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Archive for March, 2006
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Friday, March 31st, 2006OKN Workshop @ Lubiri SSS
Friday, March 31st, 2006SchoolNet Uganda recently (? hugh 
) organised a workshop for the local Knowledge Workers of the Open Knowledge Network on Participatory Rural Appraisal and Evalauations. The purpose of this workshop was to improve the monioring and evaluation of OKN’s projects in Uganda.
The Open Knowledge Network (OKN) is a human network, which collects, shares and disseminates local knowledge and is supported by flexible technical solutions. OKN is not something new. It is a synthesis of tried and tested ideas; building on what is already happening in many different fields and joining up the dots. http://www.openknowledge.net
SchoolNet Uganda is the local partner for OKN, and implements OKN’s activities in Uganda. The venue was Lubiri Seconday School in Kampala.
Here are some photos from the workshop (Sadly, I couldn’t stay on the last day of the workshop, as I’d fallen victim to those mosquitoes again!).
Busy At Work @ SquatLab :-)
Friday, March 31st, 2006If you happen to find me in my house anywhere and everywhere, you would be more likely to find me sitting in one style or another on the floor, than in a chair. I’m on the floor while reading, watching TV (on those rare occassions when I do watch TV) or even while eating!
I don’t know when I picked this habit or where I picked it from. But I kind’a do enjoy it very much. But I never could image this nifty habit of mine would come handy one day
Visit to the Source of River Nile
Tuesday, March 14th, 2006Recently, after launching Mtandao Africa (formerly ThinkQuest Africa) in one school (hmm, me and names!), we took it easy and visited the source of the Nile River!
It was a wonderful experience to be at the very spot where the water from Lake Vitoria begins a journey of several hundred kilometers to feed the Nile River.
But it was also disheartening to realise how mankind’s wanton destruction and total disregard for natural laws can break the very heart and nerves of Mother Nature. Lake Victoria is indeed drying up (see photos below), hence the serious electrical power problems in Uganda and other countries in Eastern Africa.
Microsoft Partners-In-Learning Workshop at Ngora High School
Sunday, March 12th, 2006After I returned from Africa Source 2 workshop, I went over to Ngora High School in the Eastern Region of Uganda for a 5-day workshop. It’s a pity how time flies and I’m not able to update this blog as often as I’d like to. There are a thousand and one reasons for this. But at long last here goes the update.
The recently ended Microsoft Partners in Learning Workshop at Ngora High School was one of five (5) concurrent workshops that took place throughout the country. The program is a partnership between Microsoft (through the Partners in Learning Programme) and the Ugandan Ministry of Education, with SchoolNet Uganda as the implementing body.
This forms part of the Education Mnistry’s broader vision to equip every Ugandan teacher with ICT skills by the year 2010.
Click on an image to enlarge
Africa Source 2 – The Free and Open Source Software Workshop
Sunday, March 12th, 2006
I recently attended Africa Source II, an eight day hands-on workshop aimed at building the technical capacity of folks working with and within NGOs on the African continent.
The workshop took place in one of the most beautiful parts of the Kalangala Island on Victoria Lake in Uganda from the Jan 08-Jan 15, 2006 …. and saw over a hundred participants from all over the continent and beyond.
There were three main thematic tracks, viz …
- NGO Migration
- Education Migration, and
- Information Handling and Advocacy
In addition to these main tracks, there were a plethora of skill-share events, with most of the topics chosen on-the-fly as people demanded them and people with the skills to share were found.
With four delegates from SchoolNet, we thought it wise to split up and get a little bit of a feel from each main track, instead of all four of us being in the Education Migration track.
I followed the Information Handling and Advocacy track. I thought I didn’t know much about advocacy and was going to be a mere observer. OMG … how wrong I was! I ended up being a leading contributor in most of the discussions, especially on ICT tools for advocacy.
That’s a big lesson I’ve learned. From hindsight, I know I could have done a much better job facilitating most of the tracks and skill-shares that I participated in. But I didn’t find myself ‘fit’ to do that when I was applying for the workshop.
A Hard, Hard Lesson Learned on Backups
Tuesday, March 7th, 2006In my recent post, I mentioned I had earlier posts elsewhere, which I was going to move here. But with so many posts (including lots of photos), and being on an uber-slow Internet connection, I decided not to use WordPress’ in-built importer … but rather make the switch via database.
So I went ahead to make a backup of my WordPress database. And having once been bitten, I did not want to take any chances at all this time. So I kept a copy of the database on my USB stick, a copy on my local machine, another copy on the webserver, and yet another copy in my Gmail account.
With these backups-of-backups, I reckoned I was safe enough, and went ahead to clean-up GeorgeAppiah.com, preparing the way for it’s pending assignment.
And today when I finally made time to upload my database to this new blog … grrrrrrrrrrrr. None of the 4 copies of the database I had on different media would work. Try, try, try … nada, nada, nada.
So the lesson here? Yes … make regular backups: databases, files, whatever. And yes, backup your backups too. But most importantly, test your backups before storing them.
Finally, finally, finally … a new home!
Thursday, March 2nd, 2006[photopress:uganda_beach.jpg,full,pp_empty]
So here I go … finally managed to steal some little time to get this blog running. The subject matter of this blog is actually not new. It started life at my personal blog where I used to write about many topics … from coding to cooking (oh yes … that’s true!), with life in Uganda getting it’s due attention.
So why the move? Is it just because I wanted to walk my talk? Well, that and more. I sure wanted to walk my talk about a central place to keep WEC volunteers’ journals. But also, I’ve kindda’ got other plans for the domain GeorgeAppiah.com, and I thought it wise best to separate WEC related content from the pending project I’m going to use that domain for.
So in a day or two, I’m going to move all the old posts here … plus lots and lots of photos.
So how does that pass for a supposedly first post in a blog?