Work!

So what I have been up to in the past few weeks ... I've been busy.

While I've finished training of staff at the CJE Mozarte project. More importantly, is that I've started working at MINED, although in a telecomputing form. We are in the last parts of wrapping up the contract with MINED: it's in the hands of HR, hopefully next week I'll be able to apply for my residency permit.

So what will I be working on? Capacity building is the key word in all of the responsibilities that'll have. To give you an idea of what is needed and what is planned please take a look at the technology in education plan (Plano de tecnologia da educação) link: http://www.ptemocambique.com. The plan is both in English and Portuguese. At the recent ICTE (Information and Communication Technology in Education) summit the head of the ICT department of MINED, Moçambique (my boss) presented earlier in the year. You can see his presentation regarding this plan to his overview

According to this plan MINED needs to collect information now that the schools are connected with Internet access. So I'll be creating web portals to collect, process, validate, and present data to allow for proper decisions to be made and install accountability within the system. The data would cover all aspects of the education system: student registrations, teacher education, teacher placement, etc.

In addition, I'll be working with the team to build on their abilities to create and maintain such systems. Otherwise this would be all for naught. This would include training on computer programming, software architectures creating databases that are adapted to the context and intent of the online systems, IT training and maintenance. I'll also have plenty of opportunity to travel throughout the country to the different ICT centres to install and train staff on maintenance, use and responsibilities off the centres and to it's users.

While ICT knowledge needs to be developed, access to Internet and knowledge is paramount for any development to proceed. Just as importantly is knowing how and that one could access information to promote and develop themselves. In short learning how to be resourceful in today's knowledge based world.

All this plus I'll still be consulting with the CJE/Mozarte initiative as well as other projects within VSO. Yes, I'll be busy and I'm happy about that.