UgandAshis 65 Access to knowledge in Uganda

UgandAshis 65 Access to knowledge in Uganda

Kampala, November 28, 2009

Picture yourself in the role as a lecturer of Public Health at Mountains of the Moon University in Fort Portal, Western Uganda. As a young and dynamic teacher you wish to present your students with cutting edge material (the latest online scientific publications), use of modern tools as Internet application (as for existence Global Position System for infectious disease outbreak control and study) and a fundament of knowledge (through open source, free access power point presentations, slide shows, photos and video material)

As you are new to the job and you are Ugandan you do not own a computer. To make matters even easier nor does the public health faculty (the one computer that was available crashed two months ago and was 8 years old at death). Then in the location where the main complex of buildings of the university are there is no Internet. Luckily you teach down town where there is connection however it is irregular and dial up width at best.

Added to your list of teaching requirements is a long distance learning course. Perhaps you can use pigeons to send materials. Given that Mountains of the Moon was founded as a community based college there is strong support from the local community. Perhaps in the near future more computers may be added as for now you are stuck however as your lectures are supposed to be power point based.

You sneak into the student computer science lab and prepare your lectures there. Your preparatory notes come from one of the 100 books that the faculty earns and even if the book is from 1970 books from that age are still valuable is it not. This weekend you decide to visit some relatives in Kampala.

One of them is an Internet techie who organizes an event called TEDxKLA. It is organized by the Ugandan Linux User Group and it is a catchy new way to do work shops on themes relating to the role of Internet in civil society (civil journalism, NGO’s) There you meet a senior educationalist who answers to your response that you are seeking lecturing materials for your students that he has a 500 GB hard disk full of public health lectures from prime institutions as John Hopkins, Tufts, Supercourse and Harvard.

His organization can even furbish you with a used laptop as that is what they do in their mission as a NGO. So you go to the bank take all your money, buy a 500 GB hard disk to plunge into a career that will be very promising. You see where there is a will there is a a way; Let’s roll.

You are enthralled by Supercourse; hundreds of powerpoint presentations on all possible topics in Public Health. For many of you in the USA or Europe this scenario may seem impossible yet often it works this way. Who would know of other methods to get open source freely available knowledge?

Namaskar,

Ashis