Project

The SQLSoft+ Ethiopian Project is designed to establish a partnership between several stakeholders (teachers, ICT, Microsoft, Cisco, Dep. of Education, software manufactures, hardware manufactures, and others)  to provide computers to the primary and secondary school teachers of the regions at a subsidized cost to the teacher.

The goal is to report accurate statistics on student populations, student performance relative to Ethiopia’s millennium education goals and to ultimately provide the government the data to accurately define need and progress toward those goals.

In return for providing this data, the teachers would become owners of computers, receive the necessary training in their use and have access to a service and support infrastructure that maintains those computers.

By exposing to thousands of educators at the K-12 level, we also anticipate community benefits that include access for teachers and students to previously unavailable content, such as better curriculum, books, and knowledge via the internet. 

These ancillary impacts have shown to have a positive effect on poverty, literacy, women’s rights, and health.  This access to information could open doors for students and teachers alike to professional careers and educational opportunities that may impact college enrollment, higher salaries, and overall economic development.

Major Project Components

There have been some recent press announcements referencing this project, which makes it seem like cloud computing is the overriding technology enabling this project.  While cloud computing is a component, this project relies on the success of each of the major project components.  Some of these components that I will discuss are:

  • Training
  • Computer acquisition
  • On-going technical support

Only in the third section, will cloud computing play a role.  The facets of that role are outlined later in this article.

Training

The training component will primarily be focused on teaching basic computer skills to the teachers.  The approach that will be used will be combination of instructor led training and suggested computer based instruction.  Coordinating thousands teachers to receive a laptop and to take instructor led class will be very challenging logistically.  We plan on accomplishing this by using a Train-the-Trainer approach.  We will conduct train-the-trainer sessions of approximately 14 students per class.  These students have been identified as already IT savvy with the ability to learn quickly and teach.  At the conclusion of the 10 sessions, we will have developed 140 or more instructors that will be used to train the teachers. 

Computer Acquisition

A major part of the solution for this project is to facilitate computer ownership for as many of the teachers in the regions as possible.  The approach we will take is to recommend a high quality customized laptop that is affordable to the teachers.   It is critical to this project that the computers offered to the teachers are quality computers that will last for years.  These laptops must be durable and capable of running some of the latest software.  They also must be configured such that they are secure, protected, and usage is track able.  You might be comforted to learn that we are knocking at many doors to assist the teachers (e.g. African Development Bank, USAID, World Bank, and over 100 foundations) as the project is proactively supported financially and in technology by the best experts in the field like SQLSoft, Microsoft, Cisco, and others. We actually had a meeting with African Development Bank in Tunis and we were received warmly and were supportive of the project. We are confident they will play a vital role in this project in supporting the teachers. At any rate everyone has a stake and measurable accountability has been established.

On-going Technical Support

As you can imagine, it is inconceivable that in any program that you drop laptops in a third world country without supporting them, especially when technology is new. This program supports each of those laptops using various methods including cloud technologies and physical support in places where these teachers are. As we have already discovered during our many trips to a number of sites, computer viruses are rampant throughout Ethiopia. Viruses are not static, they change constantly. And therefore, it is not enough to provide support at the outset of a project; the support needs to be provided through the entire project lifecycle, both at the software and hardware level.

The support architecture uses a three tiered model described below:

  • The first tier is provided by local resources in country and will handle basic problem resolution.  80% of the problems should be resolved by this tier
  • The second tier will be handled both locally and from the US.  These resources will be more technical in nature and will only become involved when the first tier is unable to resolve the issue in a timely manner
  • The third tier handles the most technical problems and will coordinate everything that cannot be resolved by the first and second tier.  These resources will be located in the US and will have specific knowledge of the applications that reside on the teachers laptops.