment of choice, and all the poor kiddies forced to learn C# @ school will be lost to the cause! There's no way any secondary education system is going develop curriculum content which will embrace universal coding options. No one ICT teacher in a secondary school is going to be able to teach such diverse skill, so it will typically be an appointment with some M$FT A+, N+ or MCSE qualification... with the end result a closed system suited to further M$FT exploitation.

Sorry to sound so cynical, but I've heard this bullshit too many times. Kids who wanna be geeks will become geeks through networking with other wanna be geeks and having unlimited access to the right tools. Not be listening to an inevitably disenfranchised teacher in a goverment secondary school.

Summer garden produce

2011-11-24T22:18:00.000+02:00

A morning harvest of Sicilian 'snake' (also known as cucuzza), patty pans (yellow and green variants), gem squashes and the first "doodhies" (Indian long gourd) of the season...there's no reason to patronise the long-distance veg deliveries of Fruit 'n Veg when you can get most everything in your own kitchen garden.

Phew! Finally! The Ministry's web site is up!

2011-10-20T11:25:00.004+02:00

Good news - the Ministry of Education web site is now working.

check out http://www.moe.gov.na

Now to try and find all those ETSIP reports on progress in the Tech!Na implementation plan...

Not Found

The requested URL /m_dir_viewdirectorate.php was not found on this server.
Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.

oh dear ... Omalaeti haven't managed to repair the mafrii.com links! AND, worse still, the original link to the Ministry's most valuable resource - EMIS - is still not fixed - http://emis.edsnet.na

Brakwater firestorm

2011-10-20T10:57:00.002+02:00

With a howling gale blowing in from the west, this firestorm kept us busy with flames flaring up >10 metres high. Our neighbouring farms lost tens of thousands of hectares of grazing over three days of burning.

SAIGF meeting, Johannesburg, 1-3 September 2011

2011-09-01T11:32:00.000+01:00

So we are listening to NEPAD, IGF, ICANN about all the diverse panels of people who superlocute around each other. follow the tweets from nnenna and sangonet at #saigf

why the delay in free internet access at schools in Africa?

2011-07-29T09:18:00.000+01:00

Universal affordable access is dictated by legislation on a country by country basis, and broadband internet access is dictated by the manner in which such diverse legislation regulates the ownership of such access infrastructure, thus encouraging or delaying the development of 'last-mile' and even 'last-inch' affordable access. The internet governance forum should be positioned to encourage such ownership to accelerate their commitment - logistically and financially - to completing this task and meet their social responsibility obligations. A pressing example of such outstanding responsibility is the lack of any communication infrastructure (and electricity) at some 40-50% of rural schools in southern Africa. Cynically, it remains incomprehensible that such delays in infrastructural development at African schools flies in the face of a fundamental marketing strategy to engage prospective clients at the earliest age possible. Have such decision-makers never drunk Coca Cola?

Tsumeb - a meeting of the Oshikoto Information Society!

2011-07-25T22:00:00.000+01:00

I'm looking forward to talking about assistive technologies - blogs, wikis, social networks and other cool things in the cloud - and things to come - a bit of future-think to help multi-sectoral community resource centres get excited about the future of information access!

Ministry of Education Conference 27 June - 1 July, 2011

2011-07-07T13:04:00.001+01:00

Collective Delivery of the Education Promise: Improving the Education and Training System for Quality Learning Outcomes and Quality of Life.

Bad news... the words creativity, dance, drama, and art did not feature once in the final recommendations emanating from last week's national education conference; the word 'music' featured once -

"The location of cuca shops and shebeens selling alcohol and playing loud *music* in close proximity to schools provide temptations for misbehaviour by both teachers and learners."

Sorry ngo. May I suggest that you visit Sir Ken Robinson's 2006 TED presentation for therapy ;-)? Otherwise I've heard that Ritalin is a very good substitute for twitchy feet and fingers in the classroom!

I think I'll soon be activating my personal blog awards programme for best quotations again - there were some beauties at the conference.

The best one for me was on FaceBook by

National Conference on Education (Namibia)

"Log onto the conference website at www.moeconference.org. There you will find a public/discussion forum. The Ministry's new website will be LIVE soon, hopefully next month. The Tech!na website is a static website and the information available is still relevant."

Static? It's a bloody fossil! We are still waiting to get the official recommendations from the conference. Damn! It would save so much time if the Ministry chased up Omalaeti tech to deliver their website!

I keep getting a

"403 Forbidden

You don't have permission to access / on this server."

message whenever I try to visit http://www.moe.gov.na

Anyhow, according to the conference website, the current education and training system has the following weaknesses:

poor learning outcomes at all levels;
poor management and accountability;
inequitable resource allocations;
inequitable access to quality education provision;
inefficiency; persisting decline of morals, values and discipline in educational institutions; and
little articulation between educational programmes at different levels of the schooling system including higher education and training system.

The education and training system is perceived as having little relevance to the economy; providing little capacity for knowledge creation and innovation, and therefore not effectively meeting the challenges of 21st century or supporting the attainment of national development goals and aspirations of the Vision 2030.

The objectives of the conference were:

provide an in-depth analysis of the current state of the Namibian education and training system at all levels (pre-primary, primary, secondary, vocational, higher education);
identify deficiencies in the current education and training system;
seek consensus on major and large areas in need of improvement in order to deliver quality education and training at all levels;
develop resolutions from the conference proceedings which form the basis for developing a road map towards comprehensive reforms of the Namibian education and training system

The expected outputs of the conference

An in-depth analysis of the current state of the Namibian education and training system conducted;
Deficiencies in the current education and training system identified;
Consensus reached on major and large areas needing improvement.
Roles and responsibilities of major stakeholders identified and clarified.
Policy options that need to be developed or changed identified.
Resolutions developed to provide the road map for a comprehensive education and training reforms in Namibia.

Impressions

Prime Minister Nahas Angula attacked the failure of Namibia’s education system at the opening of the conference. Prefacing his attack with the statement that the timing of the conference was “both appropriate and opportune”, Angula criticised Minister of Education, Abraham Iyambo and his team for failing to provide conference delegates with an assessment of similar policy and curriculum review exercises such as a Presidential Commission on Education, Culture and Training in 1999 and the Education and Training Sector Improvement Programme (ETSIP) in 2006. The statistics presented were grim. The reality playing itself out in remote villages and urban townships is even more dispiriting.

According to several presentations:

The highest dropouts from Namibian schools are in grades five (5), eight (8) and 10; 4,000 a year in grade five; another 4,000+ every year in grade eight and on average 15,000 a year in grade 10 for the past 10 years.
The grade 10 failures last year mirrored the national unemployment figure of 51,2%
Only about 3 000 out of 18 000 to 20 000 sitting for the examinations qualify for higher education.
More than 90 per cent of the budget (N$ 8,3 Billion) still goes to salaries for management staff and teachers, operations and administration.
Infrastructure development has not scaled up significantly in past 5 years, with some 40% of schools still without running water, proper sanitation, libraries, adequate classrooms, electricity and telecommunications.

UNICEF education consultant Peter Ninnes introduced the concept of the 'Child Friendly School' in an attempt to broadly define quality schools, based on human rights principles, in Namibia. He showed that the annual rates of increase in provision of school facilities such as electricity and telecommunications have been less than 2%, predicting 100% coverage by 2032 at this rate.

Angula concludes that “the culture of work” in the education sector and “perhaps in the public sector as a whole” has not improved in spite of these large budgets; the biggest failure in Namibia’s education system has been poor leadership and management.

In the main, the conference was technocratic and only partially reflective, with little room for dialogue given the density of presentations in the programme. There were obvious gaps when the organisers only partially unpacked education responsibilities, outcomes and deficiencies; accountability clearly remains the weakest link in this Ministry.

In terms of the two mainstream ICT in Education events - one plenary on "ICT development and utilization", and one breakaway on "harnessing the use of ICTs for improving the quality of teaching and learning", I was expecting far more practical progress reporting than excuses on the Tech!Na plan, given the reporting framework of ETSIP, since 2006.

There were plenty of excuses, but progress reports? None.

Michael Tjivikua and Maurice Nkusi of the Polytechnic of Namibia lucidly presented Namibia's challenges to integrating ICTs in education, and made several good recommendations, including the need to strengthen the monitoring and evaluation of the MoE's ICT integration programme, and revive the ICT Steering Committee of the Ministry of Education to once again engage local expertise.

During that plenary's panel session, Mr Kuria (XNet - back briefly from academic pursuits in South Africa??) had nothing substantive to report on their internet access commitments to the education sector since 2004. He harped on about the Xnet Development Alliance Trust being established as a internet access provider for schools in 2004 (by SchoolNet and Telecom Namibia), and had apparently expanded its Edunet operation to "include all educational institutions in 2007". Apparently, beyond connectivity, services such as e-learning, email provisioning, website hosting, etc. are now possible through the Xnet ISP. The Xnet website has nothing to report since it remains under construction since inception (and is mostly broken!), and their Edunet website remains unchanged since early 2009.

[The fact that XNet has recently been identified as Namibia's national education and research network (NREN) by Africa's UbuntuNet Alliance is particularly troubling given these circumstances. UbuntuNet Alliance is a regional association of NRENs in Africa, established in 2005 by five established and emerging NRENs in Eastern and Southern Africa. The driving vision was that of securing high speed and affordable Internet connectivity for the African research and education community in Gb/s rather than in Kb/s, and develop the interconnectivity between these NRENs and research and education networks worldwide.]

Ms Kumbi Short, special advisor on ICT to the Minister of Education, highlighted several challenges during the breakaway -- a lack of confidence and competence of teaching staff, issues with how to introduce ICT for assessment and as an examinable subject, a lack of provision of Internet connectivity, an understaffed NETSS centre unable to provide effective technical support and access for learners and teachers to infrastructure and resources, amongst others -- all the while Tech!Na, funded through ETSIP, was a solid plan for a phased integration of ICT into the Ministry of Education. According to Short, one challenge experienced in schools was the closure of specialised ICT training rooms when it turned out that teachers did not know how to operate the software or server effectively. She also complained that nothing has been done on the awareness and promotion of ICT integration.

The man in charge of ICT at the MoE, Deputy Director Mr Johan van Wyk, remained mostly noncommittal during this session, except for some confusion about who was responsible for online content, but the media later reported him saying that it will cost Namibia N$1 billion to equip the 1,700 schools across the country with computers. I could say a lot of things about these number, but I can't, presently, since we have no public reports to refer to!

While we can now, theoretically, examine various ETSIP reviews since 2006 via its international stakeholder consortium, the Tech!Na progress reports remain unreported in the public domain, in spite of having had some N$ 345 million earmarked for roll-out since 2006. The Tech!Na website has not seen any change since 2007, nor has the ETSIP site dealing with ICT matters and Tech!Na. The NETSS website has remained under construction since 2006. This is a shame really, since that little group of anonymous technicians have been instrumental in delivering and installing computers at (apparently) diverse schools, colleges and teacher resource centres, country-wide, from 2006 to the present!

I would advise the Minister of Education to allow an external audit of Tech!Na, from source to finish, in the face of mounting criticism of this programme's expenses and unreported deliverables! I was pleased that Dr Patti Swartz's had an opportunity to comment on the lack of progress - as the local GeSCI lead, she was instrumental in so many of the original Tech!Na formulations (come to think of it, we never got to see a public version of her last GeSCI report on Tech!Na either!). In this way the minister can save face whatever the outcome, providing these are made public. Sooner than later.

I do think the conference was hampered by having a poor contemporary public reporting mechanism - neither the conference website nor the Ministry's official website (still broken!) have managed to post the presentations, outputs, recommendations and resolutions emanating from this important national event. In this day and age that's inexcusable! Glaringly, the most interesting commentary (documented for all see!) was on the FaceBook conference community page, where some 600 FB users were able to make personal comments on the proceedings.

We can safely assume that the Internet has become "a basic human right", and a necessity for economic growth. This message has mostly sunk home at the conference.

It remains to be seen whether the Ministry of Education and Telecom Namibia decision-makers will carry the burden of free and fast internet for all schools in Namibia. According to Christof Stork (pers. comm.) of Research ICT Africa, and a key advisor to CRAN, the price of flat-rate, uncapped high-speed internet using ADSL and WIMAX technologies will come down substantially in the next year -- notwithstanding the cost of providing internet service-specific solar powered infrastructure solutions to some 600 mostly remote schools in Namibia. Based on projected price adjustments in the local telecommunications market, such an investment in free and fast internet for all schools by the Ministry would not exceed N$ 3 million per annum in the foreseeable short-term. This is a relatively small drop in the MoE's annual budget of N$ 8,3 billion. On the other hand, I am well-informed that a revised profit-generating engine at Telecom Namibia could see significant generosity if the MoE was to apply to right kind of pressure.

"Mobile tech has the fastest adoption rate of any technology in the world," says Miguel Granier, founder of Invested Development. From almost none a decade ago, there are now half a billion mobile phones in Africa. In 2007 just one fibre cable only partly connected sub-Saharan Africa to the world, and most of the continent logged on via satellite. In the past two years, however, six more cables have arrived, linking the region to the U.S., Europe and Asia, and by 2013 that number will be 12. In the past four years Africa's Internet capacity soared from 340 gigabits to 34,000 gigabits per second while the cost of the Internet to its service providers plunged from US$ 4,000 to US$ 200 per month for a megabit per second and could fall still further, to US$ 100, within a year. As a result, Internet traffic in Africa is among the fastest growing in the world. It is imperative that Namibia's Ministry of Education takes advantage of this phenomenon.

In my analysis of the conference proceedings, the following conference recommendations (as derived from the Friday report-back sessions) are likely to be most pertinent for the ICT sectors of Namibia (not in any order of priority):

The digital revolution has made computer education an integral part of the curriculum. The changes have transformed the global as well as regional economy. The Conference recommended that the use of ICTs be integrated into the education processes.

Clearly a reinforcement of the Tech!Na and ETSIP plans, the conference was able to articulate how the use of ICTs would be integrated into educational processes, by pointing at the incorporation of ICTs in *all* subjects, not just a distinct ICT-literacy subject, consider technologies and resources already in place, and open their minds to rapidly evolving technologies to make internet access key to such integration.

A range of incentives, financial and otherwise, must be introduced to reward and encourage excellent teacher performance.

It would appear that the earlier promise to deliver free laptops to teachers who complete their ICDL certification is somewhat behind schedule. Lots of unhappy teachers. It's a really matter of better management.

Adequate funding should be made available to expand, decentralise and address inequitable access to ICT and library services, especially in the regions.

self-explanatory - only about 53% of Namibia's schools have library infrastructure - there is no record of how these 'libraries' are being used, and without incentives, are non-librarian trained teaching or admin staff doing the right things with the limited resources? There was some debate around the fact that even essential text books were still in unacceptably low supply in remote schools as a result of poor centralised management and distribution systems. MCA-N is apparently driving quite aggressive demands on the Ministry for expected outcomes.

Ensure high-speed and free internet connections in all schools, with bandwidth improved by 2012 with Telecom as partner (the same recommendation was made for higher education (free internet bandwidth should be provided to increase ICT usage in the HE sector and adequate funding should be made available to expand, decentralise and address inequitable access to ICT and library services, especially in the regions).

This must be emphasised over and over again.

On-site training of teachers to encourage their incorporation of ICTs in all subjects, not just a separate ICT subject.

Not sure about the 'on-site' bit - especially if the technology is not distributed in a manner which allows all teachers to have equitable access - one large classroom filled with obsolete and hard to manage equipment will not serve this purpose at any school with more than 5 teachers.

Technologies need to be explored for learners with special needs, as well as those in remote areas to access ICT.

Properly called "assistive technologies", this "need to explore" may well suggest that there's likely going to be an update on the Tech!Na strategic plans .

Better utilise ICT that are *already* in the hands of teachers and learners, namely the mobile phone

This position originated from Kuria of XNet who I think was looking for excuses for the past 5 years' worth of non-delivery of internet access solutions to schools in Namibia. With other more appropriate technologies available, but rejected by MoE in a far too rigid rules-of-deployment framework. We can clearly embrace smart phones, running android applets, as relatively short-term precursors to better form factors for web-browser access to educational resources in the local cloud; however this should not detract from MoE and XNet responsibility to provide teachers with the right tools to empower and motivate them to perform better in the classroom, i.e., fast and free uncapped internet access!

Television sets linked to a laptop should be explored as a cost-effective interim measure

Broadcast options for good educational TV production have been explored priorly, but this recommendation has been taken out of context since it was actually suggested that wide-screen TV would (affordably) also serve as an alternative to projectors and smart whiteboards. With wireless low-power LED projectors costing less than N$ 5,000 nowadays, I think we can suggest better, more affordable, and easier to manage assistive technologies to the MoE.

The use of solar energy to support the use of ICT in the classroom in rural areas needs to be seriously looked into.

ICT literacy should be a requirement for certification of teachers and their performance appraisal in future. Teachers need to be kept abreast of new developments in ICT. Why only now? There are plenty of well-tested models for such ICT/communication-specific solar power solutions with good M and E records to adopt! Rumour has it that a Namibian computer reseller in partnership with two South African companies was "commissioned" to deliver a new solar-powered computer solution for some pilot Kunene region mobile school. Apparently there's talk about this computer reseller being the Ministry's POC - 'Partner of Choice' ??? Someone please tell me what this means!

ICT literacy should be a requirement for certification of teachers and their performance appraisal in future. Teachers need to be kept abreast of new developments in ICT.

An absolute essential in this post-modern world. If every teacher and teacher-student in Namibia had access to fast and free internet access, a little bit of electricity, a reasonable projection device combined with constructivist schooling at UNAM, this literacy requirement would be vastly simplified! However, I do remain uncomfortable with the idea that young (and old) adults are forced to attempt multiple-choice questions in a second or third language to acquire ICDL certification - the current measure of ICT literacy competency at the MoE, and the ticket to computer classroom access.

Consider a subsidy to teachers to buy their own laptops.

This has been tried before; it can work, and the Polytechnic of Namibia has a really good M & E framework with which they continue to assess the impact of their present laptop deal for lecturers and students. Someone needs to consult with Dr Tjama Tjivikua on this topic!

One target at which we should aim is one laptop per *teacher*, and one computer per *classroom*, perhaps sourced from businesses upgrading their ICTs.

The words 'laptop' and 'computer' should ideally be replaced by 'appropriate, assistive technologies' and please let us not venture into the PC refurbishment market at this stage, unless it's directly linked to a Vocational Skills training opportunity for unemployed youth with community- or in-service opportunities at educational centres in remote areas. Assistive technologies are evolving so fast that the traditional technologies the MoE is still prescribing will be obsolete in less than 18 months. We must open-mined to new technologies at a fraction of the price of such conventional stereotypes. "Buy new, cheap and frequently" would be my motto.

Expand and strengthen resource capacities of Community Learning Development Centres and sensitize Community Leaders to take ownership of these centres.

Increase funding for Adult Education and Open and Distance Learning (ODL) and encourage research and capacity building for Lifelong Learning.

Finalise and implement the national ODL policy and develop advocacy strategies for ODL.

Expand the scope of ODL and maximise the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in ODL.

Strengthen Library and Archives infrastructure, ICT and human resources capacities.

We must insist on adequate civil society representation at these ODL, Lifelong learning policy developments.

There are no technology shortcuts to good education. For primary and secondary schools that are under-performing or limited in resources, efforts to improve education should focus almost exclusively on more and better teachers. Information technology, if used at all, should be targeted for certain, specific uses. Like providing (open or universal) access to good and intellectually stimulating educational resources to learners and teachers alike.

Open access by way of Information and communication technologies (ICTs) combined with the open intellectual property arrangements of Open Education Resources (OERs) and networked collaboration have the potential to change fundamental business models for the education sector in Namibia. There are several challenges and opportunities to using digital OERs to implement new models of educational provision in Namibia.

The concept of open education encapsulates a simple but powerful idea that the world’s knowledge is a public good and that OERs provide an extraordinary opportunity for everyone to share, use, enhance and reuse knowledge. Internationally, the education sector is now exploring and implementing the potential of OER to provide free learning opportunities for all students worldwide. Namibia has the opportunity to leverage the benefits of open education and digital ICTs in providing free learning opportunities for its learners, especially those currently excluded from the formal sector by economic and social pressures and a lack of adequate infrastructure.

It would appear from recent discussion with several other e-learning advocates and developers (IIT, NAMCOL, UNAM, UNESCO, Polytechnic, MoE Library Services and others) that there are opportunities for collaborative work to accelerate local access to a richly diverse and high quality educational content ecology -- OERs which deliver locally relevant content to teachers and learners in an interactive, visually stimulating way that is fun and conducive to maximising teaching capacity and learner development. Increasingly, there are more and more exceptional open-source interactive online resources available to the education sector. These OERs urgently require aggregation, evaluation, accreditation and distribution mechanisms to have any significant impact on Namibia's education system.

Although Namibia is one of several countries in southern Africa with reasonably good commercial ICT access infrastructure, there are key limitations in the education sector - lack of infrastructure, electricity, the high cost of internet connectivity, limited (and mostly unsupported) technology penetration in the rural areas, and schools in particular, very few Namibian software and content developers and a lack of skilled ICT trainers and technicians in rural communities. Many of the development organisations active in these rural areas import such skills from other countries, resulting in limited investment and focus on this core local development opportunity, thus reducing the potential for Namibians to benefit optimally from the opportunities offered by this sector.

How do we maximize the impact of education at rural schools in a digital age, taking care not to leave anyone behind? How can we set up environments where information is free flowing? And, perhaps more boldly, how can we shift 'business as usual' so that it is the learners and educators themselves who shape the learning and educating?

Surprisingly, a recent report by the Open Learning Exchange (OLE) commissioned by UNESCO overlooked several local and international initiatives engaged in developing OERs for the Namibian education sector, including IIT's e-Campus Learning Portal, which focuses on basic literacy and numeracy, secondary and vocational bridging education based on the national syllabus for Namibian schools as prescribed by NIED. WIkiEducator and OER Foundation were also overlooked by this report.

What is clear from this, the local vocal of delegates as well as FaceBook commentary, is that there's considerable resistance to the idea of one laptop per child.

Steve Bezuidenhout, one of the MPs on the Parliamentary Standing Committee on ICTs - briefed us on the AU/Negroponte Africa-wide OLPC deal signed in Addis recently. I explained to him the message that has sunk home globally since that media-hyped launch (at this event Negroponte even had the cheek to ask for sponsors to give him US$ 1.5 million to build a new OLPC headquarters in Addis!).

Nicholas Negroponte announced his decision (in 2010!) to diversify his global OLPC interests by also developing a tablet (called XO3) by April 2011! This has thus far resulted in more media stunts with the latest simulations of his intellectual constructs - so let's call it *vaporware* for the moment.

He's thinking in the right direction, though; the important issue about XO3 is that it will have a fast, low-cost, power-efficient embedded RISC processor - ARM - meaning a *one watt* laptop screen included versus a 6 - 10 Watt OLPC laptop under Intel's x86 (modern x86 is relatively uncommon in embedded systems like OLPC). We're talking 400 - 1000% more battery runtime with ARM. On top of that, ARM is faster and better than x86 for *Android*, Sugar and even Chrome OS, representing a sort of combination that OLPC (OTPC?) will likely use for the next generation - XO-3.

What I find most disconcerting is Negroponte's suggestion that the XO-3 will initially be developed for use by *first-world* learners, *not* those in developing countries, at a price of US$75! So it begs the question as to why is he still continuing to sell his laptop - the now nearly obsolete XO1 - to developing countries at more than double the price - last count was US$188 - is he conveniently trying to get rid of all his old, failing stock?

