Connecting Eenhana: Supporting ICT Skill Development in Community Network Projects

Annastasia Shipepe & Nicola J BidwellUniversity of Namibia

What is Connecting Eenhana?

• Collaboration between:– Staff and students in from

University of Namibia’s (UNAM) School of Computing

– Glowdom Educational Foundation

– Eenhana community members

UNAM, Windhoek

Eenhana

• Small grant from The Open Technology Institute mid 2015 to establish a community network in Eenhana, far north Namibia

• Aims:– To support developing a community network for local information sharing– To provide opportunities for university students to share/apply their creative and problem solving

skills in real life contexts

People• UNAM

– Lecturers: • Gabriel Nhinda, Anna Shipepe, Anton

Limbo, Nic Bidwell – 3rd/4th year computing student interns:

• Manfred TK Takondwa, Shetu Sheetekela

– 3rd year HCI students• University of Western Cape

– Post-doc: Carlos Rey-Moreno• Glowdom Educational Foundation

– Sebulon David– Yuri Peter– Youngsters

Original Aims• Wi-fi mesh network to enable sharing information that local people cannot access

– e.g. documents about health, education and local government and content created by local people

• Nodes at– Community Radio Station– Schools, including a special school for

the Deaf– TIT Institute of Technology– Multi-purpose centre– Eenhana’s watertower, providing wide

coverage– San community

• A small digital noticeboard in Eenhana Town Council displays updates about documents

• Community members can download content, for free, onto their mobile phones or tablets, or using a computer at GEF

Teaching New Skills to Local People• Content Generation

– Digital Storytelling workshops with High school youth

• Workshops and practical experiences on: networks, web development, Raspberry pi• 15 participants– 19 – 27 years– 7 women, 8 men– From the Vocational

Training College, Eenhana Youth Group, Town Council, Ohangwena Community Radio

Network Workshops & Practicals• Shetu and Gabriel taught:

– In Oshiwambo– The difference between wired

and wireless communications and their cabling structures

– Using point-to-point networks for sharing files • Shared music files between

computers over Ethernet Cables

• TK – Network cables cable making

• One young woman took charge and showed the young men how to make the cables properly …..

– Testing nodes

Web Development Workshop• Basic html• Participants developed

simple web pages

Raspberry Pi Workshop

• Raspberry Pi (donated by PyCon Namibia) to host website

Website User Testing • We asked participants to

test the website on format, content etc

Tangi unene