Blogs

The University of Jos has won the 2008 Hewlett Packard Technology for Teaching (TFT) Grant. The Grant is designed to support innovative and effective uses of technology in the classroom setting.

The University of Jos won the Grant alongside two other African Institutions, Makarere University in Uganda and the South African University of the Free State, Bloemfontein. Each recipient of the Grant award would receive a grant of cash and equipment to implement their proposed technology based course redesign integration project. The 2008 HPTFT Higher Education Grant award is valued at about 100,000 US dollars.

The winning project titled “Integrating Technologies for teaching Mathematics in an African University” submitted by the University of Jos Mathematics Department under the leadership of Professor (Ms) W. Sirisena, while Professor L.S.O. Liverpool heads the four person Departmental Team.

Family And Friends

The ICT forum is interested in monitoring VSAT links of member institutes using free and open source software which will be non invasive and have no impact on the VSAT bandwidth. The information to be extracted from the data includes; the bandwidth utilization of the VSAT link, the various software applications in use and other relevant network traffic characterization such as the source and destination address, data volume, the protocol used etc.

This is a summary of a blog entry at http://ibiztech.wordpress.com. The idea is a cursory look at some of the issues that face ICT development in educational sector in developing countries. Check the above address for details.

1. Web 2.0 may be disruptive …. but therein lies its potential. It is mass democratization in a traditionally power-imbalanced culture. I believe the collective IQ of students (although I prefer ‘learners’) amplified by passion for what they learn and brought together via Web 2.0 exceeds that of any single lecturer/professor/guru.

From my first contact with the open source IP PBX toolkit called Asterisk, I fell in love with it ... both as an IT expert and as a business-savvy person. Come on, what could be better than free (as in free lunch) as well as free as in free speech?

But of course, Asterisk - the pure one has never been for the faint of heart. U get to configure text files and keep track of several of them, not to talk of a somewhat cryptic commands. To be fair ... Trixbox (formerly Asterisk@Home) makes this a lot easier and of course there is a webmin module for Asterisk.

It is my pleasure to announce the presence on the Internet of our E-book on “The History of Information and Communication Technology at the University of Jos” It is, the one of the few digital contributions in a growing body of documentation on ICT developments, within the Nigerian Higher Education Sector. The book can be accessed on the university website http://www.unijos.edu.ng/Partnership/CarnegieTranche2/interventions/ict/...

As we partner with you all, to strengthen ICT in the Nigerian Education Sector and bridge the digital divide, your comments on the book will be most appreciated.

Professor S. Gwanle Tyoden
Vice Chancellor

If the forum has the resources, it could establish a test lab in Abuja where we can try and these things and show prove of concept ... then member universities can copy. With such a lab ... any one of us could just pop in (or it could be more organized like a week for a team of 5 ppl to come to the lab) and work on a solution and get it to the level of proof of concept.

We need to develop Mukoms idea quoted above into a full fledged concept paper/proposal complete with a budget that can be presented to the Forum secretariat. Inputs from varied sources interested in these sort of experimenting are solicited so we have as extensive a plan as possible.

Discussions would necessarily revolve around the purpose of the lab in greater detail and how this will be effected. One thought that springs to mind as I write is the need to articulate any outcomes to the larger membership who are the ultimate benefactors of any evaluations/experimentation.

Researchers at MIT have figured out how to transfer power wirelessly, a technology they've dubbed "WiTricity." Potential applications for WiTricity include powering cell phones, laptops, household robots and other battery-run devices. However, before WiTricity enters the mainstream, there is still work to be done, as the group's tested device operated at only 40 percent efficiency

It was demonstrated by a team of researchers from MIT's Department of Physics, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies (ISN), and was reported in Thursday's edition of Science Express, the online publication of the journal Science .

See http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/1143254/DC1

Dr. Aminu Sir,

With all due respect sir, i just read thru the meeting set for the 2006 AfNOG and AfriNIC and i was unable to comprehend a place that says

"The African Network Operators' Group (AfNOG) and the African Network Information Centre (AfriNIC) will hold the 7th AfNOG Meeting and the AfriNIC-4 Meeting in Nairobi, Kenya, in May 2006."

The area of misunderstanding is the date, is it suppose to be May 2006 or May 2007? Since the sentence wasn't sounding as past tense but in a future tense eg."... will hold the 7th AfNOG Meeting and the AfriNIC-4 Meeting in Nairobi, Kenya, in May 2006."

Please sir i will be glad if i will know the right information about the meetings.

Thanks sir

Peter Osemeke