My advice to the MoE, if Namibia's government actually intends to go ahead with this AU deal, is to insist on getting the new generation of X03 Tablet! Forget near-obsolete OLPC!

To follow soon is a revised total cost of ownership model based on a few new assumptions:

MoE undertakes an external audit of Tech!Na 2006 - present.
MoE revives the ICT Steering Committee as a mechanism to make Mr J van Wyk's activities (under ETSIP) a more public and transparent process combined with thorough M & E.
MoE revises the Tech!Na strategic plans to allow for more flexible adoption of assistive technolgies.
MoE underwrites the cost of delivering fast and free internet to all of Namibia's ±1,700 schools (which will include appropriate service-specific power solutions for those ±600 schools without electricity)
MoE revises its ideological stance on delivering ICTs to ECD and primary schools last.
MoE prioritises the delivery of appropriate ICTs to school libraries and TRCs.

Some ideas for a paperless future...

2011-05-18T19:04:00.001+01:00

"The publisher is replaceable; the author is not." Great vision by Morton L. Janklow, a very successful literary agent!

some more taxi views

2011-04-13T17:36:00.002+01:00

I'm finding this photography remarkably therapeutic - no more road rage for me - a calm hand produces a steady photograph!

check the man smiling - and note the hat - the majority of perpetrators wear a diversity of hats! I'm hoping that my dear friend Dudley will find a moment to share his artistic skills with me on that front...

sorry - the hat is not visible.

my favourite spot for the name and shame game!

see the hat?

An ode to Windhoek City's town planning department - I must get some kind of appropriate quote from Hugo on the subject :-)!

I couldn't do the follow up here, but a video-clip would have had everyone rolling in the aisles!

Ain't he busted - that's another observation I can make - most of our Windhoek taxi-drivers are male.

Taxis driven by women are inevitably fitted with hats.

It's time for a name and shame game with windhoek taxis

2011-04-06T10:48:00.000+01:00

Having watched the mayhem at the taxi ranks at Mareua Mall and the University of Namibia entrance, I think it is high time that we create a website where we can post our photos of taxis breaking road rules. I'm not sure how easy it will be to identify the owners of the taxis in question, but a public site with photos may help City police come closer to creating a demerit system for wayward taxi drivers and their owners!

Some picture to follow!

2011-04-06T10:08:00.000+01:00

gardens speak for themselves - part 3, late summer

2011-03-21T16:59:00.000+02:00

With the greatest volume of rain we've ever experienced here in this part of Namibia - we're looking at beating a rainfall record last documented 120 years ago, and with the rain not finished yet at over 750 mm, the garden has taken on a distinctly out-of-control wild aspect, verdant, lush, flamboyant - words ordinarily used to describe tropical jungle! And to prove the point, we now have a mango tree growing in the place of a discarded pip. Whatever next? The cassabanana vine has produced its first fruits, and we can't wait to taste this exotic Brazilian fruit! It took a lot of rain and some successful pollinating to get this far, and I do hope to taste the harvest!

Cassabanana fruit in the making - already 40 cms long and growing!

resplendent Cassabanana vine covering our north-eastern walls

Doodhi jungle invading the acacia tree!

A sample of climate change ? Mango tree from a discarded pip!

late summer garden, trimmed for winter planting

March 2011 inner garden - tomatoes, peppers and chillies galore!

It hasn't stopped raining...

2011-02-25T11:12:00.002+02:00

Why my heart remains in Namibia ... post-rain transformations

Well, it hasn't stopped raining, raining, raining, and the larks are breeding, breeding, breeding! Is this going to be another epic rain season like Namibia had in the thirties and seventies? I really hope so, since I'm gambling on Gray's Larks shouting the odds in their local population dialects further west than I've ever recorded them before.

Ammomanes grayi or sp. nov. a(r)shi may yet see the light at the end of a thirty-year tunnel! That's almost as long as a respectable family vendetta :-)!

Restructuring OER to make it even more open than it is presently

2011-02-24T11:06:00.000+02:00

Sir John Daniel of the Commonwealth of Learning recently wrote in a keynote presentation at the Consultative meeting on opening up higher education, hosted by the OER University in Otago, New Zealand, on 23 February 2011, aimed at developing a shared understanding of a logic model for the OER university concept.

"One hundred and fifty years ago London University launched its external degree programme, for people all over the world, on the radical principle that it didn’t care how you acquired the knowledge provided you could pass the exam. That programme, which has produced five Nobel laureates over the years, demonstrates two key principles ... First, give students every possible element of flexibility in drawing on the rich environment of knowledge in their learning. But, second, make sure that you offer them routes to credible certification so that they and society can have confidence in the robustness of their knowledge and skills."

This, I think, makes absolute sense in situations - Namibia is no exception - where we simply don't have a chance in hell of accelerating the capacity of the locally recruited teachers to be *exceptionally good* teachers in the next two decades. Let's take advantage of burgeoning (and increasingly) affordable technologies to empower youth (and teachers!) by way of access models which embrace these fundamental principles.

The future of wikimedians

2011-02-24T08:11:00.000+02:00

In commentary on Heather Ford's essay - 'the missing wikipedians' where she inserted a quotation concerning wikipedia use from Kenya - “I am a heavy *user* like most of us here in Nairobi but there’s never really been motivation to become an editor before.”

the word “before” hits the nail on the head of this debate! It’s the *user* who drives demand for (more) wikimedian contributions. And while we can expect, with confidence, that improved bandwidth in Africa will see greater *usage* of Wikipedia, we still face the reality that literacy education in Africa continues to lag behind, resulting in *delayed* scaling of intent! I am a Wikimedia optimist , and continue to advocate the use of diverse Wikis in education. Indeed, the very use of educational Wikis like WIkiEducator (in the absence of any better OER on the ground) will drive the growth of editorial intent! Are Wikimedians perhaps in need of some measurable appreciation to get them, and a fresh spate of newbies, to the grindstone? Well, perhaps Jimmy Wales should be working on a “like”-like or “impressions” element for contributing authors; that’s something Youtube and Facebook have done to really up the participation!

I had nearly forgotten the beltway bandits of my past!

2011-02-02T17:33:00.002+02:00

Having just picked up a thread about AED being banged by USAID for a change, I dug out the original texts of my early fall-out with these bandits .... I'm amazed that I wasn't eventually assassinated by anyone at the time:-). Read the latest about AED hanky-panky...

"“Initial findings by USAID’s OIG reveal evidence of serious corporate misconduct, mismanagement, and a lack of internal controls [at AED], and raise serious concerns of corporate integrity,” USAID said.

So these wee interactions of mine with AED in 2003 are pale in their significance ! Read on:

Dear Bill

Having had a scotch last night, some time to think and calm down, and a frank and positive discussion with ***** today, I am now in the right frame of mind to pursue this flow of conscience.

We must ensure that the GDA can deliver 70 schools at least - the contract requires 100 schools to be delivered and this may allow USAID to put some considerable pressure on EDC and AED to indicate their cost-share under GDA - obviously GDA is somewhat different to ordinary beltway bandit deals.

The argument about US$ devaluation from 10.65 to 7.00 may still play a role in the arguments envisaged between EDC/AED and USAID, but I do think that I have a valid case in arguing for only one contractor under GDA to bring up the budget from 698k to a more realistic 900k+ to meet this US$ devaluation.

Obviously in determining the total number of schools supported by GDA, the route proposed by ********** and myself with respect to "school solution invoices" rather than complicated procurement processes for dribs and drabs in phases is the way to go. This means that the total value will fluctuate with exchange fluctuation but not the essential composition of technologies delivered to a school. In essence, given the fact that we're working with pre-owned tier1 computers, the technology will only get better as time progresses - today we ship tier1 PIs and some PIIs, next year it will likely be tier1 PIIs and PIIIs and so on... all for the same total school solution price tag.

To counter any argument with regards the costing we are providing for pre-owned machines please appreciate that while such pre-owned tier1 machines could cost between U$ 75 and 119 per unit FOB in USA, depending on shipping, at least 10 - 20 % will be dead on arrival.

Sourced locally (ie SA) such similar machines will cost us N$ 1900 - 2400 per unit, with 5-10% dead on arrival.

Factor in the normal probabilities of fall-over in NEW computers - this is presently calculated at 10% in first year of warranty! - then the cost of providing warranties on pre-owned refurbished machines situated in remote parts of Namibia is obviously significantly higher. We presently calculate that some 35% of all refurbs delivered to schools will be replaced during a three year depreciation cycle. Accordingly we have scaled these costs into our equation for a school solution.

Interestingly, though, if you compare our pricing to that of any local retail resource provider, you'll discover that our prices ARE still lower than anyone else! I have a very recent tender evaluation available for your consideration.

Nufsaid - the school solution calculator can be validated by comparison with contemporary retail procurement prices - for hardware, software, installation, internet services, maintenance contracts, etc. If such details are necessary to convince, please let me know. The workplan put forward by ******** after consultation with myself was submitted yonks ago - what has AED done about this? I understand the deadline for submission has passed.

Over to you!

Cheers

Joris

Joris,
If I were in your position I'd have the same reaction to the overhead rates and so on...

About the two Washington entities. My preference some time ago was to have AED work with you on iNET and have EDC work with you on GDA (in fact, Steve ****** suggested that). I think the argument here was that AED had a COP on the ground so it made more sense for that AED employee to be involved with both. Since EDC is the prime grantee on dot-EDU we will have to be in at some admin level. The mission may take out *****'s time if pushed.

Or if the mission wants to take out AED completely (on GDA) that is fine with me. But they may argue that they want **********'s replacement to stay in at some level, so they may want to keep AED.

Thanks for listing the main points below. Will make sure that you get a longer time for the first 35 schools (yr # 5).

Will let you know as soon as I know more.

Bill

At 06:48 PM 7/23/2003 +0200, you wrote:
Bill

TX very much for the call today, transparency and clarifications - finally a budget to examine earnestly!   It leaves me speechless - if I had been better informed of the extent of G&A cropping over and above direct costs (many of these are also hard to believe!) claimed by EDC and AED, I would have built in compensatory margins of the same stature. Too bad, I have learned my lesson well!   Further to our discussion today - my salient points:

1. Note that earlier budget discussions with AED very particularly addressed a per school solution - simply calculated at ca. US$10,000 per school for 100 schools = US$ 1 million.   This was calculated at an exchange rate (then - 1.5 years ago!) of US$ 1 = N$ 10.65. Today the exchange rate is US$ 1 = N$ 7.00, which means at least 30% devaluation on the original budget.

2. From the first pressing request by Steve ****** for a draft budget proposal which I submitted 1.5 years ago, there was NO FURTHER dialogue with AED concerning the detailed descriptors/line-items of the GDA budget.   The direct cost items as shown me today have absolutely NO BEARING on the proforma school solution calculator submitted by ******** to AED (you've now got a working spreadsheet as arbitrated by **********, and also given to ******** of USAID).

3. I argue strongly against the fact that there are TWO not ONE beltway bandits milking this GDA budget, where the contents of the MOU and GDA preparatory guidelines (remember I STILL DO NOT HAVE ANY WORKING CONTRACT DOCUMENTS) which makes reference to the use of a DC-based, USAID-approved contractor, if SchoolNet did not qualify for direct funding from USAID, based on a pre-contract audit. No such audit ever took place.   So why two beltway bandits for this particular GDA?

4. My proposal is simple - remove one bandit and the GDA will see more schools served than currently possible at US$ 698k.   I intend to pursue this matter with the board of SchoolNet and MInistry of Basic Education as a matter of extreme gravity.   A milking of US$ 302k for DC home costs is a bit much, I would say.

4. Under your present budget of US$ 698k, it is only possible to serve 43 schools; if the exchange rate improves (grant-wise), then more schools can be served at between US$ 10k and US$ 16k per school

5. Please note that the spreadsheet suggests that SchoolNet supplies 35 schools between 1 october 2002 (!!) and 30 September 2003. It is now nearly August.   I think this needs correcting.

Cheers for the mo'

Joris
Joris,
Good to talk this morning. Thanks for this justification of the cost changes. I just had two calls with Stephen ******* at USAID/Washington, and a call with Ken ******* at AED (contracting office). Stephen is going to contact the mission and say that we need to reduce the number of schools -- or we need more funding to get the number back up to 100 schools (or we need to take out some beltway bandits).

In any case, I hope this can be resolved soon. When we get a modification letter, AED will sign the subcontract and you should be able to invoice them. I'll keep you posted.

Best-
Bill

Indeed they were the best of days - Дорогой длинною (!) - reminiscent capers of guileless youth and romantic idealism.

Tertiary education blues?

2011-02-02T12:27:00.000+02:00

"The function of universities is the induction of the intellectually qualified in the rigors of rational discourse. It is not to remedy the deficiencies of primary and secondary education." Thus spake Jeremy Gauntlet, SC.

Trout fishing in Namibia, anyone?

2011-01-29T11:06:00.001+02:00

After a wildly dramatic downpour of 34 mm in just under 20 minutes the other evening, our rivers are finally flowing again! And it ain't over yet, since our 'official' rain season only started yesterday

Main riverbed looking north

and a little upstream backwater - wouldn't this be great for some trout?

Do a playback loop on my youtube contribution for the sounds of gurgling water!

taxi warfare - arithrealitics

2011-01-25T10:45:00.004+02:00

Peak hour traffic, and a city police traffic officer is just out of the picture :-). Check how taxi G38 gets most normal drivers' blood pressure up by abusing the left lane to sneak in front of the bus to beat the queue... the queue behind me was half a kilometre long. And G38 was only one of a dozen or more doing exactly the same! [then again - the transporting of people on the back of a pickup is also illegal in many places :-)!]

The Windhoek taxi strike: arithrealitics

Why taxi owners in Windhoek don't really care about a day of striking...

It's a simple equation, really... ±230 working days x >25,000 passengers x 2 trips daily x 8 kms @ N$1/km = ca. N$ 70-150 million gross income/annum for taxi *owners* in Windhoek. Go figure, it's really all about capital "who gives a sh*t" exploitation.

slight correction is in order - 21% of Windhoek population use taxis - that's 63,000 people per working day = N$ 232 million per annum - that's only a million bucks per day. Small change, strike on. Only 4% of Windhoek population use public transport, ie, municipal buses.

Troubling too, based on small vehicle CO2 emission calculations, each passenger accounts for 585 kg of CO2 per year!

Search for the right EV battery is on!

2011-01-21T10:54:00.001+02:00

Excerpted from Wikipedia

The NiMH EV-95 battery used by Toyota in their short-lived RAV4 EV lease vehicle of the early 2000s, is, typically, not available.

Chevron had inherited control of the worldwide patent rights for the NiMH EV-95 battery when it merged with Texaco, which had purchased them from General Motors. Chevron's unit won a USD 30,000,000 settlement from Toyota and Panasonic, and the production line for these large NiMH batteries was closed down and dismantled.

This case was settled in the ICC International Court of Arbitration, and not publicised due to a gag order placed on all parties involved. Only smaller NiMH batteries, incapable of powering an electric vehicle or plugging in, are currently allowed by Chevron-Texaco.

In July 2009, Cobasys NiMH division (Chevron-Texaco), was sold to a Bosch and Sanyo consortium, but still retained the patent rights and collect royalties on the batteries. (See Patent encumbrance of large automotive NiMH batteries on Wikipedia).

Further enticement NB!

China has set an industrial policy with the objective of becoming the largest EV developer and manufacturer in the world, enabling the country to leapfrog internal combustion engine (ICE) technology and go straight to electric transport. China is the world’s second largest consumer of oil behind the U.S., which historically has led the ICE vehicle market, and ahead of Japan, the leader in hybrid technology. By 2020, China is expected to rely on 65% of foreign oil imports.

China will subsidize buyers of battery-powered cars and plug-in hybrids under a pilot program aimed at keeping the country competitive in the global race to develop an electric-vehicle industry, but which also risks a public backlash. Buyers of electric vehicles will receive up to 60,000 yuan ($8,800), and buyers of certain gasoline-electric hybrids as much as 50,000 yuan, under the two-year program set to start this year in five cities—Shanghai, Hangzhou, Changchun, Shenzhen and Hefei—the ministry of finance said Tuesday.

All-electric e6 vehicles made by BYD charge up in Shenzhen, where the cars are used as taxis. BYD is in position to benefit from China's electric-car subsidies. Similar subsidy programs already are offered or are being rolled out in the U.S., Japan and Europe. Electric-car producers in China, such as Shenzhen-based BYD Co., assume the program will be expanded to other cities over time. Auto industry executives said the subsidies are likely to apply only to vehicles produced in China, although that wasn't clear from the government notice. BYD is already in a position to take advantage of the subsidies. The company launched its all-electric e6 taxis in the southern city of Shenzhen earlier this year. BYD also recently said it has sealed an agreement with Daimler AG of Germany to set up a 50-50 joint venture to develop an all-electric car for the Chinese market.

background to an action matrix for FLOSS in Africa

2011-01-21T10:20:00.000+02:00

More than a decade ago, in the face of rapidly changing technological advancement, and exorbitant cost of proprietary hardware, desktop and server software solutions stifling the use of information and communications technologies in Africa, there was a de facto development need for open source solutions on the continent. There was also an concurrent global trend toward affordable and practicable open source solutions which were becoming viable, cost effective and sustainable 'alternatives' to conventional proprietary solutions.

It is against this background that the Free Software and Open Source Foundation for Africa (FOSSFA) was formed. FOSSFA has its origin in the ICT Policy and Civil Society Workshop in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia held between 6th and 8th November 2002.It is here that the need for developing a framework for open source solutions emerged strongly. On 21 February 2003 FOSSFA was launched in Geneva, Switzerland during the second preparatory meeting of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS).

Since those formative days of the global Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) movement, things have changed dramatically. Africa has been experiencing substantial growth in the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) sector. And FLOSS has become a viable software alternative to the high cost and increase in unauthorised software usage in traditional sectors where Proprietary Software remains a standard.

Software development is, and will continue to be, a knowledge- and people-intensive activity. Given the significant penetration by FLOSS in the mobile and desktop virtualization industry, such software is no longer seen as an uncomfortably poor cousin of the proprietary giants, and is increasingly seen as an effective business opportunity and important resource. Africa has the opportunity to participate in, and benefit from, this open software movement.

The mobile and virtual desktop worlds are very much in play, with Google Android steamrolling Microsoft, with other Linux variants such as Intel's MeeGo, Samsung's Bada and Canonical's Ubuntu also gaining ground. In short, there's never been a more exciting time to be involved in the development and growth of operating systems and their apps. As we prepare a strategic / action plan for FOSSFA, almost all of Microsoft's OEM partners have abandoned Microsoft exclusivity, and Microsoft's next-generation operating system has abandoned Intel exclusivity for the first time, and FLOSS is raising considerable interest worldwide, especially in countries such as China, Brazil and India. As we are about to enter the mobile post-PC world, humanity will collectively experience a diversification of mobile apps. The more people that use the mobile platform, the more value it generates for platform participants. It would therefore seem inevitable that FLOSS will continue to help propel development in Africa.

So what role should FOSSFA continue to play in Africa?

FOSSFA is Africa's premier Non-Governmental FLOSS organisation on the continent. The vision of FOSSFA is to promote the use of FLOSS and the FLOSS model in African development. FOSSFA supports the integration of FLOSS in national policies, coordinates, promotes and adds value to African FLOSS initiatives, creativity, industry, expertise, efforts and activities at all levels.

FOSSFA partners with development organizations who share these goals towards a participatory and gender-mainstreamed sustainable development and the attainment of the Millennium Development Goals in Africa.

to be continued.

dealing with post-Paris depression

2011-01-21T09:48:00.001+02:00

I think that Twitter and the comment boxes on FaceBook, even those associated with blog entries like this do not do justice to my need to interact. Where have those heady days of vigorous often heated banter on FOSSFA and other ICT4D email distribution lists gone? Frankly, I miss them. They were simply and easy to use, and required very little bandwidth!

Virtualisation has been troubling me of late - I simply cannot smell the coffee. That may be OK for those out there who only drink tea or coca-cola, but I realise that I miss the physical contact with loads of engaging humanity around me sharing the same stimulating ambitions about ICT4ED - not the odd meeting in corridors or odd international conference, but daily, invigorating intellectual banter and bouncing ideas of all and sundry. I guess that's why sensible academics engage bright, young, busting-to-go, post-grads in esoteric play.

Heather Ford -- may she remain forever young :-) -- wrote about 'usability' in her blog recently:

‘even if you were smart enough and had enough time to use every system perfectly, you would nevertheless be right to choose your system based in part on its usability for other users’. These problems of scale and usability impact a great number of online projects because they need to reduce the number of options in order to consolidate a large number of users/content, but must also ensure that there is enough diversity of options (and further options as they learn more about tackling a certain problem) to enable growing usability. Increasing options and making the network more diverse will, in turn, dilute the numbers and thus the value of the network to users, thus decreasing the numbers of users.'

While Steven Krug said much the same about web usability in his classic book "Don't make me think", I'm not totally sure where that places Content Management Systems like KEWL, and social networking tools like FaceBook on the barometer of change...

Gardens speak for themselves part 2 - summer

2011-01-15T14:42:00.000+02:00

And the rains came and the plants multiplied and they grew and grew and grew...

A collection of 7 different basils - see if you can spot the cinnamon-flavoured one:-)

The mysterious cassabanana has just produced its first flower buds, while taking control of the house's thermoregulation - it is rapidly covering all the summer sun-baked walls!

Doodhi (long gourd) paradise - another high performance creeper!

and the cape gooseberries are prolific this year!

And a veritable jungle of greens, tomatoes, samoan chillies, bush beans, chards, rhubarb, mints and other herbs in the original garden space. The slugs are now posing the first real challenge to our native predators; the predators are engorged and have become sluggish... I now know where that word evolved :-)

And the mysterious NWCT strikes again!

2011-01-13T16:19:00.000+02:00

With apologies to my English readership:-) and extracted from the Republikein's report by Ria:

"IEWERS in Namibië loop waarskynlik iemand rond wat onbewus is dat hy ’n Toyota Land Cruiser gewen het. Die Namibiese Natuurlewe Bewaring Trustfonds (NWCT) se geldinsamelingskompetisie waarin ’n Land Cruiser die topprys was, se gelukstrekking van die wenners is op 31 Desember (2010) op Swakopmund gehou. Die kompetisie word jaarliks gehou om geld vir die NWCT in te samel. Die NWCT gebruik die geld om diere te rehabiliteer en terug in die natuur te verplaas."

Watch this space for a potentially interesting story!

re-articulated impressions of ICT literacy certification

2011-01-04T15:35:00.001+02:00

Best wishes for 2011!

I've given the problem -- trying to get international certification using non-mothertongue language --
some thought over the years of SchoolNet ICT development efforts in Namibia and further afield.

Much attention has been paid to ICDL-like competency testing and certification opportunities for teachers and students in secondary and tertiary education systems to meet ambitious millennium goals, and sadly,
significantly large numbers of perfectly intelligent individuals continue to fail these mostly multiple-choice tests largely owing to insufficient skills in *non-mothertongue* language.

The fundamental flaw lies in students being confronted by several answers of which only one is correct, but the others almost correct or almost incorrect, often using word-subtleties in that language, all of
us have to think twice before marking what we think is the *most* correct answer...

Accordingly, if we are forced to use a foreign language like English (!) to serve internationally-recognised certification courses to people who don't have such a language as mother-tongue, we are doomed to consistently poor exam results for all but the *exceptional* best.

