ISPU:Project Progress
June 2006
The project inception started in June 2006 with the proposal undergoing scrutiny and thorough revision from Chris Morris, Ajay Makan and Uys. It was an initiative from Chris and Ajay to incorporate ISPU Quelimane late in the implementation phase of the FMFI project partly because they wanted to increase the networking among the researchers and secondly because resources have been channeled already to the key project researchers in terms of training in research methodology and the philosophy of the whole project.
December 2006
After the transfer of funds the implementation of the project started. We contracted a company called Microsis LDA based in Maputo to do the installation of the wireless infrastructure. Microsis was chosen because it has e technical team that understand wireless infrastructure and has been involved in other ICT for Education projects within Mozambique. Escola Secundaria Patricio Lumumba (ESPL) received 26 Computers in the same period and we were quite happy with this. Apart from this donation the Ministry 's ICT Head of Department was keen to give 10 computers to use in the project.
January 2007
The headmaster of the school (ESPL)Mr Domingos , and his pedagogical Director Mr. João were very keen and helpful from the onset. They gave us the go ahead to plan the training and were helpful in the selection of the project participants. We emphasized the participation of female students in the project and that gender was key to the project. A group of 15 female students who had started a home craft project was chosen by the school administration as an honour of the good work they have been doing. We also chose other two heterogeneous groups to participate in the project.
February 2007
The training on ICT literacy started, based on the International Computers Drivers License (ICDL) modules. We used the version 4 Syllabus that consist of seven modules. We preferred face to face lecturing as means of understanding and engaging well with our boundary partners. Alfred Mutanga and Blessing Mavengere started exploring on the Content Management system to bes used. We opted for free and open Source software and a range of them were studied among them KEWL First Gen, Atutor, Tikiwiki, Docebo and Moodle. We were left with two options KEWL and Moodle. KEWL becauase it is an anitiative from Africa developed by the University of Western Cape, South Africa and there are Mozambican Universities involved with it, that is Eduardo Mondlane University and Catholic University of Mozambique. However we reached the conclusion that MOODLE was the best choice since both of us have been involved with for the past three years and we understood its pedagogical philosophy much better.
March 2007
Training in ICT literacy and MOODLE was installed and configured to run as an intranet application. the ESPL was configured to be a subnetwork of ISPU.