ISPU:Project Chapter
Introduction
ISPU Quelimane extension opened its doors in 1998. The Extension is situated in Quelimane the capital of the Northern Province Zambezia. The different range of services offered in ISPU as a whole varies significantly considering the location of the institution. There is a strong digital divide between the capital Maputo and Quelimane. The ICT infrastructures are very much limited and in some cases not developed at all, it is in the light of this project to collaborate with other project partners in the First Mile First Inch project within the Southern African region to bring innovative solutions in order to uplift the lives of individuals in member countries. The project seeks to contribute to the secondary school educational sector touching areas such as science and mathematics education including HIV and sex education. Gender is also of primary concern since uplifting the girl child will have a significant impact on development globally. Using the full capacities of Information and communication Technology will open up borders and break through the isolation for students, staff, and the people from Zambezia Province of Mozambique to the world community.
Policy and Legal Framework (current status)
The regulator in Mozambique is the Instituto Nacional de Telecomunicações de Moçambique (INCM). In Mozambique regulation of the wireless Internet now focuses primarily on technology standards. If manufacturers, practitioners, and entrepreneurs adhere to technical standards designed to deal with interference, no approvals are required to operate equipment. You can buy it, take it out of the box, turn it on, and use it. At the same time, because operators have no vested rights to continue operation, this constitutes a nonexclusive use of the radio spectrum. Because of the newer technologies, you can do a lot with unlicensed spectrum. Under these rules, you may not cause harmful interference. And you must accept interference from somebody. Before 2004, the unlicensed wireless spectrum was set around the 2.4-Ghz band. In June 2003, t h e International Telecommunications Union made available the 5-Ghz band for license - exempt technology deployment, and Mozambique put in force this prerogative. However there is need to emphasize that unlicensed does not mean unregulated, and all manner of operator providing wireless services still needs to maintain a no-interference working plan and a “good neighbour” attitude. Unlicensed wireless technology can help Mozambique as a developing country implement Internet networks very quickly, and that has significant implications for accelerating the growth of information systems in the country. We are also seeing rural and suburban applications in Mozambique taking advantage of Wi-Fi. Wi-Fi has proven to be a technology with broad potential around the world.
Research Question
ELearning and the use of ICTs in education depend heavily on telecommunications infrastructures established by telecom companies. These telecommunications companies use mostly the Last Mile Last Inch philosophy. In ISPU Quelimane we would like to explore how First Mile First Inch Technologies can be used to develop Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Skills in Secondary School Students in Quelimane, and Providing Online Education Resource Tools for Instituto Superior Politécnico e Universitário (ISPU Quelimane) Students.
Methodology
Project Inception In collaboration with the teachers at ISPU Quelimane and Patrice Lumumba Secondary School materials are put On-line to students. Initially a memorandum of understanding is signed and each part agreeing on what it would do. Since this includes software applications, this will be the starting phase in its development. In this phase we will justify the needs and decide on the system requirements. The deliverable item from this phase is a requirements specification for the learning management system (Content management system to be implemented). The online resource requirements specifications are elaborated in this phase and the decision is to proceed or not with the applications development. Feasibility Study The main feasibility studies carried out were economic, schedule, social, and technical feasibility studies. The ROI was the main technique used in economic feasibility studies, while we developed a range of parameters for schedule feasibility studies and the implications were that the long distance cycles between Quelimane and major suppliers of the networking equipment affected the schedule. It was also evident that on the technical part the ICT personnel at ISPU Quelimane needed to be capacity build in developing, implementing and maintaining wireless technologies. Equipment Specification and technical specifications In principle we started by following up the main focus on the FMFI project, that is building our network based on home brewed solutions. We faced technical deficiencies on this and opted for cheaper sustainable wifi equipment from Mikrotik. Desktop Research Literature review and Internet search for wireless technologies and innovative wireless solutions are done to increase the technical know-how on the solution to be implemented. Research on the telecommunication regulatory aspects in Mozambique is carried out in order to have