To illustrate - I'm feeling quite cynical today :-) - quoting, in the most part :-), a dear colleague of mine in Namibia, Andrew Clegg (see link below) , "the Namibian educational system (and that of all other former British colonies) came into being through the English Education Act of 1918. This system of year standards lead to an examination eventually called the School Certificate examination taken at Ordinary and Advanced levels (with vast quantities of multiple-choice questions! - my words). Success in this exam gave exemption to matriculation examinations set until then by the British Universities. This 1918 system became one of the most successful exports throughout the British Empire. The reason it served the colonies so well was that it was a very cost-effective mechanism for rapidly selecting and educating only the best local people to help the British run their country for them. Those who failed the standards rapidly dropped out and so did not cost anything. It was a perfect system for creating dropouts and thereby saving money."

The French and Portuguese colonists used similar deviousness to ensure the same rewarding comfort zones in their colonies. Enough cynicism - the question we have to ask ourselves is whether or not this is what we want from contemporary ICT skills development programmes - exceptional or general success ?

Hence my earlier reference in Skype discussions with FOSSFA and ICT@INNOVATION players to what efforts address *localisation* in the ICT@INNOVATION programme. I like the challenges set by LPI to aspiring System administrators. However, what is being done, locally, to get the examinations localised to the extent that they allow us to overcome English/French/Portuguese as second/third language? Who has tackled this pedagogically?

Judging from the LPI results provided by Evans in his blog recently, is there substance in my argument - and I put it to ICT@INNOVATION that the process you are using to prepare candidates for LPI exams may in fact be the closest thing to language proficiency preparation we've got.

On one side, I would love to see LPI certification demand in Africa allow for more language options to evolve on the LPI web site - I see that Korean, Taiwanese and Japanese pages exist so why not also encourage them to foster kiSwahili, Arabic and other African languages?

On the other, to what extent has LPI considered some kind of (local) language proficiency index for developing country candidates ? Could we explore that as part of the ICT@INNOVATION programme? Indeed, how *do* we localise without compromising the high standards of the LPI exams?

My first cents worth in 2011

Have a prosperous year!

With thanks to Andrew Clegg, formerly in Namibia.

Cloud computing in Germany

2010-11-23T12:04:00.000+02:00

Well, I never thought that I would ever see the inside of a MacDonalds but here I am in Bonn at the railway station using a wireless hotspot to catch up on my diverse responsibilities.

Weather is typically miserable, cold at 5 deg C and wet.

Addendum

2010-11-16T21:59:00.001+02:00

And I forgot to mention the bearded, cardinal and goldentailed woodpeckers, hoopoes, edible chrysanthemum, oregano, thyme, strawberry spinach, mizu and turnips!

And here's a photo of the truly amazing anise-flavoured perennial Mexican mint/tarragon which I nurtured from seed courtesy Baker Creek through the cold winter months! One seriously cool plant to add to "Po-ke" if you're into raw fish and herbs a la south Pacific!

gardens speak for themselves!

2010-11-16T18:40:00.000+02:00

Pre-rain November garden !

And... on from bottom left moving up and around and about, we have spearmint, strawberries, avocado, rhubarb, mizuma, dahnia, florence fennel, lolo rossa, dwarf oriental greens, horseradish, chives, brinjal, soya-beans, sunflowers, symbolic maize, sage, mustard lettuce, kale, radishes, garden beets, calendula, salad rocket, climbing beans, nasturtium, sorrel, samoan chillies, green peppers, tomatoes, lots more dahnia (coriander), pakchoi, comfrey, borage, oakleaf salad, giant parsley, lovage, gooseberries, tansy, catnip, multi-coloured chard, peppermint, pennyroyal, mugwort. There's lemongrass, a curry-leaf tree, thai lime, cherry guava, bay leaf, rosemary, grenadilla, southernwood, lemon balm, geranium, alfafa, curly parsley, regular basil, thai rosella (hibiscus), strawberry husk tomatoes, thai dill, lemon basil, hairy kaproa basil, mexican 'mint' (tagetes sp.), zuccinni (giant courgette), petite panne squash, snake gourd, fenugreek, green globe artichoke, and red kohlrabi. There's a bunch of different basil variants - dark opal, sweet thai, lime, cinnamon, liquorice scented - and several berry-producers - sunberry, huckleberry, tomantillo, naranjilla, and the mysterious fast-growing melocoton creeper (photo to follow:-)).

Now that the rain has come to Windhoek, we can sigh with relief - nearly 40 mm of rain in two days since our last drops of rain in early May this year! It does assure us that there won't be any bush fires to deal with in the next few weeks. It may also mean that the unusually high diversity of insect-eating birds in the vegetable garden will disperse. I've introduced several "spit-beetles" to counter the impact of slugs and other vegetarian pests, and there are several skinks, toads and frogs actively feeding on the same.

And the mostly insect-eating bird list - thanks to a pesticide free gardening venture - inside the netting - since May 2010 includes

Crimsonbreasted Shrike
Three-streaked Tchagra
Familiar Chat
Marico Flycatcher
Pririt Batis
Dusky Sunbird - gleaning spider webs
Scarlet-chested Sunbird
Crombec
Barred Warbler
Chestnut-vented Titbabbler
Ashy Tit
Carp's Tit
Blackchested Prinia
Shorttoed Rock Thrish
Greybacked Cameroptera (Bleating Warbler)
African Reed Warbler
Pied Barbet
White-eye
Whitebrowed Sparrow weaver
Great Sparrow
Greyheaded Sparrow
Burntnecked Eremomela
Lesser masked weaver
Redheaded finch

EV, batteries and renewables - where to?

2010-11-12T09:57:00.003+02:00

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_vehicle
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_vehicle_battery
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_encumbrance_of_large_automotive_NiMH_batteries

provide a concise summary of the EV and related issues

China has set an industrial policy with the objective of becoming the largest EV developer and manufacturer in the world, enabling the country to leapfrog internal combustion engine (ICE) technology and go straight to electric transport. China is the world’s second largest consumer of oil behind the U.S., which historically has led the ICE vehicle market, and ahead of Japan, the leader in hybrid technology. By 2020, China is expected to rely on 65% of foreign oil imports.

HSBC research predicts that China’s share of the global EV market will grow from 2.7% this year to 35% by 2020. During this time period, China will overtake Japan by 2016 and the U.S. by 2019 in dominating the global EV market.

Better Place and Chery will jointly develop switchable-battery EV prototypes with the goal of securing regional Chinese government EV pilot projects.

The impact of Quality Control Culture on OER

2010-10-26T07:21:00.001+02:00

Dear OER activists,

This time it's a bit too long for a tweet!

Joyce, an educational quality control advocate from Kenya caught me on a bad hair day with her observations of the future of open educational resources (OER) recently. She wrote:

...Uncertainty about the Quality of the OER. In countries such as Kenya where curriculum content has to be quality assured, the policy makers, teachers/instructors and students are not at ease with OER. Quality assurance for OER would be useful in such circumstances. The stakeholders would probaly consider using and reusing OER if they are assured of their quality!!

With many OER developers, I suspect, I can probably share my cynical view that this educational quality control culture (as it is in Namibia) is simply a white lie called foreign donor educational diplomacy. As I see it, it's an opportunity provided to foreign (and inevitably proprietary) expertise (with an overdose of PhDs!) to make major bucks out of short-lived, drop-and-run consultancies to a system where, feel-good policy and strategic plans aside, ministry of education *decision makers* are mostly near-geriatric "OER-in-ICT-illiterate" males steeped in neolithic traditions and conventions, who have cowed the local pedagogical skills-base into a state of despair about their *own* worth in potentially contributing significant OER to burgeoning international sites such as the WikiEducator and Wikipedia, let alone their own educational institutions!

An old colleague of mine, a retired advisor to several ministers in Namibia, once remarked that the best thing that could happen to education in Namibia was to take the 30-odd middle-management decision makers in the ministry, shoot them, and replace them with young, ambitious Namibian women. I would tend to agree, seeing the state of government education decay in Namibia today.

It's gotten so bad in Namibia that even our minister of defence, Charles Namoloh, said recently “ the Bantu education system under South African rule was better than the current state of educational affairs.”

Embarrassingly, recently appointed Deputy Minister of Education, David Namwandi, responded: “Despite the fact that this ministry is supposed to be the leading ministry, a strategic plan was never developed for it.” 

Absolute poppycock!

Since independence in 1990, foreign interventions by USAID, World Bank and others have mesmerized our myopic ministry officials with several grandiose schemes, all of which became strategic plans of one form or another - iNET, NETA, ETSIP, NQA, NTA and Tech!Na are all examples of such ill-conceived squandermania doomed to failure!

Former National Assembly member Nora Schimming-Chase described Namibia’s education system – “the business of the whole society” – as ‘disastrous’.  According to her, “the biggest mistake we made at Independence was to lose out on all the opportunities we had. Instead of drawing on all those opportunities we opted for a foreign [education] system”. 

My advice to Joyce and others caught in such quality assurance traps is get a life and *become* Wiki-Educators!

Quality control is a process by which “expertise” reviews the quality of all factors involved in the production of educational resources, providing controls, defined and well-managed processes, performance and integrity criteria, and identification of records, dependent on the competence of the individual as determined by their knowledge, skills, experience, and qualifications. Obviously human elements such as integrity, confidence, organisational culture, motivation, team spirit, and quality relationships will also affect the outcomes of such expertise. In other words, the quality of any expert outputs is at risk if any of these aspects is deficient in any way. The very democratic wiki-nature of WikiEducator and Wikipedia enables instant and continuous quality control, by allowing anyone and everyone to participate in improving articles and wiki resources as a whole (not just one overpaid foreign expert with a PhD:-)). While there will always be a few oxygen-thieves who abuse this privilege by vandalizing or propagandizing, the vast majority of people who edit WikiEducator and Wikipedia compose articles responsibly with the common good of mankind at heart - these Wikis are a public resource intended to make knowledge freely available to everyone in the world, and contributing participants take this very seriously.

Information and media literacy are crucial for today’s learners, and essential skills include the abilities to create and communicate ideas, and to understand their responsibility to the shared knowledge on the Web.

Any vaguely ICT-literate child, parent or educator (i.e., someone who can use a mobile phone to SMS, do Facebook and download MxIT) , frustrated by the lack of "real" education capacity and resources in government schools, should be able to benefit from the net-effect of these fantastic online resources, even if only by means of a mobile-phone.

Mobile phones offer a way to bridge this conventional 'have-technology-get educated' divide. For learners in developing countries such as Namibia, the ownership of a personal computer in the near future remains unlikely, but the chances for ownership of a mobile phone are high. The ubiquitousness of mobile phones, in conjunction with their internet and multimedia capabilities, make them an increasingly affordable technology. Moderately-priced mobile phones can create text, photo, video and audio content which can be easily uploaded to the Internet and shared with others on diverse social networks via multimedia messaging and other web-enabling applications. The introduction of the iPhone heralded a new generation of mobile phones, with fast processors, LCD screens, and full web-browsing. Similar, but low-cost, smart phones are predicted and will likely open up pricing models that don’t involve costly monthly fees or long-term contracts.
I think the salient questions to ask today are:

How can learners and teachers from marginalized populations obtain affordable, simple, and universally accessible means to meaningfully participate in the global, shared knowledge of the World Wde Web? How can we help learners and teachers develop an awareness of their ability to create and share useful information and creative content?

Food for though, not so?

It's been a while

2010-09-04T21:58:00.004+01:00

Looking east

It's been a while, but I'm out from the tranquility of my winter garden. Presently in Accra, Ghana to meet with FOSSFA about project management! I've got some pics to remind me of home and the garden...

A winter garden at 1700 m outside Windhoek; one nasty frost and a couple of cold days were managed effectively:-)

And we reaped the results...

2.5 metre black mamba

2010-01-13T11:09:00.001+02:00

2.5 metre black mamba
Originally uploaded by tatejoris

Starting the new year with a bang wasn't supposed to mean dealing with a black mamba on our back veranda while trying to start a fire on our barbeque . With dogs and teenagers milling around, and a very agitated snake in the tree above the barbeque, I had little choice but to take it out.

download edit upload publish link

2009-12-29T16:04:00.000+02:00

As part of my last online learning curve of the year, I learned how to download a movie from my cellphone to my netbook, upload an edited movie version from my netbook to youtube, and embed it in my blog!

So here is one of three dune-boarding clips from a short stay at De Duine hideout courtesy of Andy and Mandy! The actors include Tivon and Jordan. Watch this space - More to follow!

namibrand dune boarding3

2009-12-29T15:51:00.001+02:00

namibrand dune boarding2

2009-12-29T15:44:00.001+02:00

duneboarding1

2009-12-29T15:03:00.001+02:00

SchoolNet Namibia is officially dissolved

2009-11-10T13:39:00.004+02:00

The rumours are correct. SchoolNet Namibia was officially dissolved by its trustees and membership at a general meeting on 17 July 2009. It has taken me some time to see this process through to finality, and distance myself emotionally from what I like to call mindless reversion to a pre-renaissance development topology :-)

Managing an organization of SchoolNet Namibia's scale, scope and diversity has been a hugely stimulating experience in the face of numerous obstacles in my way, chief of which *remains* the continued resistance of Namibia's government to accept the saving 'cost of ownership' implications of Free/Libre and Open Source Software, an apparent mistrust of goods and services offered for "Free" (i.e., Open Educational Resources), and an apparent misunderstanding of universal service obligations to the education sector by State-owned telecommunications companies and energy providers!

It remains a grim reality that some 806 schools, 50% of Namibia's schools, try to function without electricity and telecommunications.

It was particularly ironic that SchoolNet's dissolution came a day after Namibia's Communications Bill, so long in the making, was finally tabled in Parliament (the nth variation, dubbed the "Spy Bill").

I remain deeply disappointed by the undeserved criticism of SchoolNet's technical support services to schools in Namibia, based on spurious allegations of poor performance by Ministry of Education (MoE) staff and their consorts at xnet and the NETSS advisory committee, which resulted in an instruction to terminate our technical services to schools of Namibia in April 2009. Having chosen to ignore our several appeals for reason, the MoE effectively banned us from carrying out projects of *any nature* at government schools in Namibia.

The internet support 'service' we had provided of late, at Telecom Namibia's mercy, was a vestige of what was once an excellent virtual private network (VPN) for schools, built on FLOSS and a very good (working!) ISM-band wifi solution. This VPN was created and generously maintained by our excellent ISP network administrators (Madryn Cosburn, Uwe Thiem (deceased July 2008), Tim Priebe, Laurent Evrard, Steven Delport and others), with the understanding that MoE, Telecom Namibia and other communications sector stakeholders could *eventually* take ownership, through xnet, as planned in the strategic stakeholder agreements signed by SchoolNet and other stakeholders through Tech!Na in September 2006.

I remain highly critical of the MoE IT department and xnet's failure to meet SchoolNet's reasonable expectations of subsidy for ICT deployment, training, internet connectivity and, most critically, nationwide capacity to provide affordable and sustainable technical service support to schools equipped with ICTs. Especially those schools equipped with Free Software solutions by SchoolNet. These schools are, in effect, going back into the dark ages, as their equipment ages and shall eventually be replaced by a M$FT solution requiring commercial support.

Being banned from attending and participating in MoE-led government ICT steering committee meetings by Vitalis Ankama (the permanent secretary of MoE) will obviously not prevent me from being publicly critical of MoE staff incompetence. However, while the boundaries between my persona and that of SchoolNet were often quite blurred, the organisation SchoolNet Namibia and its board of Trustees, staff, voluntary ICT trainers and technicians, per sé, should not have been held accountable for my personal views and opinions.

Since SchoolNet was effectively banned from providing any services to government schools in Namibia, we were no longer able to complete the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID) funded solar energy and virtual private network project in Okongo, as originally motivated and planned, in partnership with local and international stakeholders. This ban made it unrealistic for us to continue with this really cool project and we gave the funds (about N$ 1,6 million - euro 150,000) back to AECID last month. That was rather painful.

*Agency09*, a fresh start-up NGO comprising mostly former SchoolNet staff and volunteers, was chosen to take ownership of remaining SchoolNet resources. Agency09 is expected, at cost, to continue helping schools on request. You will be pleased to know that *Ebben Hatuikulipi* is the new Chairperson of the board of Agency09, with *Helena Shifindi* as the executive director. They will need all the support they can get, locally and internationally, and I'll be on hand to help, where needed.

Judging from progress by MoE with technology roll-out and support to date (see picture below), I expect that schools will still require external technical service support from Agency09 for considerable time to come. I also hope that Agency09 may yet serve as the like-minded organisation to take direct ownership of the Free Software advocacy and marketing role in Namibia.

I have been at the helm of SchoolNet since 1999. I feel strongly that it is healthy to have new leadership from time to time, to introduce new ideas and to bring in a younger, more energetic person to lead Agency09 to new heights. My work has involved a huge amount of management and administration, to the detriment of the advocacy work which I would like to pursue in a wider sphere of influence, internationally.

The past ten years of SchoolNet Namibia are rich with well-documented and highly creative lessons which have paved the way for innovative work in Namibia and further afield, even though we now see the unfortunate closure on a great chapter in the history of ICT development in Namibia's education sector.

We did it! And my ticker held out!

2009-05-27T17:39:00.003+01:00

Daures or Brandberg Mountain is the highest mountain in Namibia and has a reputation for keeping people off. Mainly because of some pretty tough conditions which make an ascent quite an epic! Liz, Tivon and I joined the Kinahan family to climb up the Hungarob ravine from ca. 600m ASL to the Snakerock shelter at ca. 2100m ASL over the past weekend, spending 4 nights on the mountain. We were fortunate that there was bountiful water in the ravines and on the upper Berg, following exceptional rains in the past 3-4 months.

My flickr account shows some of the sights we experienced up there. It's a must-see place for anyone with an interest in rock art!

a word or two (or three...) on the antics of neighbours...

2009-03-25T18:59:00.003+02:00

10 March 2009
The executive officers,
**** Investment Company
Plot 4*,
P.O. Box **
Windhoek, Namibia

*****, my bokkie,

You caught me on a really bad hair day today, giving me considerable cause to reflect on the etymology and value of the word “neighbour” and to wax biblical on the path of the righteous man, regrettably beset on some sides by the iniquities of apparently selfish and tyrannical men such as yourself.

While I could have started this particular reaction to your social misdemeanours with the locally popular “ek gaan jou moer” more befitting social misfits of your ilk, I've decided to approach this in a more benevolent manner provided by the excellent (and potentially very public) media vehicle called the *internet* – a really cool populist crowd-puller for the attention sought by neighing *boors* such as yourself. Or should that be “bores”?

I take umbrage at the manner in which you have boorishly attempted to take ownership of the law, neighing your belligerent dominion over common law access privileges and the common boundary fence between your investment company's property and that of my partner.

I find your despairing lack of manners an unwelcome intrusion of my privacy, given your failure to seek consent from my partner to introduce an access gate to our property on our common boundary fence. While the local competent authority's bylaws are *regrettably* lacking in any clarity on non-consensual embellishments of common property (i.e., our common boundary fence), I shall remind you that your use of this particular gate to trespass on our property through our common boundary fence may be challenged by a much longer standing, and highly relevant, common law framework; trespassers on our private property will, most certainly, be prosecuted. The signage is perhaps more invasive, given my determined stance, tempered as it is by (out)rage, to violate anyone foolish enough to encroach on my partner's private property!

I believe your failure to seek consent to remove (steal, vandalize, damage???) my partner's original common boundary fence and replace it with a life-threatening 2-meter high environmental abomination, is a travesty of common law. Not only does this abomination scar the skyline of an otherwise pristine natural feature of our landscape, it also effectively blocks a historical pathway for wildlife in the area.

The increasingly rare wildlife is now forced to seek alternative crossings on either side of your abomination, increasing their risk of persecution by trigger-happy yahoos in your neighbourhood, and snares set by marginalised meat-hungry employees, day-labourers, builders and other itinerants in your neighbourhood. Indeed, it is probably NOT coincidental that since your company has had the temerity to encourage trespass by its employees on our private property, we have seen a marked increase in the number of snares on wildlife pathways and common boundary fences of our private property and your neighbourhood.

I find your failure to seek consent from my partner, and clearly relevant advice from professionals, on the positioning of life-threatening (2 meter high!) electric fencing which encroaches on our side of the common boundary fence a travesty of common, municipal and public law and common sense; indeed, it is a travesty of my sensibilities to be reminded, once again, of investment companies who entrust decision-making processes to individuals with clearly delimited intellectual boundaries which translate into delusions of adequacy.

Finally, I find your apparent allegations of damage to property against us a comedy of your errors. I would think it very foolish to insinuate damage by neighbouring landowners before weighing such potentially defamatory allegations against the local perception (and related actions) your company's electric fence may have effected on those impressed by the burgeoning symbols of your investment company's apparent financial successes (more than likely to include your own delusional self!), as so overtly protected (?) by your company's extensive and elaborate security system.

As any well-fed lawyer will likely tell you in the imminent future, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. Accordingly, I reserve my rights to challenge any defamatory allegations made by you or other investment company representatives about my partner, her employees or myself.

Finally, I shall like to point out that should you not be agreeable to removing your electric fencing and gate from where they encroach and encourage illegal trespass on our private property with the utmost urgency, your non-action in these regards shall not affect our rights, which are reserved, and which we shall then, perforce, have to secure by other lawful means at our disposal.

Joris Komen

PS - lots of pictures to follow!

A new bad hair day tail!

2009-03-25T18:49:00.002+02:00

The (Acting) CEO
Namibia Airports Company Limited
Windhoek, Namibia
pr@airports.com.na

Dear Sir, Madam

Your Airport management staff at Hosea Kutako International Airport caught me on a really bad hair day. Your MISLEADING signage at the long term parking facility, manned by junior Airport staff, refers.

Having returned from a trip abroad, and being away for ONE WEEK (SEVEN days from Sunday morning through Saturday evening), I was confronted by an Airports Company management instruction to junior staff manning the collection kiosk at the long-term parking area at Hosea Kutako Airport that this period of vehicle storage represented a period of SIX 'overnights', rather than a period of ONE WEEK, in calculating the long term parking fee for my vehicle.

Accordingly, the Namibia Airports Company (NAC) was determined to collect N$ 300 for SIX 'overnights', rather than N$ 120 for ONE WEEK. Confronted by this verbal instruction to junior staff, I take offence at the very misleading signage prominently posted at the entrance to this parking area, which leaves these unfortunate, disenfranchised, junior staff to be lambasted by more than several irate customers, disputing the interpretation of the word 'week' on the NAC signage! Indeed, it appears that such heated interactions happen frequently at this gate, directly related to the NAC's misleading signage.

The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Current English, among several other paper-based and on-line dictionaries, consulted while trying to calm down since my heated dispute with your NAC management staff took place, defines the word 'week' as a period of seven DAYS. Not seven 'overnights'!

Based on telephonic exchange with your NAC management staff, it appears that they have unilaterally elected to redefine the word 'week' (a 'Company' week?) to be a week of seven 'overnights', and therefore EIGHT days by conventional reckoning.

To avoid unpleasant customer interactions in future, especially for your junior collection kiosk staff (who do not have internal company telephone access) , may I suggest that you urgently replace the presently misleading signage with something which unambiguously represents your determined position to charge your long-term parking customers N$ 50 for overnight storage over periods of one – six nights! I would go on to suggest that you then fix your signage to also reflect appropriately corrected charges for overnight storage periods of seven to 13 nights, periods of 14 nights and longer, and periods of 30 nights and longer.

Airports are stressful, dehumanising environments at the best of times; your thoughtful attention to detail could go a long way to easing this particular burden of stress for customers and staff alike.

Joris Komen
tatejoris@fastmail.fm

So I decided to make peace with the mynas

2008-10-04T03:48:00.000+02:00

So the first Pacific Golden Plover on Samoa landed on the lawns of Bahai house of worship on 14th September. Since then I've seen several more, and they do like to hang out in their preferred patches of lawn.

