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Uconnect Adds Telecentre Management to Network Training Workshops More
than 64 mostly rural primary and secondary schools will have received 450 computers from
Uconnect during the last year. Most of those
schools computers have yet to be networked. When
a school has acquired ten or more computers they are invited to send one or two teachers
and three or four students to a Network Training Workshop (NTW), bringing with them a
floor plan of their lab, from which they will design a layout for their local area network
(LAN). By the end of the five-half day NTW
trainees will have cut, crimped and tested the Cat5 Ethernet cable for their network. Schools with networked labs connected to the Internet qualify to purchase a SchoolAxxess server and may take delivery of their server only after staff have successfully completed a Telecentre Management Training Workshop. Training is based around the SchoolAxxess Server Operators Guide that includes instructions for configuring workstations and creating user accounts for student, teachers, parents and other uses from the local community. Each user is given his or her own email account, name@nameofschool.edu.co.ug.
Headmistress, Deputy Headmaster and computer lab teacher from Mbale SS receive Telecentre Management Training from Billy Moses (centre) prior to taking delivery of their server.
Daniel discusses with the Headmaster, Kashozi Primary how their school will benefit by its staff taking the Telecentre Management training. Kashozi, in Ishaka, Bushenyi District, was the first school in Uganda to receive a SchoolAxxess server. We are testing a relatively inexpensive receive-only satellite system for connecting remote rural schools such as Kashozi, using MTN Uganda's GSM data network for the uplink.
Kyambogo College NTW trainee installs a network card. Trainees from schools that already have computers without network cards should be able to purchase and install the cards, and configure them. Installing their computer labs' networks themselves provides a sense of ownership and confidence in maintaining and troubleshooting their schools' networks.
Sara presents networking basics theory to Entebbe SS trainees.
Trainee lines up each of the eight wires of the Cat5 Ethernet cable in the correct order before inserting them into an RJ45 plug and crimping it.
Bill Rigby from Voice International looks in on an NTW. Bill had said the Uconnect Schools Project was one of the more sustainable projects he knew about and mentioned this in a report he wrote for the British development agency, DFID.
Each of the team is trained in hardware and software troubleshooting. Sam, who is one of several of the team taking Cisco Network Academy courses at Makerere University, is shown preparing computers before schools take delivery.
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