Geek

One of the interesting pledges that Uhuru Kenyatta the new President of Kenya made on his election campaign was to provide school pupils with solar powered laptops. This proposal has provoked a mixed reaction in Kenya, ranging from out and out condemnation on the grounds of being a colossal waste of money to admiring acceptance of a brave initiative that will put Kenya on the map as a go ahead nation. The truth probably lies somewhere between these extremes.

On the grounds that ICT is likely to figure significantly in the world of education over here for some time I’ve been brushing up my skills and thinking of ways to be of assistance to our local education department. Having spent twenty years or so as an educational ICT specialist I’m looking forward to seeing how it develops in Kenya.

Keeping up with new versions of familiar software is one of the perennial problems facing ICT users. I’ve always enjoyed creating ICT systems and spent a happy day today wrestling with the most recent incarnation of the Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. I always thought that designing and documenting spreadsheet and database systems were the most demanding requirements of ICT courses at A level in the UK (taken by eighteen year olds prior to university entrance). I haven’t set up a proper spreadsheet system for a while and was surprised how challenging it was to build in features that I would have created very quickly a few years ago. That said it was good fun and I will, I hope, end up with an all singing and dancing electronic mark book for our teachers and for their colleagues in the wider community. The major benefits of such a system would be to put an end to the school shut down that often accompanies compiling exam marks and an associated enhancement of teachers' ability to use exam data effectively.

None of this would have been possible without my DIY dentistry yesterday. (See yesterday’s post). I’m happy to report that my tongue is now pretty much back to normal now. The facial contortions that often accompany creativity and concentration when tackling an ICT project would have been impossible with the tooth problem I suffered from until today.