Ah! the fickleness of diary-writing, keeping up to date with one's social networks, and doing an honest day's work. A month or more has passed, and many things have happened. My father passed away at the end of August, and I traveled days and long distance to get to Holland where he had lived for the past 20-odd years. I've had time to reflect on mortality. Mine and that of others. Here in Samoa, people take funerals very seriously. For days, if not weeks of negotiated settlement, gifting and a show of family strengths. My own time in Holland was spent dealing with notaries, lawyers, revenue services, pension funds and banks. And a suddenly very-alone 80-year-old mother after 54 years of marriage. It's going to take a little while to iron things out, but I am sure they will. And I'll be doing a fair bit of to-ing and fro-ing in the meanwhile.

Back in Samoa the mynas obviously had a respite from my trapping efforts, but alas! they are simply way to smart for the walk-in trap provided by the Ministry. I've caught bundles of bulbuls, but not a single myna. And my trap is one of only forty purchased by the Ministry to catch 450 000 birds. This means that each trap should be catching about 10 000 birds to make a dent on the present population. Frankly, I don't think so. Alpha-chloralose is probably the answer, or some other narcotic with a very short half-life, at carefully selected baiting sites in the vicinity of the large roosts.

I've shifted my attention to recording the vocalisations of Samoan endemics, and I've been trying to get recordings of the "mao" or giant honeycreeper, to see how responsive they are to playback. This has gotten me to hang around what must be one of the nicer looking buildings in Samao - the Bahai house of worship, just down the road from my place, and on the edge of nice piece of relict rain forest, where a couple of maos have been reported. No such luck yet, but the gardens are great, and the people are very friendly!

Apparently there are some 6 or 7 distinct bahai temples of architectural acclaim in the world, and this is one of them.

And mynas with the evil eye!

2008-08-26T21:07:00.000+01:00

This story about a minor myna war evolved from a well-meaning and highly enthusiastic public campaign offering to pay anyone SAT 0.20 (about N$ 0.75) per myna delivered to the offices of the Samoan Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment, dead or alive.

There are some 450,000 Common Mynas (Acridotheres tristis) in Samoa.

They were introduced to the island in the seventies (!) on the strength of a clearly retarded idea that these birds would help reduce cattle parasite loads. Little did they realise what a pest they had introduced! They breed like mynas ;-), so a well-designed extermination programme could potentially generate a tidy sum for someone with the right mixture of stubborn patience, fly trickery and appropriate resources to catch these extremely smart invasive aliens.

I write this little note in memory of Professor Gordon Maclean, a most excellent teacher, as many who had the privilege of being taught by him can attest. He passed away earlier this year, having retired from his University of KwaZulu Natal professorship in 1997. Gordon had an awesome knowledge of birds, especially those of arid zones, and it was he who got me excited about Namibia, 28 years ago. He also taught me to respect the English language and, fondly remembered, the difference between 'dissect' and 'disect'. I dissected many mynas, but never chopped any in half .

In 1980 Gordon insisted I undertake a Zoology honours project on the thermoregulation of the Common Myna, and, in order to perform various physiological and behavioural experiments with captive birds, I was obligated to learn how to catch mynas. Live, by hook or by crook. As it turned out, no mean feat.

Where my fellow zoology students were catching fish (yeah, I am still pissed off by that! ), recording bat acoustics or exploring the sex lives of helminths, I had the misfortune of having to catch several mynas before I could do any kind of experimental work, let alone develop some meaningful hypotheses about panting and feather ruffling.

I guess this was as much a test of my academic aspirations as it was of my character, and I did hear evil sniggers and snorting sounds coming from Waldo Meester in the staff room, then head of the Zoology Department, a man who claimed he was half dutch, half afrikaans but mostly african. Another excellent teacher, may he also rest in peace. I'm sure he's missing his particularly vile Gauloise cigarettes, which he smoked with regimental discipline, one every hour, day and night.

Getting back to the mynas, though. I still maintain that, alongside Black Crows and certain migrant Nightjars (another story:-)), they are the only species of birds which have a devious, if not outright malicious, sense of humour. Sure, there are loads of species which have developed great sense of irony (penguins and yellowfin tuna come to mind), but aside from the regular primates and odd cetaceans, most animals (and plants) lack a sense of humour (geckos bark, and crickets chirp, but I have no first hand experiences to help interpret these amusing anthropomorphisms).

I mean, what species go to such great length to pretend complete ignorance of your trapping intent, that they'll even pretend to get caught (for a little while anyway) to encourage your continued and very generous "baiting" (read feeding) for weeks, only to roll around in the tops of surrounding trees, howling with hilarity, while you remove vast quantities of other (equally well-fed!) non-target species from the nth variety of trap you've set for them in the sprawling gardens and parks around Pietermaritzburg. And then fly off, giving you the evil eye!

I am not barking mad. They do give you the evil eye (in place of a middle finger), and for want of any immediate logical reason, I suspect that (Common) Mynas are angry reincarnations – after all, what life can there be after death by bean-pulse-and-red-hot-chilli-pepper-consuming colonic cancer in subcontinental Asia ?

But I procrastinate. I eventually caught several mynas. With a variety of walk-in traps, nets, and narcotics. Day and night. Persistent trapping efforts. Hundreds of man-hours.

I got into terrible trouble with the narcotics. In spite of it still being the best solution for catching large quantities of mynas in any one baiting exercise. Works like magic. However, it does have negative spin-offs, and risks to mitigate. Especially given the unusually high density of cat and doggie-loving society in Pietermaritzburg.

After one particularly badly disturbed narcotic baiting session in one of the quieter parks near campus, I had to escape the wrath of several cat and dog owners in the area who had to deal with deeply anaethesized pets following their copious consumption of manna from heaven. Figuratively speaking. Mynas and other species dropping out of the sky in a 4 kilometre radius around the baiting site, disturbed by a dear old biddy walking her pack of neurotic short-haired Irish terriers in the park where I had successfully managed to dope some 250 hungry mynas, feral pigeons, starlings and an untold number of house sparrows, 20 minutes priorly.

to be continued...

There be ratlike dragons here!

2008-08-01T01:30:00.000+01:00

Last night I caught some scary large rats - as big as cats (check out the picture! - in the yard around the place I'm staying. After some rather unpleasant forms of humane euthanasia, I stopped for the night - three in under ten minutes. No wonder there's a problem with keeping ground-nesting birds on islands from going extinct!

On the weekend I'll start tackling common and jungle mynas.

Samoa views 4

2008-07-31T03:31:00.001+01:00

I managed to get a reasonable image of the place I'm staying from a satellite - much better resolution than I've seen for my Namibian home!

I've done some hectic cropping here, but the scale is about right, and I suspect the satellite image is quite a few years old. Arrow points at the shamba. (Click on the image for a larger view!)

As commonplace on the island as the Indian (Common) Myna, I have been seeing several large rats - very large rats :-) around the property. They are particularly destructive to ground-nesting birds, and given my recent sight of a white-browed rail in the garden, along with the several pairs of banded rails in the same area, I got a rat trap yesterday, and tried it out overnight, baited with peanut-butter...
I woke to it going off at some ungodly hour of the night, and judging from the screaming, I thought it had caught a cat, not a rat! Note that this is a biiiig trap. By the time I got out to the trap, whatever had been caught had vanished, likely with a severe headache. I shall try again tonight, closer to my door and broomstick...

I also received a 'mynamagnet' myna trap (www.mynamagnet.com.au) from the Ministry of Environment, which I intend to set up over the weekend; there are hundreds, if not thousands, of these Mynas roosting in a paddock about a kilometre away, Mynas are real bullies, chasing away all the local endemic birds, and are notorious for taking over nest-sites from local hole-nesting species. I last caught mynas in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa, in 1980, and suspect that they are as smart as ever. Damn tricky to catch! I will keep you posted!

Samoa views 20 July

2008-07-21T23:19:00.000+01:00

20 July - Sunday AM. Caught my first Trevally yesterday. What a beautiful fish! No tail walks, but in every other respect as exciting as a small tuna or garrick. Nice size, about 6 kg; caught spinning with one of those rubber mullet-look-alikes John Paterson got me using instead of smelly old pilchards for kob at Moewe Bay a couple of years ago. Used my fenwick poaching gear:-) off the back of a 10 metre catamaran in the lagoon near Aggie Grey's resort. We were supposed to go looking for humpback whales with a bunch (18) of yaght club kiddies (9 – 12 yr olds), but the weather report warned against small craft in the trench outside the reef (spring highs and big winds...) so we stayed inshore. It turned out almost wind-still and sunny, so we snorkeled for a couple of hours behind the coral reef in tepid, crystal clear water, where I saw my first squids – what strange beasts, spontaneously changing colour like turbo-charged chameleons! A solitary brown noddy was all the seabird(s) I got to see, and several tame purple swamphens were resident on the golf course.

Sorted out the morning chorus today, with the wattled honeyeater being the most vocal endemic. There were the obvious pesky mynas, and the banded rail, common everywhere. Very shy pigeons (sp. ?) in the canopy, and the quiet calls of the Samoan Fantail, hawking insects near the ground. Samoan starlings are purposeful flyers overhead, and white-rumped swiftlets abound. The odd Cardinal honeyeater is a colorful bonus, and Polynesian trillers hunt insects on a patch of lawn. A screeching flock of blue-crowned lories fly past, and I wonder what's happened to the flatbilled kingfisher of yesterday.

Weather is low cloud swirling around - it's warm and windy, so it's like being in a warm mist. It comes and goes, and there's a constant drip of water off the roof into the rain-tank. A far cry from Namibia's cool dry winter! Western Samoa is roughly at the same latitude as Ondangwa - ± 13 degrees south.

Samoa views 3

2008-07-18T21:45:00.000+01:00

A week in Samoa has passed and I have managed to find a little house to rent on the edge of the Apia catchment area, just short of the top of the island of Upolu; the area is called Tiapapata, and it's about 15 minutes drive down the hill to the centre of Apia. There are remnant patches of primary rain forest, with some giant trees left standing after the cyclones of the nineties. Away from Apia, there are far fewer Indian Mynas and dogs to spoil the environmental accoustics, resulting in a dawn chorus around the house which includes several endemic species, and especially exciting, the peculiar calls of a solitary giant honey-eater (mao).

Yesterday afternoon I went wimax signal hunting in the hills behind Apia with local ISP techies, Steve Brown and several bits of WIMAX equipment, and discovered the limitations of wimax equipment and, in particular, shitty Alvarion "modems". I would personally have opted for Navini equipment (recently bought by Cisco), and throw in some decent hi-gain antennas for good measure. I do admit that working with a 30 metre canopy is a far cry from what I'm used to in Namibia!

I've been at several meetings this week - with Samoan ministry officials, communication industry players and the media. Last night I was invited to attend a feedback session with Australian TV and Radio personalities at the Aggie Grey Hotel, and we were asked to provide inputs on how they could have more impact on their viewers and listeners in the Pacific. Entertaining event, and the sashimi was first class:-)

Here are a couple of "wish you were here" views from Samoa!

The house on the edge of the escarpment.

A view of the catchment area. Great birding, with tropic birds and terns flying over the canopy!

Samoan views 2 - wishful thinking

2008-07-16T04:05:00.002+01:00

So I guess some folks will think this journey is a paddle in coral-lined paradise (stroll in the park?)

Think on !

The Samoan "SchoolNet and Community Access Project" is expected to help the Government of Samoa develop the capacity of relevant divisions of the Ministry of Education, Sports, and Culture (MESC), as well as of teachers and students from all government and mission secondary schools (n=42), in information and communications technology (ICT) competencies. The Project will complement and expand Education Sector Project 2006–2012 activities to include ICT competencies and best practices for developing and using e-learning resources in classroom teaching and learning processes.

This is expected to enhance the quality of education, and cost-effectively improve student learning outcomes in six academic subjects aligned to wider priorities founded for mathematics and science. It will also support the Government’s efforts to improve the overall efficiency of the education sector and help to develop management models and partnership arrangements to ensure the sustainability of the project outcomes. The
Project is expected to foster the use of the Internet, where possible, and communication among schools domestically and internationally.

The Project will have four main components: (i) improving the quality of teaching and learning in secondary schools; (ii) improving access to education through ICT; (iii) establishing the Community Access Program and developing its partnerships; and (iv) strengthening education management and coordination, including improving
analyses of economic efficiency, equity, and sustainability.

Samoa views

2008-07-16T00:28:00.000+01:00

Well I guess it's best to start at the place I'll be working with several great people over the next 6 - 9 months. The Ministry of Education, Sports and Culture in Apia, Samoa. A view from the outside. Views from the inside will evolve as I find out more about the inner workings of the ADB project for which I am the project management advisor. The ADB (Asian Development Bank) website provides extensive documentation on this project. For a start I'll be involved in writing the framework for "Requests for Proposals" to entice industry to bid for technical roll-out.

SchoolNet Director's Report for 2007/8

2008-07-15T23:14:00.000+01:00

Working together toward Interoperable solutions...no, seriously, I have not been given an implant!

Microsoft is trying to develop mutual respect and understanding between themselves and the Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) community, by using their Open Source laboratory at the Microsoft campus in Redmond, Seattle, as a credible "change agency" on their vocal path to platform interoperability. I recently spent a couple of days on campus in Redmond with some 40 other FLOSS community developers, activists and bloggers at the Microsoft Technology Summit, an invite-only event where Microsoft brought together a select group of people from all over the world — key technology influencers — to learn about what the company is doing in its development labs and to preview advanced technology and new products, as well as to provide an environment for face-to-face dialogue and direct feedback. The FLOSS participants included strategists, several ICT-focused bloggers, journalists and analysts, as well as Dorothy Gordon and myself from the African FLOSS movement.

It became immediately clear that Sam Ramji, Microsoft's director of technology platform strategy, is on a mission to take heat from free and open source activists on Microsoft's behalf. Some of my esteemed FLOSS colleagues feel that Microsoft is never to be trusted, out to crush anyone who opposes them at any cost. Well, okay, I can appreciate the position of conventional FLOSS ideologues on Microsoft. I have a lot of them as friends; I drink with them on a fairly regular basis. It does look, however, that there are guys like Sam Ramji and members of his Microsoft Open Source team who genuinely want to make Microsoft products interoperate with Open Source and want to get a multitude of FLOSS projects going in their Open Source Lab. So in this same context I do think there is room for negotiation and productive discussion between SchoolNet, our government and industry partners in Namibia. And this is not an implant speaking . The big issue remains one of Sam Ramji and his team managing to change Microsoft's on-the-ground sales personnel and their government clients to understand the bigger picture of Open Source and Interoperability, and for these Microsoft profit merchants to stop treating their relationship with African government like a (shotgun?) marriage of convenience (see Insight Magazine's April 2008 issue).

source (http://www.insight.com.na) with photo credit to Marc Hofer.

What makes you a change agent? For many, it is doing what you love, and doing it well. That's why SchoolNet believes in continuing to innovate a range of choices for developing and deploying FLOSS solutions in education and community. Especially now that things are financially very tight!

Based on an earlier gloomy prognosis of further long delays in the promulgation of the already long overdue Communications Bill, the Universal Service Fund of which was supposed to provide a substantial annual subsidy for SchoolNet to continue to provide affordable technical support and internet services to schools in Namibia, it is remains doubtful whether we can realistically continue to provide technical service support and internet access to schools beyond mid-2008. Especially since these schools represent the majority of SchoolNet's debtors, and Ministry of Education (MoE) officials have thus far indicated an unwillingness to provide any kind of centralised funding support to SchoolNet – neither for international bandwidth nor for existing regional technical service support provided by SchoolNet in Ondangwa, Rundu and Gobabis.

With exception of special (solar) project schools and other small project proposals for which we have applied for funds, if we do not secure some kind of government subsidy, we shall need to reduce general Internet services to schools to a smart web-based service solution - likely sponsored by local corporations (e.g. Telecom, ITN or MTC through the XNet development alliance), and we will be forced to remove the direct expensive overheads of international bandwidth (paid to XNet and Telecom) and network administration by mid-2008. This IS a tough call and may put the ICT capacity of Namibia's education sector back into the dark ages, but it is in the hands of the MoE, and may ultimately be the only way of getting them to take direct responsibility of ALL of Namibia's school ICT needs – FLOSS and Microsoft, old and new, with and without internet.

Spanish Agency for International Cooperation (Agencia Espanola de Cooperacion International) - As part of a one-year project, this agency has provided us with funds (+Euros 168,000 =± N$ 1.8 million) to give three schools solar electricity and computer equipment to ensure that they along with 4 other (already solar electrified and resourced) schools in the Okongo cluster in Ohangwena can communicate and share information resources and tools by way of a local private wireless internet-based network with voice and other media. This non-commercial wireless network will be set up by expertise sourced through SchoolNet using a mixture of existing infrastructure (remains to be recovered from Telecom - masts and ISM-band 2.4 gHz wireless internet equipment) and new technology to be acquired through an invited tender process. SchoolNet expects to collaborate with South African, Danish, Indonesian and Canadian community organisations to develop a grassroots "best practices" wireless and alternative energy model to challenge the proposed long-term implementation plans of the ministries of education and mines and energy to empower remote communities in under served areas of Namibia. Watch this space for more news!

Green is the hot topic these days, and the concept is having an impact on the way people think about computer classrooms and information resource centres. Companies around the world are announcing ways to save energy and reduce costs by buying new hardware and services. Yet, there is little guidance on how you can take action to control energy costs at school. In the past, electricity has been treated as an overhead expense, like the cost of space or security. But with rising power costs and issues regarding reliability, supply, and capacity, electricity requires its own specific strategy. Projects which tackle performance optimization and cost reduction are a part of everyday best practices in nearly every area of business. So why not treat energy costs at remote rural schools in the same way?
If the outcome of this innovative project is positive, we can expect to see more funding from this and other agencies, for remote wireless solar powered access projects in Namibia.

SchoolNet further expects to focus on very specific projects -

the continued development and integration of relevant online Namibian curriculum content via SchoolNet's web portal;
bursary-service exchange awards for young Namibian volunteers @ SchoolNet with information technology skills potential;
the development of human resource capacity to support a local Edubuntu operating system, applications and content management system;
direct NQA approved grassroots ICT technical training and international certification (e.g. Open-ICDL) for unemployed out-of-school youth at our Katutura facilities (and at other centres such KAYEC/Rossing Foundation in Ondangwa, and OTC in Gobabis).

I believe that SchoolNet can also help create local Innovation Centres on the back of community resource centres and public libraries to provide customers and partners in education with a comprehensive set of programmes and services. The goal of these centres would be to foster innovation and growth in local ICT economies. With appropriate seed funding, we can collaboratively focus on planning, developing and testing innovative energy conservative hardware, software content and communication solutions with an ecosystem made up of civil society, industry, education, and government partners. If successful in our bids for funding, we can expect to see small sums (± N$ 100,000 - N$ 1 million) awarded to SchoolNet to undertake these projects.

With several senior (and key) staff members leaving SchoolNet in 2007 and early 2008, the board of SchoolNet and I must take some considered executive decisions as to how we can expect to have the projects for which we have raised funds to be effectively managed to ensure successful outcomes. We have been asked to take up several research and policy implementation consultancies internationally, and I believe the time is right for us to spend more time doing these. Given our experience in ICT development, we are certainly interested to address the needs and aspirations of people in emerging-market countries, including those who are increasingly consuming computing technologies and services, as well as those for whom access to computing technologies remains largely out of reach. Founded on project planning and technical support experience, we are able to help others understand the social and educational contexts of technology, and help devise solutions for emerging and underserved markets, both in remote rural and urban environments.

In theory, free and open source software should have a direct appeal to anyone concerned with education, ethics and social issues. That is, any self-respecting civil servant. Yet, in practice, it rarely does. I have previously discussed the matter of ensuring that ICT deployment to schools under the MoE ICT Policy implementation plan remains 50% FLOSS, but look forward the day that Government embraces FLOSS as public sector policy. I can then retire from public life :-).

SchoolNet has been in the business of effectively deploying FLOSS server/thin client solutions to schools for several years now, but remains deeply concerned about the IT staffing shortages which are keeping many schools from realizing the full benefits of (any) technology inside and outside the classroom, as revealed recently in a USA-based survey. This survey of some 1,000 school and district leaders and IT administrators paints a stark picture of the barriers that technical support challenges pose to integrating technology effectively in education.

Nearly three out of four school leaders say they don’t have enough IT staff to support their needs effectively, according to the survey. Fifty-five percent of respondents said they can’t maintain their network adequately, 63 percent said they can’t plan for new technologies, and 76 percent said they have trouble implementing new technologies. Large corporations typically employ one support person for every 50 PCs, at a cost of $142 per computer, per year, in the USA. According to this model, a school region with 1,000 PCs in circulation would need a staff of 20 and an annual technical-support budget of $1.4 million. In the absence of any contemporary monitoring and evaluation programme in Namibia, I would reasonably argue that our statistics are much gloomier.

Clearly, lack of funding is a key stumbling block to effective school ICT support. A big obstacle is recruiting and retaining qualified ICT staff members; the salaries are simply not competitive enough. Under these circumstances I think it would be premature to ignore the technical volunteer model created by SchoolNet Namibia.

I have highlighted the important role that FLOSS can play as a practical instrument for development”, and I continue to argue that the “free and open” aspirations of FLOSS make it a natural component of the development agenda. We use FLOSS solutions as a part of our day-to-day operations, and with the exception of proprietary accounting software, most critical parts of SchoolNet's technical infrastructure are implemented using FLOSS. But I again emphasize the critical role that consistent support plays in the success and sustainability of our ICT solutions,

Ultimately, all our software, hardware, content and energy choices should based upon the solution's ability to achieve the best overall return on technology investments.

April 2008

Damn! First Guido and now Uwe!

2008-07-15T23:10:00.000+01:00

I am writing this in Western Samoa, where I started my first day of schoolnet
development support in the Ministry of Education. An exciting day dampened by sad news.

First the shocker of Guido Sohne passing away a month or so ago. Committed, sometimes fanatical, promoter of all things Free/Libre, Guido was inspired to have African FLOSS activists join him and other FLOSS advocates in Seattle to talk FLOSS with Microsoft. And a few weeks later he was gone. There were several tributes made to him in the FLOSS world, as well as in FaceBook. What a tragic loss to Africa's youthful efforts in ICT development.

And now Uwe.

Uwe was one of the longest contributors to the KDE desktop and was one of the original members of the core development team. He moved on to become the main KDE representative in Africa. Uwe was one of the first people to write a book on KDE development, which helped many people who have become regular contributors today, and was still writing about KDE last week. Uwe put his back into it and was a great advocate for Free software in his area of the world.

I am deeply grieved by the tragic news and loss of Uwe; he was such an incredibly important partner, mentor and inspiration in our Open Source development efforts in Namibia. We'll miss him when we finally do get public sector FLOSS policy in Namibia. A wonderful, vastly talented intellectual and eccentric to the end, I am bereaved by the fact that I missed drinking a last cup of first-flush darjeeling tea (his favourite!) with him in his kitchen. I shall also greatly miss the no-holds-barred and often heated debates over drinks at the Furstenhof and other drinking holes in Windhoek with him and other Linux User Group (LUG) members. I regret not having been able to attend more of these LUG meetings, and trust that the LUG will continue to meet in the spirit Uwe would have expected.

I knew Uwe was not well in the previous months, but he was obstinate in not wanting to solicite any help from those around him, and I deeply regret not having been firmer in my last enquiries.

