Chris In Africa

Finals are finished. I had to make up three exams. The easiest was for my web programming class. The material was straightforward and led itself to easy test questions. The hardest was my networking class. The exam wasn’t just for the third term, but comprehensive over the entire year. The students would only have 2 hours to take it, so I couldn’t just concatenate the other 2 exams with a little more added on. I ended up trying to selected questions from the main themes of the course with more of a focus on the theory from the beginning (last fall!).

I also took my networking class on a field trip after finals. We went to another volunteer’s site an hour out of the city and worked on the senior secondary school’s computer lab. The lab is unique here: it is made up of laptops. The school had also just acquired a dial up connection. My students did a good job of getting things set up, they can handle the basics well. When it came to configuring a copy of XP Home to share the Internet with another computer on the network I had to step in.

I tried to do some “career counseling” with the students. One student wants to get a job (or is family has told him that he has to) and all the rest are going on for more schooling. Some are headed to the University of The Gambia”s access program to work on their math skills before going into computers. A few are even hoping to go to school in the states. We looked at different school”s websites, checked out admissions data, talked about the realities of applying to schools from here. Maybe in a few years I”ll be able to take a road trip and visit them in the states!

Kane, Yee, and I helped the Gambian staff at GTTI rearrange their lab. Here is how it turned out.

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Last week I took my students on a field trip to Unique Solutions. The company is one of several ISPs in The Gambia. Although my students were late, seven showed up.

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Oh my poor students.

The class average was 54%. The total for the term was 55%. My two students that show up regularly and do the homework both scored As on the exam and a B for the term. The next tier of students passed the term (all 3 of them!). That leaves 5 that have failed the term. The biggest cause of this by far was the goose egg (0) for the 9 quizzes / homework.

Hopefully we’ll do better for the third term.

Teaching at GTTI has been great. Today is the term two exam. This term has been challenging. First term I covered networking theory: models, types of technology, a bit of history and different hardware. We did all of our work on Linux and Windows. Second term we did some practicals that the students had been begging for. We learned how to use basic tools like ping, ifconfig, ipconfig, dig and tracepath. We installed basic services like DNS, DHCP, FTP and SSH in both Linux and Windows.

Teaching these topics has been hard from the beginning. First year students taking a course on networking is an odd choice. The students lacked the prerequisite knowledge but GTTI really wanted that course taught. I took the course slowly and made sure everyone was keeping up. It felt like I was pulling teeth sometimes but the students were learning.

Unfortunately I’ve started teaching a course at MDI and UTG. The students at the other schools are much more motivated then my GTTI students. The first day of class they demanded a syllabus, they call me to ask questions and they do their homework. I’ve been assigning small quizzes every week at GTTI to make the students keep up with some of the vocab where at the other schools the students got bored with my little quizzes because they weren’t very challenging.

I’ve been trying to get my students at GTTI to set up to the new higher bar that has been set by their peers. It hasn’t gone well so far. They act like they are in year 13 at senior secondary school. This isn’t entirely their fault: for the past month or so there has been an interdepartmental football tournament. When the games are played the head of the department comes around and kicks everyone out of the labs and locks the door and makes them watch. It doesn’t send the best signal.

My exam for this term is fair I think. They have a different grading scheme here (50% is passing). My class average is right around there. The exam is comprehensive but not as challenging as their term 1 exam. The last term was mostly multiple choice and short answer. I made the multiple choice tricky. This exam is focused more on vocab (through matching) and short answer with two small programming questions at the end. I spent the last week reviewing for the students who bothered to show up, so there shouldn’t be any surprises. It should be a fair test.