Thursday, July 8, 2010

The nineth day of our tour, 06/07/2010

It is another beautifully day, wake up with energy to do things and continue with what we discussed yesterday. We start of brainstorming about possibility at TPSC and hopefully we will take TPSC somewhere if we get to implement these ideas.

Speaking of availability from previous day, availability is about making sure that data and software needed are accessible and are in bear the originality. Availability could be of data/information and application, these things has to be made available as  they are driving engine of any organization. So as to make sure you have a required level of right and genuine data and software, three things has to be ensured, Confidentiality, Integrity and Availability of data and software.

In oder to have a maximum availability, we needs to know what factors lead to someone to be able to compromise either software or data, these things includes Motive, Opportunity and Willingness to compromise. If all of these three are in and owned by someone then that someone is a threat to an institution and appropriate measures needs to be taken in oder for systems and data to be secured and available all the time.

Who are people that likes to compromise data or software? This has been a question to most of the people and the answer could fall into the one or all the following, Fun hackersCompetitors and Anyone who think by doing that he/she will have a certain chance having a Financial advantage.

After knowing all these then it is possible for a person to know which are the best ways to protect his/her data and software provided that he/she has necessary tools. For example, taking a simple consideration of our own computers (PC), in oder to make sure your data and softwares are not compromised you must make sure that your operating system is not compromised and this could be made possible by installing all possible and released parches, there after install and update an antivirus and above all beware of site the visit and mails they download and any removable storage device that gets access to your computer.

After having discussion about all that we came to design and implement a small network by configuring switches, we created Virtual Private Network (VLAN) and made them communicate to each other, it was a challenging exercise but we managed and at last manage to make computer communicate using the VLAN we created.

This was one of of the very pleasing and challenging day, we learned a lot in this day.

The evening time was one of the finest evening I had never had, we take a trip to the nearest town to watch a football match, the whole staff at SAMOffice wore similar T Shirts ready to witness the semi final match between Netherlands and Uruguay, one of the finest match. We really enjoyed ourselves very much that evening..  

The eighth day of our tour, 05/07/2010

We started our day as always, 08:30 was the time to be picked up to the place where we will be conducting our sessions, at Samoffice's office. Roel, came to pick us as planned and we were on our way there. It took us less than ten minutes and were in the office. We discussed about our expectation and arranged for the schedule of the whole tour time.

After being comfortable with all that the details, we started discussing issues on Network maintenance. We have two types of Network maintenance, Active and Pro-active maintenance. Active maintenance being done as soon as problem arise while Pro-active being done to prevent the problems to happen. At TPSC we are currently doing Active maintenance which eat lot of energy and sometimes frustrating. In oder to be able to use Pro-active means of maintenance TPSC needs to have certain tools that will be used to show condition of the system at the current time and one can use certain attributes form the system to determine or predict the condition of the system sometimes to come.

Pro-active maintenance has number of advantages, one of them being Setting of standards. With setting of standard we basically paying attention on Setting of Priority, Quality and Procedures that will be used in maintenance of the Networking systems we have. This will give more room to management to make decisions and sometimes and easier work on the new staff is recruited. The second advantage will be centralization, mainly centralization of problems and means to deal with them. With Centralization we will be able to Monitor, Be able to expand and Ensuring availability of the network hardware, software and data.

We spoke lot of techniques that could be of use at TPSC and this has been a wonderful and enjoyable content. What TPSC needs to do is to ensure that what has been learned should be made into practice and being beneficial to TPSC.         

Tuesday, July 6, 2010

The seventh day of our tour, 04/07/2010

It is Sunday, a day to rest, look back to the whole week and planning for the coming week. We spent almost the whole day in our house everyone of us did what pleases him. Roel came to pick us and showed us places, we went to visit a hotel near the river and enjoyed ourselves.
There after we went back to our place for the rest ready for the next day.