Uwe played a key role as a founding partner and thinker in the establishment of SchoolNet Namibia way back in 1999. Along with Steven Delport, Madryn Cosburn, John Buckam and a couple of other inspiring IT players in Namibia, he helped engineer a model of Open source software, open hardware, open content and open access which made SchoolNet Namibia what it is esteemed for today. I am in Samoa today as a result of these great inspirations, and am proud of the fact that SchoolNet remains a stellar model of ICT development in education as a result of these inputs by Open Source advocates of Uwe's stature, philosophy and spirit.

May he rest in peace, and let's find practical ways of keeping his memory alive.

visiting with Microsoft at Redmond

2008-03-26T23:49:00.000+02:00

Thanks to Guido Sohne's invitation (now based in Nairobi) in February, I've joined several people at a Microsoft Technology Summit (MTS08) at their campus in Redmond.
Hearing Sam Ranji speak earlier this morning, it's clear that he wants us to test the strength of his asbestos pants (read his blog:-)). Sam Ramji is Microsoft's director of "platform technology strategy", and Guido works for him. Sam's mission is to take heat at open source events and panels on Microsoft's behalf, while demonstrating that Microsoft is "listening" to views and complaints of FLOSS community members.

I hope to evaluate the extent of their intent to co-operate. Accordingly, I am at the M$FT campus in Redmond, Seattle, WA for a couple of days of dialogue in a “non-non-disclosure agreement" meeting, with some 40 odd people (Microsoft, C#, Ruby, Flex, PHP programmers, NGO activists and bloggers, welcomed to challenge Sam and his gang on their several approaches to FLOSS.

There may yet be some kind of wiki (I hope:-)) or other site on this event, which I'll post.

Back from travels in the south Pacific

2008-01-17T10:48:00.000+02:00

Greetings from a very hot (+40C) and still way too dry Namibia. The rainy season has yet to start across much of Namibia, except for the extreme north east (Caprivi) which may imminently benefit from disaster management given the sudden rise in water levels of the Zambezi river's already flooded conditions!

I finally got back to Windhoek after a circuitous journey through Samoa, New Zealand, a brief bit of western Australia, central South Africa and coastal Namibia. I've added a little widget slideshow to my blog to show some of the fine scenery (and birds) I happened to see on my journey.

By managing to circumvent every city (with exception of a frightening experience in central Auckland during peak hour traffic) in New Zealand, either through really bad timing (late night fly-bys) or rural alternatives to main national roads, the biggest “city” I stopped in was a place called Hokitika; famous for its greenstone shops - a bit of a tourist trap me thinks, having earlier seen seen some beautiful greenstoneswork in Havelock (famous for greenlipped mussels!). Camping out most of the time in really excellent national parks and forests, we got to see the majority of New Zealand’s endemic birds (even the fabled and fabulous Kiwi!), got sucked dry by sandflies (and itched for dear life for nearly 10 days!!) and rained on frequently. A truly splendid experience!

I had hoped to catch several trout but alas! no such no joy and a major reason for returning very soon to catch the huge monsters I saw lurking in several streams and lakes, before my season permit expires in April :-). Considering how New Zealand has made concerted effort to get rid of all sorts of nasty invasive aliens such as possums, stoats and hedgehogs, I am somewhat annoyed by the price of the permit to catch trout and salmon (NZ$ 96!) - nasty invasive aliens in their own right - in New Zealand. While I admit they are very tasty and full of Omega 3s, I don't really see the case for such expensive permits, when strictly speaking I am helping the environment be rid of alien predators who have undoubtably taken out several species of endemic fresh-water and estuarine fish and amphibian species?

A better planned itinerary next time, (starting in South island!) will definitely see me spending more time on Steward and South Islands - with a sea kayak and more time to fish - both are definitely places worth visiting at least twice in a lifetime! As is Samoa:-)- but that's another story altogether !

TCO of deployment - Ministry of Education, Namibia

2007-09-08T12:30:00.001+02:00

TCO of deployment - Ministry of Education, Namibia
Originally uploaded by tatejoris

total cost of ownership of ICT deployment - SchoolNet Namibia

2007-09-08T12:28:00.001+02:00

total cost of ownership of ICT deployment - SchoolNet Namibia
Originally uploaded by tatejoris

SchoolNet Director's Report 2006/7

2007-08-31T15:21:00.000+01:00

Toward ICT convergence in education; another dark soliloquy or is there room for enlightened dialogue? Director’s Report 2006/7

Olof Hesselmark, my favourite African ICT Futurist (and Realist!), recently wrote:

"Personally, I would again emphasize SchoolNet Namibia's original justification, that computers are great for fun, that their main value is as communication tools, and that they are great sources for news and information in environments where little printed material is available. Correct me if I'm wrong, but is it not true that when Ministries of Education (assisted by foreign consultants) justify IT expenses, improved educational results are near the top of the list?"

I might also, tongue-in-cheek, add "Also sprach Zarathustra" and pause to reflect on the extent to which SchoolNet’s vision has once again been disambiguated by foreign ICT development consultants striving to gain title deed to technocratic respectability in the developing world. What the heck, I’ve always called a spade a spade :-); read my blog!

The Global E-Schools & Communities Initiative (GeSCI) brings home one such example of an unfortunate disambiguation of otherwise progressive ICT development in Namibia. They are not the first, nor will they be the last, such foreign ICT consultancy to receive my criticism!

GeSCI and their short-lived horde of naïve (and fantastically expensive) foreign consultants from Accenture and elsewhere, helped formulate a Ministry of Education ICT Implementation Plan; the outcome of several hundred meetings with stakeholders (including ourselves!) in 2005 and 2006. Regrettably, nearly one year after its launch, with the GeSCI and Accenture consultants long gone, this plan remains effectively unimplemented today. Some N$ 13 million has been spent on this implementation plan, yet not a single school has received a computer as a result of this expenditure, to date.

Purchased at fantastic cost through an opaque government tender process in February 2007, these computers are wearing out their warranty in a government warehouse in Windhoek, waiting for the acceptance, by local government and political stakeholders, of a definitive deployment list of only 40 schools, 20 of which shall be provided with Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) solutions – according to the “master” plan launched in September 2006. At this stage there is no guarantee that SchoolNet will be successful in a newly proposed government quotation tender bid to undertake the deployment of FLOSS to these 20 schools.

At the present rate of implementation, it is highly unlikely that any school (with exception of those privileged or motivated enough to secure external donations or financial assistance) will receive a single new computer in 2007! Secondary schools will shortly return to work on revision and exam time tables in the last term; it is hard to believe that any teacher at these schools will find the time to undertake 80 + hours of obligatory ICT certification training in order to manage these computers for the prescribed curricular use.

As a result of this foreign consultancy-driven fiasco, there are obvious operational consequences for a civil society organization like SchoolNet Namibia. Built on a framework of technology innovations, speedy and flexible reaction to local needs, genuine operational transparency (check our website!) and a vision to empower youth with ICT using FLOSS, Open Content (OC) and Open Access (OA) models of engagement to provide incentive to youth and their educators, SchoolNet can ill-afford to continue carrying the technical support burden of the Ministry of Education’s ICT implementation plan without eventual logistic and financial consideration from the Ministry of Education or alternative revenue streams, locally and internationally.

This said, SchoolNet has the good fortune of Sida funding for one more year. Sida funds designated to help SchoolNet continue to provide ICT support and internet access to schools, while waiting for the Ministry of Education and XNet to deliver within a reasonable period of time, after which SchoolNet Namibia can refocus on driving ICT innovations in education and community, as it has shown the world it’s really good at doing!

Given this generous support to date, what has SchoolNet been doing in the past year?

SchoolNet received 8954 relevant technical support requests via our helpdesk and toll-free number in 2006 and, following the Christmas holidays and a short and un-dramatic rainy season, in the first two months of 2007 (Table 1). It is reassuring to record that only 943 calls (11% of total) were escalated to technical support staff at our regional offices in Ondangwa, Rundu, Gobabis and Windhoek, resulting in 663 site visits to deal with various technical problems not solved on the phone. Some 37% of these calls were related to problems with the internet, and another 32% of calls were related to server-based hardware and software issues. The great majority of site visits (424) were made by SchoolNet staff from our Ondangwa office. This is self-explanatory, given the fact that the majority of SchoolNet-supported schools are found in the Omusati, Oshana, Ohangwena and Oshikoto regions of north-central Namibia. There were 80 requests for trainers in the past year, again mostly from these regions and an improvement on previous years; possibly an indication that our awareness programme through the comic Hai Ti! appears to have had some effect on our educators and school administrators!

Our Annual General Meeting in July saw us celebrate SchoolNet´s seventh anniversary, and in order to document our relatively short, but very intense history, we collaborated in a special publication, "Diatribe”, jointly produced by Andrew Weir, Sarah Taylor and Ted Scott of the College of the Arts’ Media Art Technology Centre at KCAC. As we celebrate our first seven years of existence, it is important to reflect on the challenges and opportunities that will face SchoolNet Namibia in the next years to come. In the past few years we have made various strategic changes to SchoolNet’s operational focus and organisational structure. A number of SchoolNet’s ICT products and services were phased out, delivery strategies were changed and new initiatives, products and services conceptualised and implemented.

These changes were driven by developments within the education and communication sectors, civil society, the nature of our international and local funding, our income generation models, the civil society, public sector and legislative environments in which SchoolNet operates, and expects to operate in the future. Furthermore, ongoing assessment of the relevance of our ICT efforts in response to the challenge of strengthening the ICT capacity of the educational sector, has led us to think hard about long-term and sustainable solutions to our continued engagement with ICT development in Namibia’s education sector.

Web 2.0 = Education 2.0, with the ever-increasing potential of the Internet

Educational transformation occurs when the increasingly familiar Web 2.0 technologies – blogs, wikis, podcasts, social networking and even gaming – are used to revolutionise traditional approaches to education. It is really all about how we use the Web these days. While Web 1.0 was all about one-to-many communication, without much interaction, Web 2.0 is truly participatory; emphasizing collaboration, sharing and community. Learners and teachers should be able to use Web 2.0 technologies to maintain educational resources online, interact with teachers and other learners, view, share and modify multimedia in a converging world of open content and open access on an improved IP network of better and increasingly affordable service- and technology-neutral bandwidth, anywhere, anytime. Great examples include the e-viva project by Ultralab, fanfiction.net and KidsRgreen.org.

Personalised education could be the biggest change in teaching and learning in the next decade. It has the potential to re-engage the interest of thousands of unmotivated teachers, and can provide a highly structured, engaging and interactive approach to each and every child’s learning experience. Schools should serve as centres of empowered collaborative learning with the advent of Web 2.0 tools and resources, and take advantage of personal communication devices which can be “education-enabled”!

SchoolNet has been planning forward with a strong focus on new opportunities through ICT convergence. For example, a Portable Digital Assistant, or PDA, is a hand-held device equipped with computer-like capabilities. Nowadays, PDAs include wireless network connectivity, mobile phones, cameras and a variety of add-on hardware extensions. Handheld portable digital devices can include wireless network connectivity, with extensions such as a mobile phone, bluetooth connections, virtual keyboards, camera and a variety of add-on hardware and software. These handheld mobile-enabled devices are sometime called Pocket PCs, “smartphones”, “wearables” , “communicators” or “mobile multimedia machines”.

Such tools can create an exciting spectrum of educational opportunities. This convergence is the newest technological revolution and, as the number of such devices increases, this technology will become increasingly more affordable for learners and teachers. PDA and mobile phone technology will potentially assist individuals to learn anytime, anywhere, by empowering them to access internet resources, capture, store and manage everyday events such as images and sounds, and communicate and share the material with colleagues, friends and family, anytime, anywhere, throughout the world. Mobile phones and PDAs can enable teachers and learners to share resources and allow learners to ask questions, answer polls, and give feedback; they can be used for delivery of courseware, tests and tutoring; as a tool that supports learners’ enquiries in computer-supported collaborative learning; as personal technologies for lifelong learning, to help improve literacy and numeracy skills.

Capitalising on mobile technologies and the potential of the Internet, both at the individual and broader community level, is an ongoing challenge for SchoolNet’s efforts to bring Namibian schools and other education sector clients into the modern online environment. Moreover, given the reach of the Internet, local schools – learners and teachers - should become active participants in global discussions and debates - and more importantly, influencing the national ICT development agenda. Indeed, the Internet provides a strategic opportunity for the future of SchoolNet as it provides increasingly more efficient ways to channel information about its activities and engages with all its stakeholders - including learners, teachers, donors, government, the private sector, general public and community partners. SchoolNet’s future will be geared towards optimising its activities and resources, and increasing its impact on the ICT uptake in the Namibian education and development sectors.

Providing Affordable and Relevant ICT Solutions – planning forward, strategically!

Building on SchoolNet’s excellent track record of local expertise and innovations (local IS “lekker”!), our emphasis will be on providing a considerably wider range of affordable and relevant ICT solutions to the education sector in partnership with private and public sector ICT service providers through the ICT Alliance of Namibia and the XNet Development Alliance; expanding and integrating our range of educational and information products and services through SchoolNet's website, and a proposed new Content Management System and Technical Services Database; bringing home and building a local development community around our current FLOSS products OpenLab and other FLOSS distributions based on local demand; enhancing our knowledge of ICT trends and changes in the education sector through ongoing research and participation in international forums such as the Wikimedia Foundation, SchoolNet Africa, FOSSFA and the Commonwealth of Learning; and intensifying our FLOSS, OC and OA advocacy activities and leadership role on such issues in Namibia’s ICT development sector through SchoolNet membership and participation in the ICT Alliance, ICT in Education Steering Committee of the MoE, NETSS and XNet.

Key operational strategies to be implemented and pursued in support of these objectives include a more streamlined organisational structure, with appropriate skills and capacity where required, strategic alignment with other ICT stakeholders such as NETSS and XNet when these eventually do become operational, the integration of activities and resources across development projects such as the UNESCO solar schools project, and even closer cooperation and interaction with a range of NGOs, government and private sector stakeholders. Increasingly, much of SchoolNet’s operational activities will be geared toward building and deploying a skilled human resource to provide decentralized, rural technical support and internet service, with a central hub of FLOSS, OC and OA development, community building, innovation and social activism.

Many of the sustainability issues facing SchoolNet Namibia are also challenges facing similar organisations in other developing countries. This situation presents SchoolNet with exciting opportunities to leverage its expertise in cooperation with other regional NGOs with similar interests and social obligations. To this end, SchoolNet Namibia will co-host a workshop of SchoolNet Africa participants from several African countries in Windhoek in October 2007. Furthermore, the Commonwealth of Learning has invited SchoolNet Namibia to engage in several skills-sharing workshops in small States of the Commonwealth in the Caribbean and Oceania over the next 12 months.

Namibia still faces many challenges associated with the “digital divide”, affecting the development of a knowledge economy. The cost of telecommunications continues to be a major obstacle to transforming Namibia into an information society, and saturation of international bandwidth remains a critical problem in effecting a viable internet service to Namibia’s education sector.

SchoolNet’s active engagement in the formulation of public sector FLOSS policy and appropriate legislation to enable Creative Commons licensing, an Universal Service Fund and the re-delegation of Namibia’s .NA domain administration, is geared to help effect significant change in Namibia’s national ICT policy environment. SchoolNet is frequently criticized for being too loudly vocal in its criticism of government and industrial technocracy; I say, “right on!”, someone’s got to do this!

SchoolNet is at a very important crossroads in its evolution. The first seven years have come and gone. As an ICT development organisation, SchoolNet’s work will continue to attempt to maximize ICT opportunities as well as initiate efforts aimed at the empowerment of youth through ICTs. Many challenges remain in building the organisation, scaling up and expanding its core ICT activities, and adhering to its mission and vision.

And the latest annual report (for 2006)

2006-06-23T22:34:00.000+01:00

An invitation to think about what we know and what we believe

Peter Weber wrote in his book " The Success of Open Source ", that
"property in open source is configured fundamentally around the right to distribute, not the right to exclude. If that sentence feels awkward on first reading, that is a testimony to just how deeply embedded ... the exclusion view of property really is."

Last year I rationalised SchoolNet Namibia’s destiny on the basis of a significant localised collection of innovations in ICTs in education - ranging from exciting new free/libre and open source software called OpenLab to an internationally acclaimed and award-winning educational comic called Hai Ti! While SchoolNet Namibia can be very proud of its ICT development efforts to date, as rightly reported by our Chairperson, the processes and paradigm shifts required for democratisation through ICTs in Namibia remain challenging. More so than ever before.

When I began to think about free/libre and open source software (FLOSS) many years ago, I had to convince just about everyone I talked to, outside of a very small technology community, that this represented a very real opportunity to challenge vendor-locked drop -‘n - run ICT development models and something worth pursuing in the education sector.

In spite of the fact that our total cost of ownership model clearly leads the way as result of our use of FLOSS and appropriate technologies, I'm sorry to say that I still have to make this case to Government officials and Donor staff who remain obstinately reticent in their vendor-locked comfort zone, sitting on the fence with painfully noncommittal diplomacy, likely using expired copies of proprietary software to write policy papers, tender documents and clickety-click textbooks. This clearly means that SchoolNet’s advocacy role in the liberation of the education sector with FLOSS and universal access to the internet, is not over yet; not by a long shot!

In 2005, SchoolNet Namibia became pivotal in providing structured, experiential help to Namibia's Ministry of Education and other countries to locate their ICT initiatives and plans within a generic process template of good practice in relation to integrating Information and Communications Technologies into the education system. As a result of these engagements, Namibia is probably more advanced than any other African country in being able to determine its current progress with ICT integration and to plan and cost its next steps. SchoolNet Namibia has been intent on providing valuable tools that will help Namibia and other countries to determine future strategies in terms of ICT integration, how they will get there, and the critical decisions that will determine what ICT integration will involve in the education sector of each country.

While on a national per capita school basis (especially if calculated on the basis of electrified schools) SchoolNet Namibia probably has the best ICT development progress in education sectors in Africa to date, and more learners and teachers (again on a per capita basis!) using the internet than anywhere else in Africa, it still boils down to fewer than 200,000 learners and 8,000 teachers empowered by ICTs in Namibia today.

In general, many of the issues and challenges associated with ICTs in education initiatives are known by the policy makers, donors and educators. However, data on the nature and extent of these challenges remain limited because of the lack of monitoring and evaluation tools and methodologies dealing with the use of ICTs in schools and their impact on teaching and learning. We urgently need to develop the local expertise and tools to undertake such work, to avoid the risk of having even more costly foreign development expertise swamp the nature of our business.

SchoolNet Namibia has grown to what it has achieved today - a national end-to-end ICT service provider to the education sector of Namibia - on the back of a fiercely defended (and oft' frequently criticised) principle of free/libre and open source software and creative commons licensed educational content as an implicit universal service obligation to the education sector.

SchoolNet Namibia has spent five years building local capacity to deliver ICTs to Namibia's education sector, on a NATION-WIDE basis; this has seen SchoolNet Namibia reach an unprecedented number of schools, teacher colleges, resource centres and other instances in Namibia. This has largely come by its own volition, coupled with a volumes of local energy and expertise invested to make SchoolNet Namibia a hugely successful end-to-end ICT service provider, in Namibia, on a NATION-WIDE scale of operation. Yes, we did, indeed, convincingly secure very generous bilateral financial support to make this possible; based on faith in our free and open source software and content solution!

Which SchoolNets in Africa (and further afield!) can lay claim to being engaged with local (and international) stake holders in their respective countries to deliver and service ICTs to their education sectors on a NATION-WIDE scale of deployment?

Which SchoolNets in Africa (and further afield!) have developed a national toll-free help desk and technical service solution to provide end-to-end technical service to ALL schools, NATION-WIDE?

Which SchoolNets in Africa (and further afield!) have engaged their governments and monopolistic telecommunication providers to ensure that ALL schools, NATION-WIDE, have access to unlimited volume, 24/7 flat-rate internet services at N$ 165/month ?

Bottom-line: Which SchoolNets in Africa (and further afield!) have deployed FLOSS in a meaningful and affordable total cost of ownership model?

SchoolNet Namibia says it all!

Our future as a civil society organisation lies in ensuring equality and equitable access to Open Educational Resources, on the basis of our experiences and remaining dynamic in shaping contingent futures on the back of emerging technologies.

I should like to express my sincere gratitude to the board of Trustees for allowing such creative licence to flourish in hands of the young, bright, tech-savvy Namibians that make up the SchoolNet Namibia team! I am very proud to be part of this team as we look to new and diverse horizons in 2006 and beyond.

16th June 2006

And now I also do flckr!

2006-06-23T22:30:00.000+01:00

Well, I never thought I would get this far:-) Now there's a diary of images to accompany my blog!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/tatejoris/

enjoy:-)

Another first world misanthropy joins my blacklist

2006-02-02T10:14:00.000+02:00

From: joris@schoolnet.na
Subject: Re: Kontakt über charity-network.de
Date: January 18, 2006 12:14:37 GMT+02:00
To: walter.zielinski@t-online.de
Cc: eddy@lug-norderstedt.de, khalid.bomba@gesci.org

Hi Walter

I am having a particularly bad hair day today. Based on information at your web site http://www.charity-network.de,
and following up on some correspondence to a Linux User group in Germany wherein you recently stated, :

snip

Mit den örtlichen namibischen Schulen ist zudem das Prinzip
abgesprochen; sie wünschen diese Konfiguration.

Unser Fazit: Dies ist konkrete Hilfe auf der Basis der Nachhaltigkeit
und kein westlich-imperialistischer Ausbeutungsansatz; dies ist auch
nicht westliche Entwicklungshilfe mit dem angeblich überlegenen Knowhow
europäisch geprägter Wirtschaftsmissionare.

Tatsache bleibt aber auch, dass auch in Namibia nur ein verschwindend
kleiner Teil der PC-Community für Linux votiert.

snip

I find that your response is very typical of the many highly patronising first world bleedin' heart drop 'n run brigade that Namibia has had to deal with these past years - we spend an enormous amount of time repairing the damage done by first world organisations dropping boxes, providing some symbolic short term support and then buggering off before things really start falling apart !

Firstly, may I advise that you pay particular attention to the framework within which Namibia's Ministry of Education encourages direct engagement by foreign philanthropists with LOCAL ICT deployment experts based in Namibia - run by Namibians for Namibians! To presume that your proposal for Namibia, without the consent of the ICT for Education Steering Committee, is "concrete help" is utter codswallop - in this regard I have directed my concerns to the relevant Ministry officials to deal with. We are happy to accommodate second hand computers donated by well meaning german citizens through Lions and Rotaries and their ilk, but under somewhat more stringent long-term cost of ownership models of support and service over three to five years.

Secondly, your insinuation that schools in Namibia have an express wish for M$FT WINDOZ 2000 configurations is either something you've picked up from M$FT persona directly, or it is a delusional projection of your purported adequacy as a German Charity! You've got this all wrong - Schools in Namibia are GRATEFUL for ANY computers, IRRESPECTIVE of operating system, CONDITIONAL on there being a guaranteed and appropriate service to support these technologies at such schools.

FInally, your suggestion that Gnu/Linux accounts for only a tiny fragment of the ICT community use in Namibia is completely incorrect, if not misrepresentation of the facts - only 33 schools in Namibia (mostly priviledged, private schools) use M$FT solutions by way of legacy - in excess of 340 schools (mostly underserved, underpriviledged disadvantaged schools) use SchoolNet's Free and Open Source (FOSS) solution called OpenLab. Please be advised that this collective educational community of some 200,000 users are very pleased with these ICT resources, for simple reason that it is bundled with carefully considered and hugely affordable long-term service support, training, repairs and maintenance country wide, and coupled with affordable flat-rate 24/7 internet access....