the appropriate choice of equipment and online services. Also the reports of the assessments that have previously taken in Telecentres, from other projects, which have been done in Mozambique, regarding services and technologies in use and the required services by the user, will be reviewed. During the desktop research different models and succeeded experiences of online resources for schools and universities will be reviewed in order to decide what to adapt for our project. As well as if there are any publications about designing application for non-computer/Web-experienced people. Systems Analysis and Design (Learning Management System) A software project management plan (SPMP) is elaborated in this case in order to have a concrete methodological approach in developing the system. A combination of the study of system development models and web application development models is done and the appropriate model is chosen. Didactic Consideration Since the project involve educational material , and content we thought it was important for us to infuse some pedagogical principles in the project. The basic pedagogical principles that guided us are blended learning, contructivism, Constructionism, Social Constructivism, Connected and Separate and we foound that MOODLE offer these sound pedagogical principles. Introduction of the system and user training O modular basis the users were trained and basic computer skills were the intial courses to be offered to the users. System Tests and Monitoring Parrallel changeover was the main method used and statical information such as the system usage per day were taken. Also the stability of the network was constanly monitored and notably power surges are the major setbacks.
Implementation process
The overall goal of the project is build an affordable communication technology, in the local community by making best use of whatever sources are available. It is the belief of this project that using inexpensive off-the shelf equipment, a high speed data network can connect remote areas, to provide both broadband network access in areas that even dial up does not exist and to ultimately connect ISPU Quelimane and its neighbouring schools to the global internet. We believe that by working with our local community we can build a telecommunications infrastructure that benefits everyone who participates in it. The institutions interconnected are: Instituto superior Politécnico e Universitário (ISPU Quelimane) Instituto Médio Politécnico (IMEP) Patrice Lumumba Secondary School (ESPL) The main reason to interconnect ISPU and IMEP was to replace the existing aerial Ethernet connection and a switch acting as a repeater in the dormitory located half way through the buildings. This in principle is violating networking principles as UTP cables are not outdoor networking resources. In the long run a fibre optic backbone might be installed but the wireless infrastructure becomes a viable one. The ESPL is connected to the ISPU Quelimane network to make avail the e-learning application to the students. At this stage there is no intention to distribute internet or any World Wide Web service to ESPL, because of the low bandwidth that ISPU has.
Technical
The equipment installed at each node of the network is not only a wireless interface to the network but also a device capable of improving the organization and efficiency of each local area network, as well as the management of all platforms. In fact, each node of the network, on top of assuring a wireless connection to the global network is a reasonably powerful router capable of handling features such as DHCP server, firewall, NATing, bandwidth management, dynamic routing for redundancy etc. The equipment installed also assures that the full management of the global network can be done remotely from any place in the network which will be of great help especially due to lack of skilled ICT human resources at the schools.
Network Description
At each point there is a full router installed supporting wireless interfaces which can be configured either as access points or remote stations. These routers are implemented based on the Router board hardware with the Mikrotik Router OS operating system, both produced by Mikrotik in Latvia. Regarding the wireless component, we operate on 5GHz (UNI band – 801.11a standard), instead of the 2.4 GHZ (ISM band – 801.11b/g standard), as it is less sensitive to interference and more channels are available. In terms of costs one might argue that we opted for an expensive solution but this is no longer the fact as 5GHZ band equipment are becoming cheaper and they guarantee more stability on the network. Regarding the antennas, and due to the fact that we do not have the concept of a central point but all connections are point to point, we have used directional antennas for better performance.As distances between the involved buildings are quite small, and taking advantage that the ISPU Quelimane building has line of sight to the other buildings, we installed an Omni directional antenna at ISPU , and directional antennas at IMEP and ESPL pointing to the ISPU one. The ISPU installation is configured as an access point with SSID “ispunet “ and on the other two routers the wireless interface are configured as stations accessing the ispunet access point.