The sixth day of our tour, 03/07/2010

We had to wake up early to wrap somethings up as it is our last day in Groningen. We work on and write a report for the whole week we had, then at 10:00 we were on our way to Roel place called Horst aan de maas. Niek took us with his car. We drove all the way to this town, roads are to perfect to drive slow and we really enjoyed ourselves.

We arrive at Roel place at 12:45, his office is situated near by his home, he has this cool environment to work and to concentrate on issues. We spent sometime there and plan for what will happen on the coming week. Then we had some drinks and lunch with his family. After that he showed us around and took us to the place they prepared for us to stay for the whole coming week. It is one of the finest place to be, I would recommend this place to any one who need to concentrate or to have a total rest.

It is a complete house so we have to do everything for ourselves, like cooking, washing and cleaning the house. We just like this place and we thank them for a such a nice and enjoyable place.

The fifth day of our tour, 02/07/2010


Another beautiful day to live and witness what Datacenter holds and what is really into it. Today is the day that we get to visit a datacenter that Servers University of Groningen. It servers not only University of Groningen student but also Hanze University and used to host some other company.
In this data center we did not only get to see many servers but also we get to see larger and most effective ones. We also get to see that server that is used to capture data from space by using telescopes. This was the fastest computer when it was bought and it still in the top 5000 fastest computer in the world. We also get to see new type of servers that a small in size and efficient as the one we have by now or sometimes most efficient. We get to see also backup facilities. Arrangement of server room is as good as you can never imagine, cooling system is aimed only to the servers as there is no need to cool the whole room. The plan is to minimize power usage.
In such hug facility, multiple servers and important server power sources has to be stable if not then number of activist includes reaches could not be available, based with this finding TPSC has to learn new ways to insure that power failures should not be entertained and must be taken seriously and measures needs to be taken as soon as possible and not to wait until one of the servers to go off.
University’s data, mails and other reports are all stored in these server that make security of severs very high, availability of system must be ensured and power supply must also be ensured as a simple failure to any of the factors I mentioned above would mean a total loss.
We get to learn that the backbone of the system is mainly in open source software (Linux as operating system) this reduces cost very much as if they had to use licensed copies they would have to pay for thousands of licenses for each server they own. I believe TPSC has to use such approach too as it is one cost effective measure in ICT implementation.
After datacenter we get opportunity to see visit other parts of the University, we get to see ongoing building construction and sports department and sport facilities.
At the end of the tour, we were attracted to do our further studies in this university as it has everything in place and well defined, TPSC could do it too, and we only need to start from somewhere.