Suggest you have a thorough look at SchoolNet Namibia's website, and read some of my articulations at my BLOG

tatejoris.blogspot.com

before you take any further UNILATERAL steps in delivering second hand computers with costly and unserviceable Windoz solutions to schools in Namibia, which may result in some possibly very painful international media attention to your German Charity.

TX

Joris Komen
Director SchoolNet Namibia
http://www.schoolnet.na

On Jan 18, 2006, at 11:17 AM, walter.zielinski@t-online.de wrote:

Hallo Herr Komen,

Wir haben von Ihnen eine Kontaktanfrage mit folgendem Inhalt erhalten:

"Please be advised that while your apparent philanthropy is noted with interest, you should be aware that Namibia now has an ICT Policy for Education, whereby any ICT project intending to deliver ICTs to schools in Namibia MUST obtain clearance AND approval from the Ministry of Education ICT steering committee - pls contact Khalid Bomba of GESCI or myself for more details -

khalid.bomba@gesci.org"

Wir werden uns umgehend bei Ihnen melden.

Mit freundlichen Grüßen,

das Charity Network-Team

more first world misanthropy?

2005-12-10T13:11:00.000+02:00

Hi Karl

You've caught me on a particularly bad hair day today. Ouch.

If WCE stands for World Computer Exchange, you've chosen the wrong country to be a Programme Officer; indeed, we are still suffering a recent unilateral "long-term" educational technology blunder by this particular WCE (with Peace Corps and Rotary Club) since the patronising first world fuckknuckle who orchestrated this misanthropic disaster timed his departure perfectly, leaving various ill-equiped recipients of second-hand WCE trash in the lurch, neglecting to address long term technical support responsibilities and naively expecting the locals to *gratefully* pick up the pieces ....

Obviously, if you've obtained credentials from some other partisan first world bleedin' heart brigade (not WCE - they DO NOT have credentials with relevant ICT development stakeholders in Namibia!), who may be intent on patronising Namibia with some more unilateral and ill-conceived misanthropy, without the Ministry of Education ICT steering committee vouchsafing these intentions, then so be it. We'll find out soon enough, and make a very public fuss. Please read our National ICT Policy for Education to understand your obligations to our very legitimate civil society concerns.

I strongly advise that you distance yourself from this WCE as soon as possible; with your art college background (and conditional on you having a valid work/study permit/visa) you shall find very positive and encouraging engagement from SchoolNet and others (e.g., MATS - College of the Arts) by sharing your skills in a local realm which is likely to benefit from your expertise. If you have Joomla, Dreamweaver, PHP and MySQL experience, this would be a boon. By the way, we don't do Moodle - we do KEWL; check out our FLOSS partners' -- GetOpenLab and KEWL -- websites for insights to our richly diverse use of FLOSS in Namibia. You might also consider becoming conversant with Hai Ti!, our educational comic.

On the other hand, if you ARE intent on remaining a programme officer for this WCE, may I suggest that you go do this in rural Mexico; it would be a distinctively cheaper sabbatical, psychologically less devastating, and the local mescal will give you fantastic gender-bending experiences to share with your partner Suzanne on your travel-wise return to New York.

I further suggest you read my blogs at tatejoris.blogspot.com for my views on first world misanthropy. You probably think that I'm jealously protective of (appropriate) ICT development in Namibia's education sector -- you're absolutely right.

Cheers

Joris Komen

On 9 Dec 2005, at 04:02, KA Peltomaa wrote:

Dear Mr. Joris Komen:

My name is Karl Peltomaa and I am WCE’s new Programme Officer for Namibia. I will be arriving in Namibia January 21st and will be in-country until June 7th. I am planning to make my affiliation with WCE and the work I will do Namibia the beginning of a long-term engagement with educational technology in Namibia. In preparation for my work, I have gained knowledge of your past and current work from reports, website info, and from reading the AFLUG list. I believe that it would be mutually beneficial for our organizations if we could coordinate/collaborate.

In my current day-to-day work, I am an instructor at the Art Institute of New York City where I teach various computer courses; networking, project management, and web scripting. I have, for some time, been using open-source software and am in the process of introducing the Moodle learning management system at my institution (my Moodle site is www.mooded.com/moodle).

I am willing to work with SNA on a volunteer basis. My wife, Suzanne, and I are on sabbatical from our colleges. She is an anthropologist and will be conducting research in collaboration with the Gender Research and Advocacy Project at the Legal Assistance Centre in Windhoek.

I look forward to hearing from you and hope to meet and work with you in the near future.

Sincerely,

Karl A. Peltomaa

Previous iterations of this theme ....

April 2005 - delusions of adequacy by Timothy Anderson - left me speechless:-)

Hello Michael,

Our Board voted to enter into partnership with the Tsandi Teachers Resource Center. Thank you for all of your hard work there as a Peace Corps Volunteer.

We still will need the list of schools and centres as well as the total number of youth to be impacted. Your plan is posted at this url:

http://www.worldcomputerexchange.org/partner_plans/Namibia-PCV-Plan.doc

I received, signed, and mailed back our agreement.

Please send me the e-mail address of Olavi Angula.

Let me know when you and they are ready for a donation certificate and proforma invoice.

I got to spend some time with Joris Komen again last week while I was in Dublin. I also met the new GeSCI

[we sat across a table from each other during a short workshop and exchanged polite niceties]

faciliator for Namibia as well as some people from the Ministry of Basic Education, Sport, and Culture. I talked the most with Johan van Wyk their Deputy Director of the Division of Information Technology. I also met with Sean Nicholson, an Education Technology Specialist with Microsoft Namibia. These people all may be helpful as we go forward in Namibia.

Best wishes,

timothy

Timothy Anderson
President
World Computer Exchange (international)
World Computer Exchange - Canada

my missive to Mr Wick on 24 October 2004

Barry

I am NOT sorry that you construed my response as "harsh"; SchoolNet has weathered many naive, "bleedin heart, drop 'n run" philanthropies these past 5 years, and one more does not burden the reality that such "trick or treat" generosity does more harm than good in the well-defined framework of ICT development in education in Namibia. Welcome to the real world - I wasn't even having a bad hair day when I wrote yesterday's response to your patronising little note.

I am not sure what you mean by "discussion". .... I would, at worst, call it unilateral delinquency, or at best, an example of what I call a senior moment.

As I recall, you have priorly asked SchoolNet to provide temporary storage-space at our Ondangwa workshop. No further discussion was held in this regard.

You had also priorly indicated that all the donated PCs would be pre-loaded with M$FT OS. [... I presume this also implies, quid pro quo, that these donated PCs shall each have a decent application suite and educational content, under license from M$FT...]

You had also indicated that you would deliberate which schools would benefit from your generosity.

NO discussion was ever held on this matter - noisome, considering that SchoolNet DOES NOT provide technical training or maintenance support to multiple operating systems at any school in Namibia. SchoolNet can only provide such essential support to schools which have our OpenLab solution in place. This for very good reason - we simply DO NOT have the qualified human resource to support other operating systems.

To date I still wait for a list of schools and the PC quota/school that this arbitrary generosity intends to serve.

Within the framework of our SchoolNet service to schools, such a list is very important to us. We shall need it to revise our existing service contracts with such schools where there will be such overlap.

I do understand from a number of Peace Corps volunteers in northern Namibia that such overlap will be imminent. While still waiting for Waldo to provide critical information, I have no concrete contemporary knowledge of which schools will receive or retain Peace Corps in 2005, so will reserve further comment until I see both lists.

I also wait to see a structured proposal from you or your principals as to how this delivery is going to be supported by "volunteers" in the framework of non-existent M$FT maintenance and support services to the Namibian education sector.

It is incredibly arrogant and patronising of you to presume that these "volunteers" can be burdened with the responsibility of "expertise" and capability of technical service support implied in your most recent remark. Eric Kouskalis, the only extant (and genuinely competent) M$FT contracted service volunteer (World Teach) leaves at end of November. Schools can obviously seek technical service support from reputable commercial IT vendors in Windhoek, but at significant cost, or take a risk with a limited few chancers in Oshakati.

I presume also that the public library recipients will obtain their technical service support directly from the MBESC IT Department, in the same manner it presently provides technical service support to the recipients of the Chinese computer donation a year or so ago.

Given the relation between MBESC, Peace Corps and SchoolNet under the USAID funded SchoolNet GDA, I expect there SHALL be transparency on various aspects of your generosity in the VERY IMMINENT future.

Joris Komen

At 10:36 pm -0600 23/10/04, Barry Wick wrote:
Joris,

I'm also copying Selma and Howard of the Peace Corps on your note.

You and I have been in discussion on the Rotary Club project for two years now. The Rotary Club has partnered with Peace Corps in a number of countries, probably some that have SchoolNet too. The computers will end up at schools in the North with volunteers, so that there will be support and expertise on site.

I'm sorry that your note was so harsh. I certainly have high regard for SchoolNet and have enjoyed our association.

Barry
From: Joris Komen
To: "Barry Wick" , theo@schoolnet.na
CC: staff@schoolnet.na, wjunius@na.peacecorps.gov, jvanwyk@mec.gov.na
Subject: Re: thanks for everything
Date: Sat, 23 Oct 2004 11:43:12 +0200

Hi Barry

I hope you enjoyed your voluntary stint in Namibia.

After the public library services have picked out all their items of choice from the rotary container, and the leftovers arrive somewhere in northern Namibia, who will manage the refurbishment, software, and subsequent deployment and installation of these leftovers at the schools in the north? Who will provide the essential support services to these schools which receive these leftovers?? And for how long?

My immediate guess is you'll go down in Namibia's ICT development history books as another misguided patronising drop 'n run do-gooder.

If there's anything you can do from the US to help SchoolNet, is to learn from the ENSUING lessons to be learned by the folks left to deal with YOUR responsibilities, and NEVER undertake such a venture again.

God forbid!!

Enjoy your warm sense of well-being when you're back in colorado. I will make sure that you and your principals are kept WELL-INFORMED of the short, medium and long-term outcomes of your misguided generosity.

Joris Komen
Director
SchoolNet Namibia

At 2:54 am -0600 23/10/04, Barry Wick wrote:
Joris and Theo,

I'm here for another month and then return to Colorado. Thanks for all your help during the two years that we've been here. Really appreciate all your support. If there is anything I can do from the U.S. to help SchoolNet, please let me know. My address is as follows.

Barry Wick
1110 Sparta Drive
Layafatte, Colorado 80026
U.S.A.
303-926-4356
barrywick_peacecorps@hotmail.com

By the way, the Rotary Club computers have finally arrived after many delays. We will distribute them to schools in the North for use by new volunteers for the 2005 school year.

Best wishes,

Barry Wick
Peace Corps Namibia

workface realities

2005-11-04T17:42:00.000+02:00

At the ICT development work face - SchoolNet Namibia realities

Paper presented at the 2005 Open Education Conference, Logan, Utah.

Introduction

Reading from a recent Microsoft press-release:

" To celebrate a pilot project that was started two years ago, His Excellency, President Hifikepunye Pohamba and the regional CEO of Microsoft, Jean-Phillipe Courtois, officially launched the Pathfinder initiative in Namibia earlier this month. Born out of a Memorandum of Understanding signed with the government of Namibia and represented by its Parliament, Pathfinder supports the efforts of NEPAD and focuses on the needs and educational growth of Africa. Having proven its sustainability (in Namibia), Microsoft is ready to replicate and deploy Pathfinder across other regions in Africa. To date, Pathfinder has been rolled out across 13 schools around Namibia.”

Writing as I do, about the effectiveness and sustainability of open education in Namibia, I am occasionally asked whether my resultant ’bad hair day tails’ about Microsoft and other corporate misanthropies aren’t simply sour grapes. Given the fact that my preferred tipple is whisky, I say clachan a' choin to this myopic view, and instead call them grapes of wrath strewn along a path of civil righteousness (some call it disobedience), determined as I am to see each and every school in Namibia ICT-empowered in an effective and sustainable manner. And I certainly don't need a ‘Pathfinder’ to stay on this path - even after a few drams!

What, indeed, is ‘open education’ ? I see open education embracing the great potential and responsibility of humanity to harness and leverage the advances and freedoms provided by information and communication technology in order to extend educational opportunities to all that want it.

In this context, my paper touches on international issues, policy and administrative issues, overcoming barriers to open education, and securing affordable open educational resources. A lot of this is about plain common sense, and a bit of lateral thinking.

International Issues

Namibia has weathered many naïve, ‘bleedin' heart, drop 'n run’ international ICT misanthropies these past 5 years, and one more does not burden the reality that such misguided ‘trick or treat’ generosity does more harm than good in an otherwise well-defined framework of ICT development in education in Namibia.

The Microsoft ‘Pathfinder’ project, World Bank’s InfoDev ‘Namibia Country Gateway’ project, Shell’s ‘Oshana Connect’ project , the Italian CISP telecentre project, World Computer Exchange, US Peace Corps and Rotary Club’s school PC donation drives, to name but a few, have all failed dismally, given their lack of attention to long-term support obligations.

Conventional international ICT development support has traditionally focused on quick project returns based on capital expense, numbers of computers delivered, and shining ‘best practices’ reports filled with ‘kodak moments’.

Example 1: The Shell ‘Oshana Connect’ Project

Take the example of the Shell ‘Oshana Connect’ project in northern Namibia. A project proposal to Shell, put together by local stake holders in 2002, was subsequently awarded to the UK-based Initiative Foundation for implementation. The reasoning behind this, according to Shell, was that the Initiative Foundation had done prior work elsewhere in the developing world, and was hence a trusted international development partner.

According to the Initiative Foundation web site (www.einitiative.org), John Patton, US-citizen, founding-chairman and political scientist, was involved with the Internet and developing communities since 1995 when he first began working on internet connectivity in Russia. In 1999, Patton sought to take his lessons learned in Russia to other developing communities. The web site describes projects in Russia, Sierra Leone and Namibia.

The Initiative Foundation claims that, in Namibia, their Oshana Connect (wireless) internet network reached ten centres and covered an area in excess of 30 km2. The Oshana Connect team was focused on creating a sustainable community network to support local NGOs in their efforts to assist the community, assist local businesses in their efforts to improve their own operations, and provide access and education. The core team consisted of a two project directors – Tuhafeni Hilukiluah who focused on community, managing the centres, programming and content, and Harry Hoff who focused on efforts to build sustainability.

So what happened to Oshana Connect? According to the Initiative Foundation web site, the “project in Namibia is reaching independence. We have had a good first two years and have learned much. In September (2004), we will post our report and plans for the fourth quarter and beyond.'

No such report has yet been forthcoming; our own findings paint a very gloomy picture. Oshana Connect has left the building. Literally and figuratively. Tuhafeni and Harry are purportedly fighting over funds and technologies gone astray, the wireless network has disappeared to more economic climes, and the once lively student computer laboratory at the Ongwediva College of Education has been abandoned.

Example 2: The Microsoft ‘Pathfinder’ Project

The Namibian Pathfinder project is another example of misguided international corporate misanthropy, launched by Microsoft in Namibia. In contrast to the Oshana Connect project, however, the Pathfinder project continues to get tremendous international publicity as an international ICT development ‘success story’. Marketed directly, and by Microsoft’s preferred international 'charitable' channel partner, Digital Pipeline (www.digitalpipeline.com), this publicity stunt is widely seen as Microsoft’s latest strategy to drive Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) and the Creative Commons (in education) out of Namibia, and discourage other African Education Ministries from embracing FLOSS. I think this is a very risky strategy, given the precarious and miniature scale of the venture in Namibia to date.

Consider the facts:

1. The PathFinder project managed to deliver 156 refurbished computers to 13 Namibian schools in two years. At this stage six of the 13 schools are only barely functional - thanks to the efforts of transient summer holiday students from Harvard. The rest have fallen off the Pathfinder map. Two of the six schools have internet access, courtesy of SchoolNet Namibia.

2. The proprietary software bundled with these computers, MS Office and Encarta, was provided at special discounted pricing; the terms and conditions of use, upgrade and renewal remain obscure.

3. Until quite recently, technical support for these schools required an international phone call to a call-centre in Cairo, Egypt (talk about globalisation!!). Microsoft now expects the government of Namibia to take full responsibility for technical support at these schools.

4. To this end, Microsoft assisted the government of Namibia to establish a computer refurbishment workshop at the Windhoek Vocational Training Centre, which expects to recruit ‘junior computer technicians’ for a once-off student fee of N$ 7,000 (US$ 1,077) to gain such skills.

5. Given an apparent desperate shortage of used computers, resulting from the Prince of Wales International Business Leaders Forum (www.digitalpartnership.org) failing to deliver as promised, Microsoft, through Digital Pipelines, now exploits international used computer agencies such as Computer Aid International and Digital Links, which have traditionally tended the needs of CSOs in African countries.

6. Enraptured by the first Pathfinder effort, the government of Namibian agreed to having Microsoft deploy another 390 refurbished computers to 13 secondary schools, for the exclusive purpose of replacing old typewriting classes with the subjects keyboarding and office administration. In order to replace typewriting with keyboarding and office administration, Microsoft is using proprietary ‘trial’ software which will allow for thin client/server configurations in these 30-computer labs. The Namibian schools will serve as guinea pigs to fine-tune this new software which requires a CDROM to boot the workstations. Little, if any, attention was paid to such issues as furniture, electricity and technical support at the schools thus affected.

Reading from another Microsoft press-release :

“The surest mark of success came today, when Microsoft’s participation in the programme came to a close, and the company ceded administration of the Pathfinder programme to the Namibian government.”

This is the key - ceding administration to the Namibian government! I call this bailing out of a project doomed to failure from the start, and leaving Namibia to take the rap for a fiasco in the making. Microsoft has simply passed the buck to the Government of Namibia.

Very few international development projects stay around long enough to experience difficulties, or take any responsibility for the mostly disastrous after-effects of underestimated costs of long-term ICT ownership.

SchoolNet Namibia expects that international development agencies and industry stake holders recognise the importance of a 'total cost of ownership' model which ensures long-term internet access, technical maintenance, repair, training and support services to schools provided with ICT equipment.

Other International issues - the use of used computers, US$ 100 laptops, and disposal of E-waste ...

SchoolNet co-hosted the first Africa Source Free and Open Source Developers Workshop in 2004, bringing together nearly 100 FLOSS programmers and thinkers from around the world to strategise the future of FLOSS development in the context of bridging educational digital divides. This workshop provided an opportunity for SchoolNet to host a critical one-day meeting on the “One Million computers for African Schools” campaign, bringing together international stake holders to determine the role of refurbished computers in education sectors of Africa. The reports and recommendations from both these events have received considerable international attention, with the result that SchoolNet Namibia expects to receive 5,000 of 10,000 used computers donated by KPN, a large corporation in Holland, in 2005.

Dapo Ladimeji, a London-based African bean-counter and my current worst flavour of the year, recently characterised this campaign as a 'landfill project' at a recent ICT meeting in Vienna, Austria. I was somewhat taken aback by this myopic exposition on an African initiative which has been at the forefront of developing real world, localised total cost of ownership models for ICT development in education in Africa! But then, Dapo hasn't lived in Africa for decades.

Such ‘Dapoesque’ is not representative of continent-wide opinion concerning the integration of affordable and sustainable ICTs in education - a sector more likely to successfully embrace ICTs (and importantly, FLOSS and the Creative Commons!) than any other sector on the continent.

Importantly, I don't think the issue of ‘landfill’ is only applicable to refurbs. It is applicable to any electronic waste resulting from ICTs in development! Especially given our need to look at 3-year obsolescence (and business) cycles when it comes to rolling out ICTs in education.

In this context, I should like to illuminate the fact that increasingly more first world consumers are paying somewhere between US$ 40 and US$ 60 toward end-of-life recycling when they buy a PC from their local dealership - certainly in Europe - given improved EU legislation to this effect. The USA is a sorry state of affairs in this regard; 50% of its E-waste is shipped to the Far East - out of sight, out of mind.

It does beg the question as to why we should be paying anyone for used PCs. On the contrary, I believe we should be paid to take receipt of second-hand technologies; at very least covering the cost of shipping these PCs back to source, on completion of a three-year ‘life-in-African-school’ cycle. This is SchoolNet Namibia's present position - we expect that more African SchoolNets will follow suit. It would also mean the demise of a bunch of very greedy ‘charitable’ channel partners, mentioned previously, playing silly buggers with our precious ICT development funds, our Universal Access Funds and our hard-earned local income.

We are obviously very excited by the formation of Nicholas Negroponte’s ‘One Laptop Per Child’ Association, and the development, by MIT’s Media Lab, of a FLOSS-driven US$ 100 Laptop9 to this end. However, will these US$ 100 laptops have the cost of environmentally appropriate end-of-life recycling factored in? This is an important consideration, given the fact that there are no ISO-14000+ compliant recycling plants anywhere in Africa. It currently costs SchoolNet Namibia US$ 6 per PC (excluding monitor) to ship these back to source in Europe or USA.

Conditional on these end-of-life recycling obligations being met, SchoolNet Namibia had placed an early order for 72,000 MIT US$ 100 Laptops @ US$ 83-87/unit, where US$ 3 - 6 is put aside for the eventual return to source for ISO-compliant E-waste disposal. The US$ 10 income margin would be used to assist (only very partially) SchoolNet to defray local costs associated with the technical support, maintenance, 3-year motherboard warranty, repair and training obligations SchoolNet has toward its education sector clients in terms of our existing total cost of ownership model.

I had also proposed that MIT uses SchoolNet Namibia and existing FLOSS schools as guinea pigs for alpha MIT Laptops to help MIT establish their robustness in the "real world" of African education - heat, dust, dreadful electricity, and hundreds of thousands of hugely enthusiastic, fearless, grubby-fingered FLOSS users, aged between 6 and 25 years old!

In a recent press release, Walter Bender, executive director of MIT’s Media Lab, said Brazilian officials were receptive to the idea of collaborating on a project to distribute inexpensive laptops to schoolchildren.

"We think that Brazil is potentially a very important partner in this project, in part because of a tradition of being creative in this space," Bender said. "There's a big community within Brazil that believes we need to transform how kids learn, where they learn, and they see this as a possible vehicle for transformation."

Alas! Reading this publicity from Brazil, and the lack of response from MIT to my earlier correspondence, it looks like African SchoolNet initiatives are being left out in the cold by the MIT US$ 100 Laptop project. Nia Lewis, who works in the office of Nicholas Negroponte, wrote “The reason that large countries have been the focus (and Brazil approached us) is that we need to begin with a large order so that we can get manufacturing up and running. Once this is in process we will able to determine how to assist all countries of the world.”

Looking at demographic statistics for African youth, by our estimates, approximately 500 million of the estimated 800 million Africans are under the age of 25, and of school-going age. When we launched the ”One Million computers for African Schools” campaign, we were told that we were “irresponsible” to campaign for such a “high” number of computers. Go figure.

I strongly believe that Namibia, one of very few countries in Africa, indeed world-wide, with a national ICT Policy for Education, would be an excellent testbed in this US$ 100 laptop project to roll out ICTs to schools, learners and teachers in Namibia, and further afield.

Policy and Administration Issues

Enter the Government of Namibia. Unlike most other countries in Africa, Namibia has a national ICT Policy for Education10 . And an implementation plan for nation-wide rollout of ICTs, in tandem with the UN ICT task force's Global E-Schools and Communities Initiative (GeSCI), in the making. This is good news for the Namibian education sector, and, for Ministries of Education in other countries, struggling to come to terms with their Millennium Development Goals, a great source of inspiration.

Importantly, the national ICT Policy for Education states, “...acquiring the technologies themselves, (no matter how difficult and expensive the process) may be the easiest and cheapest element in a series of elements that eventually could make these technologies sustainable and beneficial... it is a matter of making it simple for the Ministry of Education, the main national agencies, stake holders, and partners in
the education service (including all the teacher education institutions, examination bodies, the National Institute for Educational Development [NIED], the Information Technology Society, Civil Society, teacher associations, governors’ organisations, and the local authorities) ... to co-operate.”

