It’s ICT teaching time

For about the next 10 weeks I’m going to be really busy as it’s time to get back in the MoE teaching lab and try to help 4 groups of school directors and school ICT teachers learn enough IT basics (both software and hardware) in order that they can take the skills back to the schools and organise IT labs and training.

This year it’s going to be a little harder for us (the trainers) since there are only three of us, whereas last year there were five. However it’s even tougher for the students some of whom come to us with next to no computer experience at all – I have certainly had to find new levels of patience in order to help people who, for example, have never used a mouse before – it’s great to see the rapid progress most of our students make, though.

The training is also linked with the Remote Schools Solar Power project insofar as teachers and directors from the schools involved have been selected to attend, this presents a particular challenge given that some of our phase 2 students may not have touched a computer since phase 1, last summer, due to the fact that not all schools in the project have had their installations yet.

The overall situation for ICT in Eritrea is that it’s picking up after a slow start. Internet access can still be very slow, though no slower than in certain other sub-saharan countries by all accounts, but more and more people are wanting to use technology and ICT training is very popular so to get it into schools cannot be a bad thing.

Miss Eritrea
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A chance encounter in the garden of the Ambasoira (formerly Imperial) hotel allows me to make remarks about Eritrean women which I couldn't normally make (well this is a joint blog).

Ever since Asmara beer made its very welcome re-appearance we have, from time-to-time, visited what past volunteers knew as “the beer garden” but what we have only known as “that-nice-garden-where-you-can-have-tea-at-the-side-of-the-Ambasoira” until now.

Last week at a leaving do I couldn't help noticing, as we made our way to join the others, that one of the tables seemed to have more than it's fair share of supermodels sitting around it. Eritrea, in turn, has more that it's fair share of stunning looking women (don’t even get me started on a discussion of bone structure) just wandering around - very distracting. It turns out that they were actually prospective contestants for the Miss Eritrea competition and were being interviewed on camera in a nice peaceful garden setting, I'm not going to say much more but I have never seen such a concentration of long limbs in one place before.

P