The fourth day of our tour, 01/07/2010


A normal day preparation started as usually, Niek came to our Hotel earlier that we learned some things before anything; again we had to learn our today’s schedule that we know what will happen in our day. We had to learn about installing and configuring Wordpress in the server, the server space that Niek gave us for one year to practice our wordpress skills, we really appreciate this opportunity that we have been given by Niek that we practice our Wordpress, thank you Niek. After all these we had to take a bus to University of Hanze, one of the Universities that provide Applied Science studies, it is a really nice University. Today is about e-learning environment, Open education, Multimedia and tools used in today’s world learning practices.
Staring with e-learning environment we have been introduced to Balackboard Learning software, here we discussed basics about e-learning software that is widely used in the world, it is a licensed and yet widely used, own licenses for this software cost a lot and it cannot be afforded by our growing college, TPSC, but this does not mean that TPSC has to seatback, relax and witness other deploying such software, there are alternatives, such alternatives includes Moodle one of the famous e-learning software. The plan is that TPSC has to start using it as soon as it can be afforded. With such software, learning will be improved, made available and advanced, facilitators can post course materials, assignments, dates of assessments and results, again students have an advantage that they can access the studying materials, assignments and schedules and attend their assignments for their courses provided they have an internet connection. There is this other software that is used to facilitate learning, particularly e-learning, this software is called Sharepoint and it works in the similar fashion as Blackboard.
Then we discussed about Open Education, with this learners have ability to get access to more materials and access to share what is offered by other University, Colleges or Learning center freely. This facility can be used or link to some free material site to be made available at TPCS IRC, one of the good is http://www.openeducation.net/, hhtp://www.slideshare.net, http://www.merlot.org/merlot/index.htm, http://wlh.webhost.utexas.edu/browse.cfm, http://www.uwtv.org/index.aspx, With such sites one can have materials he/she needs for free. With these site, not only students are in advantageous side but also teachers, they can not only get access to materials but also they can discuss to for their suitability, if possible teachers can visit these sites and give suitable links to students as not all materials in the internet are suitable for certain discipline of learning, lot of studies and literatures must be taken into consideration to deduce the perfect and suitable materials.
Then we discussed about Multimedia, these are tools that can be used to facilitate learning and making studying process easier. As broadband becomes ubiquitous, interactive designers are increasingly called upon to incorporate multiple media and dynamic graphics into their work. Presenting instruction in multiple media can be more effective than doing it through a single medium (such as text), but what is important is combining media effectively, not merely adding media. Effective multimedia for learning requires carefully combining media in well reasoned ways that take advantage of each medium’s unique characteristics. The most effective multimedia provides learning experiences that mirror real-world experiences and let learners apply the content in various contexts.
Then we discussed about software which can be used to collaborate not only for facilitators but also trainees, with these tools we can share documents and information. Such tools includes Google wave, Google docs, Google education (free learning and collaboration environment), again there are tools that can be used for communication not only one to one but one to many means of communication, and these tools could be MS live, Yahoo Messenger, Skype and Wikis. With such tools we provide more rooms for learning and trying to narrow the distance between students and teachers or sources of materials.
Based on what we learned we believe that TPSC can adopt some of these techniques if not all of them to make a learning process easier and comfortable as ever before. With these tools we give more rooms for challenges and discussion, what is really needed is change attitude and people readiness for change.

Friday, July 2, 2010

The third day of our tour, 31/06/2010

Wake up a little tired, it might be because of yesterday's exercises. I did my normal preparation for the day and was ready for the day.

Niek came to pick us up at our Hotel at 08:45 am for library tour. The plan was to witness and understand how other library manage information and what are the tools used to run library. We arrived at Central Library of the University of Groningen, one the of the oldest and biggest Library in Netherlands. in this Library each discipline has got its own Library and this is what make it bigger, speaking of size, it is bigger than Institute of Finance Management (IFM) in Dar es salaam. You might wonder how do people work in the such a huge facility and every thing is in order and nothing gets lost.. this is what brings us here and lets find out together.

We arrived at the Central library at 09:30 am, someone was there already to guide us and show us around, her name is Joke Bos, she is one of the staff in the Library department, she was happy to be with us and had lot of energy to show us around and introduce us to other staff. To be with someone new you don't know for six to seven hour and that someone to be satisfied and enjoy him/herself is not an easy job, but Joke was able to make us enjoy and made us wanting to stay more in the library. The tour was very comprehensive and enjoyable, with lot of excitements.

Joke received us warmly and started our tour at the main entrance, here is where every user of the library must pass through. There are number of lockers in which Library use place there belonging, user are only allowed to carry their laptops, water and some materials that could be of use in the library. Joke told us that the introduced a certain system for user of the library to place their things in lockers and that is there are bags in the locker that has the number of the locker you put you belonging to to make it easy for someone to remember his/her locker and also to help them to carry few things that they are going to use in the library, too bad library users did not like it and librarians are looking at some other way to implement it.  This library is 395 years old, one year younger compared to University.

Library users are allowed to carry their phones with them and are supposed to move to the corridors to attend their phone when they have someone in the phones. Again, they can carry somethings to eat with them but only water can be taken in the library, other things should be taken at the canteen or somewhere else but not in the library.

Library has got four floors and some wings in it, each discipline is attached to certain floor and some discipline share the floor and even wings. Each floor has computer system that could be used by Library user, the good thing about this computer system is that there is a certain dedicated system that could tell where unoccupied computer is, so no would be wondering around looking for computer. The Library has got about 4oo computers and again Library user can bring there laptops with them and can access the same content as other computers, laptops are connected to the system using a wireless accessed network. Connection to the wireless network is not done as anyone thinks it could be done, configuration information are given and that information works only within the Library. This system can also be available if Library user use IPhones, IPads or Smartphones.