Namibia’s ICT Policy for Education and its draft implementation plan come as timely relief, giving mandate to a cross-sectoral ICT Task Force, which includes active participation by SchoolNet, to transparently review and advise on ICT development initiatives such as the Microsoft Pathfinder project.

The Ministry of Education has recognised the value of SchoolNet Namibia, has accepted its vision, and have started taking ownership of the mechanisms of national ICT policy implementation. It is pleasing to know that a civil society initiative has been accepted into the hierarchy of educational service delivery and has become institutionalised as a viable technical service provider.

Despite being one of the leading countries in Africa in terms of telecommunications access and use, Namibia ranks comparatively low in terms of openness of the telecommunications market11 . Currently, the tele-communications industry is regulated by two ministries -- Ministry of Information and Broadcasting and Ministry of Transport, Public Works and Communications (although the draft Telecommunications Bill is set to change that within the next 6 - 12 months). Fixed line and mobile telephony are currently monopolised by Telecom Namibia and MTC respectively, with government being the major shareholder in both companies through the Namibia Post and Telecom Holdings company.

The Telecommunications Policy and Regulatory Framework (1999) describes a vision of universal access and liberalisation of the telecommunications sector. The draft Telecommunications Bill is currently being reviewed by Parliament and provides for the regulation of telecommunication activities including the use and allocation of radio spectrum, and the establishment of an independent Namibian Communications Authority. The Bill’s aim of Universal access is pivotal to Namibia’s vision and a Universal Service Fund (USF) will be established and administered by the Regulator.
The existing telecommunications regulatory framework makes provision for a Universal Service Obligation (USO) by the monopolies.

The liberalisation of the Telecommunication sector will introduce competition as a means for accelerated infrastructure development, increased efficiency and diversified services, thereby making government’s decentralisation efforts cheaper and increase Namibia’s attractiveness for foreign investment.

Namibia’s Vision 2030 - Policy Framework for Long-term National Development12 - focuses on capacity building investments to transform Namibia into knowledge-based economy, where ICT plays a central role. Targets for development include revised national ICT policy, ICT training as part of formative competency education, support for internet access in rural areas and installation of wide-area wireless infrastructure, countrywide.

Overcoming barriers to open education

SchoolNet has reached its sixth year of existence as a not-for-profit, civil society organisation, providing sustainable, affordable open source technology solutions and internet access, as well as technical support, training services and rich educational content to schools, community-based educational organisations, and educational practitioners throughout Namibia. To realise SchoolNet's vision, our approach has involved a number of key steps to overcome barriers to open education:

• Gathering political and economic support;
• Establishing wide-reaching stake holder partnerships;
• Constructing appropriate ICT solutions;
• Expanding the reach of the programme to embrace all of Namibia's education sector;
• Obtaining regulatory and policy endorsement of appropriate ICT solutions;
• Rationalising affordability and sustainability models for such ICT solutions

While SchoolNet Namibia can be very proud of its ICT development efforts to date, the processes and paradigm shifts required for democratisation through ICTs in Namibia remain challenging.

When SchoolNet Namibia was launched early in 2000, the drive came from civil society, with considerable industrial and political clout. In 1999 there was a significant amount of lobbying done with key stake holders. Partnerships were formed with government, private sector, parastatals, other CSOs and international development agencies, resulting in the launch of SchoolNet by the Permanent Secretaries for Education and Information, respectively.

SchoolNet provides opportunities for out-of-school, unemployed youth to be exposed to global information, new ways of thinking and an ICT resource base which far exceeds what the formal education system has been able to provide; especially in under-served rural schools. The socio-political implications of this civil society initiative were carefully considered to determine whether access to the internet could be seen as a threat to the political fabric of the country and the conservatism of its education system. High-level political support was needed to endorse the SchoolNet programme and to set the parameters within which it should operate.

In order to aid democratisation processes in Namibia, SchoolNet should ideally remain a critical link between civil society and democratic government through innovative ICT integration programmes. We must continue to demonstrate how SchoolNet innovations can be translated into practice, and how these can be adapted to different social, economic and cultural contexts. We must also continue to demonstrate that our institutional performance with FLOSS provides for coherence among the various ICT policy sectors at work in Namibia.

I expect that SchoolNet innovations will help reshape educational and societal precepts and produce refreshingly different structural features to help drive educational democratisation processes.

While there are numerous democratisation initiatives which embody social activism to challenge dominant ideologies in Namibia and elsewhere, social transformation and empowerment opportunities through ICTs generally take a secondary position to more pressing economic, education and health issues.

Many civil society organisations have been enlisted by governments as an alternative to conventional public-sector development programmes. We must be careful that such attentions do not exhaust SchoolNet’s organisational resources taking on industry or sectorial responsibilities or ditching our transformative agenda as we are increasingly co-opted by market forces in economically lean times. Importantly, SchoolNet must remain active in its role to sensitise the state and industry to take more direct responsibility of ICT development in the disadvantaged schools of Namibia, in the context of their considerable civic obligation.

The SchoolNet model is driven by champions from different sectors, locally and internationally. SchoolNet continues to expand its sphere of influence by participating in local initiatives such as the ICT Alliance of Namibia13 (a public/private/civil society partnership), the ICT for Education Task Force, and the XNet Development Alliance Trust, which has SchoolNet and Telecom Namibia as founding members. The XNet Trust is unique in allowing members from Namibia's civil society, business and public sectors to join and actively contribute to the development of Namibia's knowledge economy, in line with Namibia's Vision 2030's goal of Universal Access for all. The XNet Trust has the founding President of Namibia as its patron and life member. The significant achievement of SchoolNet Namibia has been the way it has negotiated a convincing USO commitment for subsidised internet to schools by the tele-communications monopolies through XNet. Telecom Namibia has committed US$ 2.05 million to XNet; a matching commitment from MTC is presently being negotiated.

The symbiotic relationship with Telecom did not happen overnight. It was the result of protracted negotiations to rationalise a trade-off between a significant USO and the market growth potential of educated users of ICTs in previously under-served, rural areas of Namibia. It was eventually agreed that Telecom would provide wide-area wireless (‘wifi’) infrastructure, and subsidise internet access to schools, nation-wide, through XNet, with SchoolNet as the internet service provider.

Having earlier set up wifi internet for schools in north-central Namibia, using a spread-spectrum ISM frequency 2.4 gHz solution, we recognised that as more and more non-school users entered the 2.4 gHz arena, the spectrum could become difficult to manage. Accordingly, a dedicated wifi frequency, free from interference, was needed, and Telecom Namibia subsequently obtained a license from the regulator for the 2.6 gHz frequency band by XNet for nation-wide education sector use. The present 2.6gHz infrastructure provides wifi coverage of about 17,000 km2 in north-central Namibia, the capital city Windhoek, and a coastal town, Swakopmund. Wifi infrastructure will be deployed to other areas of Namibia on a demand-driven basis. SchoolNet continues to use 2.4gHz solutions for secure, localised school wifi hotspots.

The cost of internet connectivity is a serious barrier to open education in virtually every African country. For example, commercial dial-on-demand internet in Ghana costs US$ 55/month, not including underlying telecommunication costs; in Kenya such costs are US$ 30-40/month. In Namibia, the cheapest commercial dial-on-demand internet service costs US$ 15/month. Through XNet, SchoolNet formulated a strategy to minimise the costs of internet connectivity, making it affordable across the education sector in Namibia. This strategy has resulted in a standard flat-rate 24/7 internet access solution of US$ 25/month for schools, and free dial-on-demand internet access for educators, using SchoolNet’s national 0700 number with reduced telecom charges; an one-hour internet call, anywhere in Namibia, presently costs US$ 2.72.

Under the XNet agreement, Telecom Namibia (and other telecommunications providers) support SchoolNet's connectivity service to all schools participating in the SchoolNet scheme, nation-wide. SchoolNet will manage the relations with schools, ensuring that schools which have access also have appropriate ICTs and skills to use them. SchoolNet’s own Internet Service capacity - a virtual private network - will eventually be transferred to the new XNet Trust. Provision is also made to subsidise those schools that cannot afford even the discounted rate, by a cross-subsidy scheme which encourages privileged schools and other educational centres to pay more if they can afford to do so.

SchoolNet remains a flexible entity, as it was developed along action-research lines, where emerging issues were dealt with as they arose, new ideas were tested and viable solutions found. Feedback mechanisms, including independent monitoring and evaluation, were put in place from the outset and have been maintained through ongoing discussions with the key informants from government, industry and international development agencies, who have a vested interest in securing the success of the programme. This strategy has been repeated in the formation of XNet.

Securing affordable open educational resources and freedoms

SchoolNet Namibia has a stellar position on the African continent with respect to FLOSS deployment in Education, and we have the capacity to localise (and decentralise) the assembly, maintenance, repair, training and support services for ICTs deployed to schools, nation-wide. SchoolNet Namibia has built a strategic implementation plan in line with Namibia’s ICT Policy for Education, and is a leader among SchoolNet initiatives across Africa.

Said candidly, we must continue to be highly agitated by the glaring realities in Namibia to drive effective and urgent implementation of the national ICT Policy for Education; 1640 schools, comprising 18,000 teachers and 600,000+ learners, of which 690 schools do not have electricity yet, and few schools have any library resources to speak of. HIV-AIDS is taking an alarming toll of educators, and teacher-absenteeism and male teenager dropout are on the increase.

We shall need some 72,000 computers to reach first world expectations of a 10:1 learner to computer ratio and a 1:1 teacher to computer ration in schools in Namibia. At this stage of ICT development in the Namibian education sector, fewer than 300 schools have any educational ICT integration capacities to speak of. Presently, most of these have FLOSS solutions and Internet access, provided by SchoolNet. Only some 50 (mostly privileged) schools use Microsoft applications; mostly without Internet access, and with growing concern about the extent to which many such schools have unauthorised copies of Microsoft and other third-party proprietary software.

While on a national per capita school basis (especially if calculated on the basis of electrified schools, n= 950) we probably have the best ICT development progress in education sectors in Africa to date, and more learners and teachers (again on a per capita basis) using the internet than anywhere else in Africa, it still boils down to fewer than 200,000 learners and 8,000 teachers empowered by ICTs in Namibia today. This reality shall clearly remain the substance of SchoolNet Namibia's agitation today and in the future!

Focusing on schools with secondary grades, SchoolNet has deployed ICT solutions scaled to specifications and priorities set by the national ICT Policy for Education. Such ICT systems typically include a new Pentium IV (Intel-inside) server, between 5 and 20 refurbished thin-client diskless workstations (with new monitors, mice and keyboards) and an Uninterrupted Power Supply. These PCs are installed on SchoolNet’s innovative round tabletops, with network cabling, switch and internet service equipment ensuring that all computers have secure access to server-based software, applications and locally relevant educational content, as well as the Internet. Developed specially for the Namibian education sector by Direq International in collaboration with local and international pedagogues, SchoolNet Namibia’s tailor-made OpenLab solution provides Namibian schools with access to a wide range of educational resources.

The latest release of Direq OpenLab is awesome! Especially with a localised Wikipedia (meeting the demand for a FLOSS reference encyclopaedia), and some fantastic learner/learning management and examination tools to complement the existing educational resources. Literacy and numeracy applications, as well as an educational playground, provide an interactive resource base for teachers and learners from Grade 1-12. A typing tutor, Open Office suite and the latest Edsnet resources (produced by Namibia's Institute for Educational Development) has been integrated to provide teachers with local curricular guidelines and syllabus resources. The Gutenberg Project provides access to several thousand popular copyleft textbook and classic literature resources in both text-printable and html formats. The teacher-oriented self-guided IT-literacy training modules (EDN) work without the need to go on the internet (Certification will shortly be available through SchoolNet South Africa and the University of KwaZulu Natal, SA).

Best practices guidelines, activity worksheets and lesson plans, developed by local Peace Corps volunteers and others, are available on our web site inclusive of materials for HIV/AIDS awareness. We also have our very first online local language Oshindonga and Oshikwanyama translation resource materials to add to our growing list of localised online materials.

SchoolNet has established a nation-wide programme to deploy affordable desktop computers running FLOSS to the education sector for home use, at entry level pricing of US$ 380, inclusive of free dial-on-demand internet access for educators. Launched earlier this year, demand for such home computers has increased, putatively linked to exposure to Hai Ti!, SchoolNet’s new paper- and web-based comic series.

While empowering youth with ICTs is relatively easy, we have to contend with the reality that state-paid educators (75% women!) remain prevalently resistant to ICTs, limited by an effective 30-hour workweek and 203 working-day year with very few locally relevant educational ICT resources at hand. At this stage of shifting ICT-ownership paradigms, operational strategies and methods of ICT empowerment of (mostly women!) educators in Namibia, we should like to encourage educators, learners and communities to embrace these ICTs in their lives - education, work and play. We would like them to appreciate the value of ICTs and the rich educational resources provided by this platform.

There are presently 350,000 effectively tech-savvy mobile phone users in Namibia; is it realistic to see as many home computer users in Namibia in the next five years? I believe so -- conditional on the capital cost of such ICTs dropping to that of entry-level (US$ 100) mobile phones, and internet access becoming significantly more affordable, through deregulation of our monopolistic international broadband providers! How we tackle this challenge, starting with educators in Namibia, is the substance of SchoolNet innovations yet to come :-)!

SchoolNet Namibia has produced Hai Ti!, a launch comic-book and weekly one-page newspaper and web-based inserts with the help of Strikas Entertainment and Direq International. Hai Ti! (which means “listen up” in the Oshiwambo language of Namibia), was published under Creative Commons licensing, with the purpose of educating Namibian teachers and learners on ICTs.

Hai Ti! has had very positive feedback in Namibia since its launch in April 2005. Our present thinking around story boards for ICT integration in education identify simple and visually stimulating training messages providing ICT foundation and integration skills, civic and democratising lessons, overcoming existing language, cultural and economic barriers, using a central female cult-hero teaching Mathematics in an entertaining, educationally relevant and hopefully addictive way. The lessons are aimed at encouraging personal control over the ICT environment, comfort in the use of ICT services, trust in a professional SchoolNet service, and above all, build respect for the intelligence and ability of educators to use ICTs creatively!

I should like to see ICTs help uplift the social status of the teaching profession (a universal problem not limited to Namibia!). While we do have champion teachers out there, as well as inspired administrators, driving quality education in disadvantaged communities, we must find solutions that incentivise and reward such champions for their performance in improving educational outcomes. It is also high time that we pay closer attention to the fact that women are the purchasers of virtually everything; that women dominate education - in attendance, employment and graduation results - and the fact that more women than men are using the Internet today. Hence our emphasis on control, comfort, trust and respect, rather than male-oriented gimmickry!

We see excellent opportunity in Hai Ti! for branding opportunity for FLOSS, Creative Commons licensed content, as well as our corporate and international development sponsors, through embedded product placement, in different (possibly even serialised) multilingual media environments - we have access to national as well as satellite TV (TV One Africa, Multichoice and their global education partnerships), Radio and the Internet. There is also an exciting opportunity to partner with other regional newspapers in distribution of such materials.

SchoolNet’s Technical Service Centre, which opened at the Katutura Community Arts Centre in 2003 has refurbished thousands of computers with voluntary help of hundreds of out-of-school unemployed youth, and deployed these computers to schools and other educational clients countrywide. More than 1000 computers were refurbished and deployed in 2004 alone. These efforts were pivotal to the publication of the widely-acclaimed Bridges.Org Guide “How to set up and operate a successful computer refurbishment centre in Africa - planning and management guide”, the SchoolNet Africa online Technical Service Centre Managers’ Training programme and the African SchoolNet Toolkit.

SchoolNet’s toll-free telephonic help desk services, coupled with a locally developed copyleft help-desk tracking database have significantly improved SchoolNet’s operational capacity for troubleshooting, technical service and repair services in the past year. The database is proving to be a powerful monitoring and evaluation tool of the impact of ICTs on the education sector.

Training (with a large Namibian technical volunteer pool - some 63 young Namibians on our books this year, and many more being trained presently) providing support (help desk, toll-free telephonic support, and roving trainers and technicians). Training of trainers continues at a rapid pace, with volunteer trainers deployed to more than 40 schools in 2005, on a demand-driven basis. SchoolNet established a satellite workshop and training centre in Ondangwa, north-central Namibia, in 2004. By end-2005, we will have established technical service centres in Rundu and Gobabis, covering other regions with large numbers of remote, under-served schools. These decentralised service centres make local training and technical service support more cost effective and efficient. Since the majority of schools served by SchoolNet are in northern Namibia, centres such as in Ondangwa save teachers and learners the time and expense of travelling hundreds of kilometres to the capital city.

Given its track record to date, SchoolNet will continue to do ample justice to ICT development, using FLOSS and the Creative Commons, in education in Namibia in the years to come! Importantly, SchoolNet expects to effect achievement of a key development goal which is to "improve the preconditions for education and for the gathering of knowledge and participation in a democracy by the country’s youth through broadened horizons and a higher level of knowledge by using the possibilities of cheap and simple communication that ICTs offers." Learners and teachers (mostly women!) in schools as well as young people (mostly women, as SchoolNet trainees and volunteers) are expected to broaden their horizons, learning new skills, and becoming better at information gathering as a result of SchoolNet Namibia’s efforts in the years to come.

In these contexts, I am hugely pleased that we have an ICT Policy for Education and an Implementation plan in the making. Positive marketing of FLOSS and its effectiveness, stability, content richness and affordability in education, is giving FLOSS a much higher public profile than ever before. I look forward to the day, sooner than later, that our government takes a firm stance, like increasingly more governments world wide, on the adoption of FLOSS in the public sector.

I should like to express my gratitude to the Hewlett Foundation for allowing me this opportunity to share some Namibian work face realities with you.....and paying homage to the young, bright, tech-savvy Namibians that make up the SchoolNet Namibia team!

microsophical reflections - part 2

2005-09-06T08:52:00.000+02:00

Winner of SchoolNet’s "Best ICT Quotation of the Month" Award!

August 2005

Mr Sean Nicholson
Industry solutions specialist for education and emerging markets,
Microsoft

"I believe Pathfinder has legs..."

http://www.microsoft.com/emea/presscentre/NamibiaPathfinderTS.mspx

This M$FT Press Release reads:

The surest mark of success came today, when Microsoft’s participation in the programme came to a close, and the company ceded administration of the Pathfinder programme to the Namibian government.

“What’s remarkable about Pathfinder is, first, that it’s a total solution, addressing issues such as training, tools and support,” says Sean Nicholson, industry solutions specialist for education and emerging markets at Microsoft, and the company’s project manager for the African Pathfinder initiative. “Second, we’ve looked at how to make it sustainable and scalable. It’s no problem to run a project in one or two schools. But how about a thousand schools, or ten thousand? How do you make sure that any project you do is still running next year?”

"...I believe Pathfinder has legs and is sustainable in Namibia. The initiative will continue to change and develop here, but it’s not our project anymore, and that is precisely the point.”

Yes, legs indeed! To run away on :-)

The Namibian Pathfinder project is a good example of misguided international corporate misanthropy, launched by Microsoft in Namibia. Surprisingly, the Pathfinder project continues to get tremendous international publicity as an international ICT development ‘success story’. Marketed directly, and by Microsoft’s preferred international 'charitable' channel partner, Digital Pipeline (www.digitalpipeline.com), this publicity stunt is widely seen as Microsoft’s latest strategy to drive Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) and the Creative Commons (in education) out of Namibia, and discourage other African Education Ministries from embracing FLOSS. I think this is a very risky strategy, given the precarious and miniature scale of the venture in Namibia to date.

Consider the facts:

1. The PathFinder project managed to deliver 156 refurbished computers to 13 Namibian schools in two years. At this stage six of the 13 schools are only barely functional - thanks to the efforts of transient summer holiday students from Harvard. The rest have fallen off the Pathfinder map. Two of the six schools have internet access, courtesy of SchoolNet Namibia.

2. The proprietary software bundled with these computers, MS Office and Encarta, was provided at special discounted pricing; the terms and conditions of use, upgrade and renewal remain obscure.

3. Until quite recently, technical support for these schools required an international phone call to a call-centre in Cairo, Egypt (talk about globalisation!!). Microsoft now expects the government of Namibia to take full responsibility for technical support at these schools.

4. To this end, Microsoft assisted the government of Namibia to establish a computer refurbishment workshop at the Windhoek Vocational Training Centre, which expects to recruit ‘junior computer technicians’ for a once-off student fee of N$ 7,000 (US$ 1,077) to gain such skills.

5. Given an apparent desperate shortage of used computers, resulting from the Prince of Wales International Business Leaders Forum (www.digitalpartnership.org) failing to deliver as promised, Microsoft, through Digital Pipelines, now exploits international used computer agencies such as Computer Aid International and Digital Links, which have traditionally tended the needs of CSOs in African countries.

6. In spite of the first Pathfinder disaster, the government of Namibian unwittingly agreed to having Microsoft deploy another 390 refurbished computers to 13 secondary schools, for the exclusive purpose of replacing old typewriting classes with the subjects keyboarding and office administration. In order to replace typewriting with keyboarding and office administration, Microsoft is using proprietary ‘trial’ software which will allow for thin client/server configurations in these 30-computer labs. The Namibian schools will serve as guinea pigs to fine-tune this new software which requires a CDROM to boot the workstations. Little, if any, attention was paid to such issues as furniture, electricity and technical support at the schools thus affected (contrary to the glowing press releases).

“The surest mark of success came today, when Microsoft’s participation in the programme came to a close, and the company ceded administration of the Pathfinder programme to the Namibian government.”

This is the key - "ceding administration" to the Namibian government! I call this "legging it" from a project doomed to failure from the start, and leaving Namibia to take the rap for a fiasco in the making. Microsoft has simply passed the buck to the Government of Namibia. Very few international development projects stay around long enough to experience difficulties, or take any responsibility for the mostly disastrous after-effects of underestimated costs of long-term ICT ownership.

SchoolNet Namibia expects that international development agencies and industry stake holders recognise the importance of a 'total cost of ownership' model which ensures long-term internet access, technical maintenance, repair, training and support services to schools provided with ICT equipment. We expect that the ICT task force set up by Ministry of Education will have ample opportunity to review the outcomes of this short-lived lost cause.

We shall need 72,000 computers to reach first world expectations of a 10:1 learner to computer ratio and a 1:1 teacher to computer ration in schools in Namibia. At this stage of ICT development in the Namibian education sector, fewer than 300 schools have any educational ICT integration capacities to speak of. Presently, most of these have FLOSS solutions and Internet access, provided by SchoolNet.

Only some 50 (mostly privileged) schools use Microsoft applications; mostly without Internet access, and with growing concern about the extent to which many such schools have unauthorised copies of Microsoft and other third-party proprietary software.

While on a national per capita school basis (especially if calculated on the basis of electrified schools, n= 950) we probably have the best ICT development progress in education sectors in Africa to date, and more learners and teachers (again on a per capita basis) using the internet than anywhere else in Africa, it still boils down to fewer than 200,000 learners and 8,000 teachers empowered by ICTs in Namibia today. This reality shall clearly remain the substance of SchoolNet Namibia's agitation today and in the future!

Focusing on schools with secondary grades, SchoolNet has deployed ICT solutions scaled to specifications and priorities set by the national ICT Policy for Education. Such ICT systems typically include a new Pentium IV (Intel-inside) server, between 5 and 20 refurbished thin-client diskless workstations (with new monitors, mice and keyboards) and an Uninterrupted Power Supply. These PCs are installed on SchoolNet’s innovative round tabletops, with network cabling, switch and internet service equipment ensuring that all computers have secure access to server-based software, applications and locally relevant educational content, as well as the Internet. Developed specially for the Namibian education sector by Direq International in collaboration with local and international pedagogues, SchoolNet Namibia’s tailor-made OpenLab solution provides Namibian schools with access to a wide range of educational resources.

The latest release of Direq OpenLab is awesome! Especially with a localised Wikipedia (meeting the demand for a FLOSS reference encyclopaedia), and some fantastic learner/learning management and examination tools to complement the existing educational resources. Literacy and numeracy applications, as well as an educational playground, provide an interactive resource base for teachers and learners from Grade 1-12. A typing tutor, Open Office suite and the latest Edsnet resources (produced by Namibia's Institute for Educational Development) has been integrated to provide teachers with local curricular guidelines and syllabus resources. The Gutenberg Project provides access to several thousand popular copyleft textbook and classic literature resources in both text-printable and html formats. The teacher-oriented self-guided IT-literacy training modules (EDN) work without the need to go on the internet (Certification will shortly be available through SchoolNet South Africa and the University of KwaZulu Natal, SA).

Best practices guidelines, activity worksheets and lesson plans, developed by local Peace Corps volunteers and others, are available on our web site inclusive of materials for HIV/AIDS awareness. We also have our very first online local language Oshindonga and Oshikwanyama translation resource materials to add to our growing list of localised online materials.

SchoolNet has established a nation-wide programme to deploy affordable desktop computers running FLOSS to the education sector for home use, at entry level pricing of US$ 380, inclusive of free dial-on-demand internet access for educators. Launched earlier this year, demand for such home computers has increased, putatively linked to exposure to Hai Ti!, SchoolNet’s paper- and web-based comic series ( http://www.schoolnet.na/haiti ).

microsophical reflections - part 1

2005-09-06T08:13:00.000+02:00

Winner of SchoolNet’s "Best ICT Quotation of the Month" Award!

JUNE 2005

Mr Johan Van Wyk
Deputy Director: IT
Ministry of Education
Namibia

"We are now starting to use refurbished computers from Digital Pipeline in our schools, as we feel that including refurbs into our model, will reduce the cost of implementing ICT in schools, allowing the Ministry to do more with less".

http://www.digitalpipeline.com/projects.htm

bad hair day tails

2005-08-31T17:57:00.000+01:00

Writing as I do, about the effectiveness and sustainability of ICTs in open education in Namibia, I am occasionally asked whether my resultant "bad hair day” tails :-) about Microsoft and other corporate misanthropies aren’t simply sour grapes. Given the fact that my prefered tipple is whisky, I say clachan a' choin to this myopic view, and instead call them grapes of wrath strewn along a path of civil righteousness (some call it disobedience), determined as I am to see each and every school in Namibia ICT-empowered in an effective and sustainable manner.

Read on some of my memorable tails...

Challenging myopic authority

2005-08-31T14:50:00.000+01:00

The Principal
St *********'s College

Tate **********,

Your regretful award of TWO detentions to my son Daniel for VANDALISM OF SCHOOL PROPERTY refers.

I was already having a bad hair day when I received written notice of these detentions. I shall therefore only briefly put aside my real-world dealings with more pertinent educational polemic in Namibia, to address the matter of Daniel's schooling by yourself and your peers.

To wit, and succinctly so, the act of VANDALISM refers to the WILFUL DESTRUCTION OF PROPERTY. This, therefore, is an EXTREMELY SERIOUS allegation against Daniel.

As I understand, in the absence of any supporting evidence to the contrary from yourself or your peers, Daniel stands accused of loosening the door knob of a classroom, resulting in the classroom being inaccessible to grade nine german language scholars for some short period of time. According to my sources, the original screws were replaced to restore the door knob's functionality, suggesting there was NO DESTRUCTION OF PROPERTY. There was, likely, a short-lived state of discomfort on the part of your german language teacher, thus affronted by this prank.

If you and your peers do have cause to call this age-worn juvenile prank an act of VANDALISM, then I applaud your retribution (two detentions) for the vaudeville in schooling it enacts, given the judgment and punishment meted Daniel by your vehmgericht. Particularly so, given the fact that he was recently punished with one detention for having had his shirt partially un-tucked in class at the end of a (hopefully) scholastic day.

I am, however, considerably disturbed by the protracted circumstance of this drama. In particular, and at obvious risk of repeating hearsay, which I trust you will take considered and careful effort to explain, I have the following questions:

1. Why was it necessary for you to use expletives such as "bullshit" and "causing shit" in berating Daniel for the prank in question?

2. Why was it necessary for your vehmgericht to take nearly a week to deliberate the judgment and punishment for this prank, given the fact that you had already insinuated the prank to be an act of vandalism in your preliminary, and apparently heated, discourse with Daniel ?

While I, too, use expletives in the heat of the moment, I find the intimidation inherent in your preliminary insinuation of vandalism noisome. This intimidation, with dire implication of severe punishment, caused undue trauma in Daniel's already tumultuous stage of teenage-dom.

Speaking of sensibilities, I shall expect you to revise the verdict of the offence for which Daniel stands accused. It appears that you are oft somewhat hasty in charging your scholars with heinous crimes against property and propriety. From my academic standpoint, a previous allegation of "plagiarism" against Daniel, for a well-written and well-researched history essay describing the well-documented events leading up to the first world war, comes to mind.

I entrust you and your scholastic peers with the education of my children. However, I have only tolerated your schooling efforts up to now. While I recognise your cordelieran obligation to school my children into becoming good, god-fearing, clean-shaven and neatly dressed citizens, your current schooling effort with Daniel suggests that you are likely distracted by more pressing educational obligations to consider the highly opportunistic educational value of creative punishment.

Does Daniel deserve to be punished for a juvenile prank? Yes, he does.

While detention may well be fardel befitting an ass, I shall expect you to creatively revise the punishment you have deemed appropriate for the offence (now) in question. For good reason.

Daniel is not an ass; he is a well-socialised, intelligent, brave and caring teenager, who, by virtue of his upbringing, will hopefully remain outspoken and individualistic in his actions. I trust that through positive engagement with his peers, mentors and teachers, Daniel will hopefully avoid translating his challenges of authority into any further juvenile pranks.

May I therefore suggest, given the presently limited bouquet of punishment at your disposal, that you get him to write an essay on some appropriately relevant topic during his own free time over weekends? Essays on the pros and cons of civil disobedience, or the impact of dress code and hairstyle on social norms, or how social activism swung political polarities in France, the Philippines or former states of the Russian Federation, all spring to mind.

I believe that my present remarks address the requirement of personal validity entrenched in your old as the hill detention form letter. I shall not sign acknowledgment of this particular detention form letter, given the highly questionable allegation therein, nor shall I sign any others in future, unless they are radically modified to accommodate creative forms of schooling. I shall avail myself to consider your creative suggestions when these should have cause to arise.

Yours faithfully
Joris Komen

My now famous "Dear George..." mail

2005-08-31T14:41:00.000+01:00

An Open Letter To:
George Ferreira,
Regional Manager,
Microsoft South and East Africa

Dear George, my whilom philanthrope;

On the wild notion of Microsoft being a partner in educational development with SchoolNet Namibia for a measly US$ 2,000 - passably, a succès de scandale, given the present climate...

Microsoft weather forecast:

"We at Microsoft are committed to working with institutions while harnessing technology to better fulfil their missions of preparing intellectually and technically competent citizens for success in the Information Age"

And further:

"At Microsoft, we foresee a world where all children will be using mobile, digital devices to enhance the learning process both at home and school...in a Microsoft Anytime Anywhere Learning (AAL) world, every student will have their own laptop computer."

Tony Roberts' [Computer Aid International] weather forecast:

"In the UK alone over one million computers are buried in landfill sites every year - bespoiling the countryside and damaging the environment ... worldwide, 56 million computers are thrown away every year."

Joris Komen's [SchoolNet Namibia] weather forecast:

"Professor Steve Molyneux, the Microsoft Chair of Advanced Learning Technologies at the University of Wolverhampton in the UK, has secured some 7 million pounds for a short-term Microsoft-oriented research project; in contrast, Namibia's economy has enormous difficulty raising 7 million pounds required to provide self- sustaining ICT access and infrastructure to every single school, nation-wide. This is the calamitous comedy of development."

David A. Wheeler's weather forecast:

"... according to Robert Kramer of CompTIA (Computer Technology Industry Association), political leaders everywhere from California to Zambia are considering legislating a preference for Open Source software use; he counted at least 70 active proposals for software procurement policies that prefer OSS/FS in 24 countries as of October 2002 ... clearly this demonstrates significant positive interest in OSS/FS from various governments."

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Given these contrasting contexts, dare I hazard to guess that the international perspective as described by David A. Wheeler's excellent report on Open Source software may help you rationalise the *current* dilemma facing Microsoft in its purportedly philanthropic efforts in Namibia? I argue that your recent efforts are simply ill-conceived ploys to arrest the increasingly common view that such philanthropy does little to obscure Microsoft's solipsism.SchoolNet's view is that software licensing is a gadfly all consumers and developers can brush aside with a little co-operation and a common adherence to the punk rockier part of IT: Do It Yourself.

Critically, one fundamental, oft overlooked, issue, is the fact that while "free" Microsoft software offers may well be seen as generous, they are effectively limited to lower quality PC technologies which are NOT bound by "global PRELOAD OEM Agreements" enforced with Tier 1 computer manufacturers such as Compaq, Acer, and Dell, to name but a few. Without exemption from such Preload OEM agreements, Microsoft donations (and Open Source solutions) must either be installed on older or lower quality machines, or must first be paid for - since these costs are embedded in the Microsoft-Manufacturer OEM Agreement - and then overwritten with 'free' or open source wares, as we inevitably do, on the high quality computers. Such entrenched OEM deals sap Microsoft's offer of any genuine, or even effective, generosity !!

SchoolNet Namibia has recently been through just such a dilemma with Microsoft. To illustrate:

George Ferreira wrote:

Subject: RE: Microsoft Schools and cost of laptop preloads
Date: Mon, 14 Oct 2002 10:51:56 +0200
Message-ID:
28E2969FC8666944ACE963D31413975D023EE7BF@job-msg-01.africa.corp.microsoft.com

We would like to set up a meeting with you to finalize the implementation of the Terminal Servicee solution at thee sschools you have metioned below. From our side we are ready to deploy together with your nominated technical candidate so that he maylearn the implementation of technology.
Regarding the Aceer Notebooks, Acer has a global OEM agreement with Microsoft Corp, in which they have to report all desktops or notebooks being sold. Due to the series of the Notebook which you are taking it comes standard with an O/S being primarily Windows XP Pro.
Please Accept that I cannot go and interfere in Comparex way of business...

Microsoft undertook to provide gratis licensed operating system and Office Pro application software for up to 100 laptop computers in the SchoolNet - AED BESII (USAID funded) programme in Namibia. Originally, Microsoft offered old MS Millenium stock to serve this purpose, but following our request to upgrade to an XP Pro or MS 2000 equivalent, and given the insistence of our development partners, Microsoft agreed to this change. Following a move to provide laptops with Intel, rather than inferior ISI630 processors, we were fortunate to secure a really good deal on (tier 1) Acer laptops (US$600 below normal retail), but with the dilemma of not being able to avoid Preloaded OEM (XP PRO), as Acer dealers such as Comparex are contractually bound by Microsoft.

Microsoft is now, post facto, unwilling to cover the cost of this preloaded MS operating system, which will set NetDay/SchoolNet back some US$ 9,000, but will still provide 50 gratis licenses for Office Pro, locally valued at some US$ 2,000. Unfortunately, this license package requires us to load Office Pro on each of the 50 laptops, without any documentation being made available to the recipients of such application software.

From the outset of our consultative meetings with Microsoft, it was made abundantly clear that SchoolNet and NetDay would be happy to provide Microsoft with an opportunity to develop a potential alternative to our viable Open Source LTSP refurbished LAN and stand-alone Linux-PC solutions for schools and teachers in Namibia and further afield in Africa. The original understanding was that each of five pilot schools would be furnished with a 20 refurbished diskless thin-client computer + contemporary server laboratory, at Microsoft's cost, to show and tell Microsoft's extraordinary commitment to affordable LAN computer technologies for education in Namibia.

At our consultative meeting at Microsoft offices on Thursday 17 October, it became imminently clear that the development of a potential Microsoft alternative to our viable Open Source LTSP refurbished LAN solution at five pilot schools in Katutura would incur considerable cost for SchoolNet, given the revised understanding that Microsoft would not be paying for the refurbished hardware, but would only provide the software platform at some unknown Research & Development (!!) cost resulting from co-opting expertise from other third-party Microsoft partners.

Such a change of direction would result in SchoolNet having to pay out in the order of US$ 4,500 per school to provide Microsoft with a significant educational branding opportunity in Namibia, coupled with free technical support service obligated by SchoolNet to all its school clients, in an extraordinary deviation from SchoolNet's commitment to provide skills development, technical support and helpdesk services to its Open Source LTSP LAN school clients and Linux-PC teacher clients.

Based on your earlier blatant assertions, Microsoft is very keen on harnessing major publicity along the lines of "Microsoft replaces Linux at SchoolNet Namibia". I'm afraid that is simply not going to happen. I have, from the very beginning made it VERY clear that SchoolNet has NO desire to REPLACE Linux with Microsoft, but would be happy to accommodate an AFFORDABLE Microsoft diskless refurbished thin-client LAN alternative for potential use in areas where Microsoft distributors would be able to provide technical support to such proprietary Microsoft LAN alternatives.

I should, however, stress that SchoolNet has no desire to FUND Microsoft in such an endeavour, to the tune of US$22,500 for pilot [Microsoft-driven] school hardware + US$ 9,300 for laptop MS OS, in exchange for a paltry US$2,000 worth of proprietary OFFICE PRO application software!

I would like to express my sentiments regarding the way SchoolNet, and through it, 1545 schools in Namibia might, remotely, have been duped for a paltry US$ 2,000. I do so, since you likely still see SchoolNet Namibia as a velitation of some negligible nuisance value.

Given recent developments in Peru (see Dr EDGAR DAVID VILLANUEVA NUÑEZ's breath-taking correspondence), I'm actually afraid to say that SchoolNet has the tenacity of a DDT-resistant Formica Ant.

SchoolNet provides strategies, technologies and network implementations that solidify Namibia's nascent knowledge economy. Our products bespeak a great opportunity for replication, and promise to narrow the digital divide in the majority of developing countries in Africa. A bit big to swallow? Chew it -- DDT is another flavour of global corporate partnership in development .

Earlier this year, South Africa's President Thabo Mbeki announced in his state-of-the-nation speech to Parliament that Microsoft would provide free software for all of South Africa's 32,000 government schools. Subsequently, in apparent Zeitgeist, Microsoft Africa pledged to try to do the same for Namibian schools, through SchoolNet, in exchange for direct branding opportunities with some of SchoolNet's educational projects.

A big multi-national company trying to shrink the digital divide by giving the kinds of things that are purportedly easy for it to give amounts to a philanthropy properly called perverse. While corporate generosity should ordinarily be worthy of praise, recipients must approach it with utmost suspicion nevertheless. At the risk of solecism, I suggest that offerings in the vein of Microsoft's philanthropy belie good corporate citizenship to the advantage of key business in most developing African countries - lucrative Government enterprise licenses! Viva WSSD, viva WSSD Global Partnership Outcomes as seen through the eyes of the Vandana Shivas of the world!

As rightly pointed out by www.bridges.org earlier this year, the real issue for schools is not the cost of proprietary software licensing, but the challenges and costs of deployment, maintenance and skilled human resources of sustainable ICT infrastructure at often very remote schools. Conventional Microsoft products have rapid product cycles and quick obsolescence, along with expensive long-term maintenance and support implications. In the few urban settings in Namibia, there are probably enough MCSE paper tigers to get some affordable, albeit dubious, maintenance and support. However, such probability declines as one travels into remote areas of Namibia.

It is highly unlikely that Microsoft will ever respond to this missive, unless of course it perceives SchoolNet to be a pest as swatable as the Peruvian government. Given these circumstances, and SchoolNet's own special brand of Open Source Zeitgeist, I see no further reason for SchoolNet to pursue Microsoft philanthropy in Namibia.

Our well-developed relationships with those international development, government, parastatal and local corporate participants which support the roll-out of ICTs in education in Namibia will see us through delivering a tried, tested and well-supported open-source LTSP LAN solution to some 600 odd (mostly secondary) Namibian schools in next 2 years (as well as countless schools elsewhere in Africa), coupled with various value-adds such as gratis internet access, reduced telecom costs, wireless technologies, solar technologies and open source educational content and administrative tools - a truly miraculous gem of an educational ISP cost-benefit model for replication throughout Africa - with an absolutely clear conscience!

Shafted for a paltry US$ 2000? Not in your wildest linga-longer dreams!

Yours faithfully

Joris Komen
Founding Executive Director, SchoolNet Namibia and NetDay Namibia.

A bad hair day in 2004

2005-08-31T14:30:00.000+01:00

A bad hair day tail from late-2004 - to help set the tone :-)

Hi,

I am having a particularly bad hair day today...

As per usual I appear to be the only gobemouche of the American Federation of Teachers' (AFT) global development alliance, representing a cost-share MOU between local ICT in education development stakeholders, USAID and
AFT -- the appointed contractors serving this alliance. I have taken some moments to digest the content of the latest of AFT's chronicles of gloom, and intend to leave flies in this festering unguent, prior to my proposal that we withdraw SchoolNet's engagement from this sad little AFT GDA project altogether...

I am informed that AFT has been given an opportunity to extend their project (a no-cost extention?) in Namibia on the basis of a report which attempts to veil their numerous blunders in blame. In particular, blame on SchoolNet. I will not allow SchoolNet's reputation to endure any more of such surculose sycophancy any longer.

The focus of my dissent is a feasibility study report dated April 2004, purportedly prepared by BOTH AFT and the National Institute for Educational Development (NIED), a copy of which I received electronically on 15 October 2004.

Therein the authors write

"The period for conducting the Feasibility Study was extended from the initial plan of 6 months to 15 months. This delay was due to several unanticipated developments that would have a fundamental impact on the future course of the project, making it impossible to accurately forecast the project's trajectory and to estimate future project expenses. Among the most important of these are:

1. an 18-month delay in selecting pilot schools due to: the inability of SchoolNet Namibia to provide an accurate listing of schools that had fully functioning ICT platforms and trained teachers; the decision to replace six SchoolNet schools with schools participating in the Microsoft/Parliament ICT program; and delays in getting ministry authorization to install DireqLearn software in pilot schools;

2. a decision by Alliance partners to source curriculum content software locally rather than having it developed in the U.S. by LessonLab, an educational software organization recommended by the AFT;

3. a decision by the Alliance to accept an offer by Microsoft Ireland Operations Ltd. to include in the pilot study six schools that were being equipped with Microsoft platforms, under an agreement with the Parliament of Namibia;

4. related to 3 and 4 above, was the difficulty and delay in identifying locally sourced curriculum content compatible with the Namibian syllabus and the technical requirements of SchoolNet's Gnu/Linux and Microsoft's Windows operating systems;

5. dissension by SchoolNet Namibia to include Microsoft Ireland Operations Ltd. as a full partner in the Alliance;

6. resistance by SchoolNet Namibia to testing and resolving technical issues related to making LearnOnLine (LOL) content curriculum (selected by a NIED review panel and approved by the Alliance) available to pilot schools equipped with SchoolNet's Gnu/Linux platform; and

7. turnover of key AFT project personnel."

While I am gob-smacked by the authors' temerity in transfering blame to SchoolNet for innumerable unilateral blunders during the first " 6 months of feasibility study", followed by collusion with M$FT thereafter, my more direct points of dissent read as follows:

1. After an 12-month joyride by David Roth at the considerable expense of the American people, and the considerable chagrin of SOME of us in Namibia, during which time the AFT goal posts were moved to accommodate various unilateral Roth-driven changes, the "feasibility" component was extended for an extra 12 months to seemingly cover up the brouhaha surrounding budget allocations for AFT's choice of LessonLab and subsequent M$FT californication. While the bureaucratic delays of USAID/AED/EDC to expedite the SchoolNet GDA came as a fitting distraction, SchoolNet was also denied access to USAID funding under AFT GDA contract to deliver technology and content services meeting AFT's then latest cross-platform technology, OS and content requirements. This then also resulted in the SchoolNet GDA being manipulated to select NEW schools to meet NEW AFT school selection and OS and content criteria.

2, 3 & 4. A decision by SOME Alliance partners to source curriculum software different to that offered by SchoolNet followed Roth's collusion with M$FT, neatly accomodating a concerted take-over bid by M$FT in their national "anti-Linux" campaign (quoting Gary Hodgson, formerly employed by M$FT, who spearheaded this campaign in Namibia - a more detailed articulation exposing this campaign is in preparation - i am mightily pleased Schoolnet has a call centre in Windhoek, not Cairo!).

5. Correction -- dissent not dissension, resulting from Roth and M$FT pushing the limits of the laws of disseisin. We remain firm on this position, as reiterated and minuted in the SchoolNet Board of Trustees' most recent board meeting.

6. Utter codswallop - SchoolNet DID NOT resist testing - it DID test LOL and laughed out loud!!! AND provided its frank opinions and made recommendations to AFT and LOL. To add insult to injury, AFT is misrepresenting our denial of a resource intensive M$FT EMULATION on our open source platform as a denial of their choice M$FT content package to SchoolNet schools. I have made it plain and simple to both AFT and LOL - provide a LOCAL LOL web service, and SchoolNet will ENSURE THAT SUCH LOL RESOURCES ARE MADE AVAILABLE ONLINE!!! Please phone LOL and Eric Kouskalis (WorldTeach) to confirm such dialogue took place!

7. Herein lies the core of the problem - costly and myopic AFT project personnel short on transparency.

To date I am STILL waiting for a response from AFT concerning outstanding issues raised on numerous occasions. The present feasibility study report does little to ease my mind that they take my queries seriously, or, for that matter, ever read any of my mails.

Since it appears that SchoolNet is the only AFT GDA Alliance member who continues to protest AFT's position on awarding M$FT FULL MEMBERSHIP of the AFT GDA Alliance, and that it intends to pursue this on the grounds of M$FT cost-share (this is a complete joke!), I respectfully request that USAID accepts SchoolNet's withdrawal from the AFT GDA.

To cater to AFT's needs for functional schoolnet services at the schoolnet schools earmarked for the continuation of the AFT project, I have discussed this matter with my staff -

1. Training needs at AFT project schools can be honoured by the CECS project - Theo Whittaker can be contacted directly.
2. Technical service and support needs - schools continue to use our toll-free number, and get problem solving escalated as we do for all our educational clients.
3. LOL - when we hear that LOL would like their educational content hosted on a local web server, we will either facilitate this on our own ISP server, conditional on allowing ALL our educational clients access to this resource, or provide a URL link to whichever local server is opted for.
4. Learnthings - the online version will be available to the M$FT pilot schools, conditional on these schools acquiring internet access from SchoolNet/XNet ISP.

I have reached saturation point with AFT antics; any further direct engagement with AFT would be noisome at this stage. As I have indicated before, I would be happy to meet with you to work out appropriate face-saving escape routes. I have taken considerable time this weekend to read through all the fine print concerning our partnership in the AFT GDA and the subsequent AFT contract. Since the GDA is NOT a legally binding contract, and we have NO contractual agreement with AFT directly, there is no reason why we cannot gracefully withdraw from this GDA.

Yours faithfully
Joris Komen