The Library has got a dedicated website within University website, lot of information about library is this site such information includes News, General information, Catalogs, Requests e.t.c.  some information change every now and then but some change after some time. With this site Library users can check availability of books anywhere they are if the book is not in the Central library inquiries can be done some other library in town as there is an interlinking of libraries ans user will have to contribute for some amount of money to have the book he/she requested. After the book has been received in the Library, user can be informed using his/her email account.

Although everything could be found in the website, Library make use of Blackbord, one of the licensed e-learning web-based system to make learning proses more structured. This library  is not only having a wonderful system to keep and making information available but it has some old books and old machined used for printing.

We also got a chance to discuss technologies which could be of handy for our college. No one can not agree with me that to have a best system such as one in the Central university you need to have lot of funds and support and funds but this is not necessarily the fact as the are lot of open system which could be used with small amount of funds compared to the licensed ones, such systems includes moodle an open e-learning facility and system which has almost similar functions as blackbord. For such a growing College such as ours, we will need to invest a lot in the infrastructure and on the software side we need to check possibilities in Open wares and software which are indeed available for us to use.

To visit this Library did not only make aware of how good a library can be but it also show me how people like and proud to show others what others are thinking are impossible to implement. I also appreciate the fact that someone could be there for someone else and being able to offer him/her an assistance required. If the make it we can also make it as they were where we are right now and with globalization we can make it within no time, lets face this as a challenge that need an immediate response.

I would like also to say my sincere thanks to each Central library department staff who in one way or another make us enjoy ourselves and contribute to our staying and surveying in the library.    

Thursday, July 1, 2010

The second day of our tour, 29/06/2010

The day begin at 05:30am as usual, some people have been created with the alarm clock in their head and I am one of them. Physical exercise is what is needed to make your body ready and fresh for the day, so I had to warm up a bit. There after washing and breakfast follows.

After breakfast we had to walk to Niek's place. His place is not far from our hotel, at least we get used to the city and we can walk by ourselves to certain places without being lost, I believe it a great achievement, isn't it? It is a five minutes walk from our hotel to Niek's place, he was ready and we drive all the way to his office.

Niek's office is outside the town, he told us that that place has been build from the past five years, almost building looks new and some are still in construction. Niek's office is in fifth floor of the building where there are some other five Information Technology related companies, owned by young entrepreneurs.

Lets get into a really business now, we started by discussing and going deeper into web 2 technologies, today we spoke about RSS (Really Simple Syndication), an RSS documents are called feeds or sometime channels, RSS is the means of accessing many website or web contents from different sites into one page, the RSS feed can be read by RSS reader. Most common example of RSS includes my.yahoo and igoogle.We discussed and practicing RSS using igoogle.

The next thing was about tagging and creating a profile of the information I liked and enjoy reading using a del.icio.us one of the most famous tagging tool, we discuss about it and we even watched some video of how to go about with it. There after we came to work it, we created our profiles, add networks and people that we can all share what we find interesting. This tool can only be used by people with yahoo accounts and it can also be used in TPSC by academic staff with the similar specialization to easier browsing and sharing information among themselves.

After del.icio.us we learned about wikis, tools that are available in the internet not for personal advertising for for profiling, this could be used to speak about about facts about somethings, organizations, people and much more.. but be carefully not everything you can write can be made available in wikis. the good thing about wiki is every one who has an account in wiki can edit what is posted provided it is a fact about what is written for this we are guaranteed of have a precise information about that specific topic. We can say, wiki is like a collaborative website, that anyone can edit, add or delete some contents from it the reason behind is to maintain and keep only the truth about certain topic. Wiki are considered to to be the largest and well know source of information. We learned about wiki and practicing to create one for TPSC, Alexander succeeded to make one for TPSC, it is up to TPSC staff to create accounts in Wikipedia that the get to add and edit the content in the article about TPSC.

Here comes another experience, lunch time.. office-mates and neighboring offices people take time to go buy lunch together and sitting together in a common room for lunch and discussion, this is a very cool experience as majority of neighbors get to know about each other and sharing experience, I think this is something which could be done at TPSC to create closeness and sharing of experience and knowledge.

After lunch we had discussions on technologies that could make TPSC appreciate ICT and make use of it, we agreed that Wordpress could be used for TPSC website and IRC while Moodle could be used to facilitate e-learning. Niek created us sites that we could us to practice and appreciate the utilization of Moodle and Wordpress. We even discussed about issue and how to make TPSC staff make full use ICT in training ans assessments, this could be a bit tedious but it has to be done. The idea behind is to start with younger people then older ones as younger people are almost ready for the change compared to older people, with this tactic we can create a frame work for others and others will follow by seeing how things works.

After this session and discussion it was a time for relaxation and gym, Niek took me to the gym, I had a rally great time in gym. The day ends up here.    

Monday, June 28, 2010

The first day of our tour, 28/06/2010

As I mentioned in the previous post, sunrise is very early in Netherlands, with my curtains open, I had to wake up very early.. it was 0530. I watched some television and exercise a bit and making myself ready for the day. We took our breakfast at the hotel, it was a nice breakfast indeed, though some foods were not familier but we enjoyed ourselves.
Niek came to our hotel at 0830, we had an introductory part of our training and some discussions on what the course will do not only for us but also for TPSC. Though there were some issues which were already arranged for us to study, we were given a chance to propose what we would like to be taught, we proposed that we would like to be equipped with with web technologies, e-learning systems, web-based admission and results system and some other things which could bring a change and make TPSC staff not only user of the systems but being able to update what will be provided by the system.
We discussed about implementing Moodle as our e-learning system, we planned to start designing it when we are still in Netherlands and we will start implementation as soon as we land to Tanzania. While in Netherlands we will discuss about major functionality of the system and how to create a culture to TPSC staff to use ICT in providing course materials and examination results to students and some other functionality which could be of handy to facilitators and students.
This e-learning system will not only made life easier to students and academic staff but it will provide an easier means to other people and public at large to get to interact with TPSC, as most of them will applying for courses online, read some journals prepared by TPSC and again being able to send some queries on certain issues that they think TPSC could be provide solution, isn't this going to be cool feature and good start for TPSC to market herself? We all have the answer and the right answers are what makes us come up with such an idea.
After this discussion, we were told to report each day and everything we do in our own blogs.
After making the first report available online, we went to visit one of the best University in town and Niek's office before we went to visit the public library in Netherlands. In this library we get to know lot of things, most of them could be positive impact if implemented at TPSC's library.
Speaking of this library, we witnessed a lot, among them being a smart system for checking availability and borrowing books, journals, DVDs and much more, a smart way of printing, a smart way of arranging materials in the library, a smart way of work in the library and interlinking of library.
After library we went to watch a football match with some friends of which Netherlands team won.
We really had a very good day..     

A trip to Netherland on 27/06/2010.

We had a very long trip, a nine hours trip. We landed at Amsterdam airport early in the morning and a lady called Leonoor Akkermans came to pick us. She introduced herself and gave us some documentations and information on how to go about with some certain major things. She bought us three train ticket to Groningen a city where our hotel is.


At the train-stop Niek and Roel came to pick us, they showed us around and we had a lunch together at the restaraunt near our hotel, after that we went to our hotel which is in town, it is called Martini Hotel.


In the evening time we went at Niek's place, he had his birthday party, we meet with his frinds and family for BBQ and drinks, we really had a wonderful time there, we had people to talk to, sharing some experiances and talks about Africa and ongoing world cup issues, there after we came back to our hotel for a night sleep.


I witnessed something stranger with Netherland, they have a very early sunrise and late sunset.


The good thing is we do enjoy ourselves as weather is very good, lot of sun hence no need to take your jacket with us.


Thats Netherlands, in Groningen.