Resources on the Internet for IT students in Africa

Hello all,

Just briefly, I am a Peace Corps Volunteer in the Gambia, West Africa and I am a teacher in information technology specifically all the basics including Office 2003. I teach at the college level and I will be giving exams to my students in a couple of weeks and I have been endlessly looking for study guides on the net to give my students. I have found some good materials but they are just ok. Anything relating to "Microsoft Office Specialist" requires a purchase. So my question is if anyone knows of a place or has material (free of charge) that covers Microsoft Office 2003 would be greatly appreciated.

My biggest challenge is materials where the college I an posted at doesn't even have textbooks nor other things that help in teaching. Slowly-slowly I would like to say progress has been made. I use alison.com to help the students understand further my point and had LanSchool.com make a donation as an alternative to a projector. GenevaLogic is on the verge of making a donation so IT in Africa is taking a strong leap forward as I have been witnessing life here for the past 14 months.

Thank you,
Terry

my place:
www.terryberna.com[/url]

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Comments

JDMurray

Is there a U.S. address for the Peace Corps where people could donate computer training materials to you? Does the PC have a Web site that lists the types of materials that their field workers need?

druid318

^ Just what I was thinking.

I'm sure alot of people in IT would have books they could donate. Used books are better than no books i think.

exam lé?

There is no U.S. address for sending material to a volunteer. It would have to be sent overseas to the volunteer. I think what is more in need is kids games rather than text books. Games like english, math, science that can run on old machines with windows 95/8 as well as XP with a min of 64 megs of ram to operate. I have recently downloaded games like clifford and dora the explorer, but I can't get a hold of education games like math. I don't have my students play these games, i just burn them on CDRs and send them upcountry to the lower and upper basic schools.

My biggest problem with the students is they lack critical thought and that is because the educational system they had gone through doesn't really encourage critical and logical thought. A 5th grader or a student in my college level class will always ask the instructor, "can i click now?," or "should i save this now?" They will repeat this a thousand times before they finally understand what will happen when they click "yes," or "no," or "cancel." So my idea was to give games out to the lower grade levels and hopefully they will develop the skills to understand what happens when they click on a button. And eventually some of these students will find their way to the universities or institutes and already have some sort of understanding in logical thought when operating a computer.

The government of the Gambia has been donating semi- new machines to the lower and upper basic schools to educate the students in the IT field. There are a lot of problems with that like electricity and corrupt headmasters who personally use or sell petrol that runs the generator for the computer lab. But regardless many schools do have some kind of computer lab whether its only of three computers or twenty. Some places they do use windows 95 and only run when a toubab or white person is around to help instruct the class.

At first I was in search of textbooks, but realized the problems in obtaining them like shipping and cost and government bureaucracy in importing them. As a volunteer in the Gambia I do have resources to teach like Alison.com for office 2003 and other booklets I have made. The things I do need are online printable resource materials that cover things like how to be a Microsoft office specialist or study guides of IT like an online version of sparknotes. My Institute has a copy machine that runs non-stop and that is how we make materials for the students. And of course kids educational games.

But if you are willing to donate books then let me talk to some volunteers and see what they need. I myself feel independent of the need of textbooks. I think the cheapest method to ship heavy things is a mail bag which is a dollar a pound.

If you are willing to donate educational children's games to do math, science, english, etc. then yes you are more than welcome to send them to me. I could even take the ISO images if you ftp them online. Otherwise they could be sent via the post. Like i said let me talk to other volunteers and see if they could use computer training manuals and textbooks first before you send anything. Much Much appreciated.

Thank you very much,
Terry

My address is:
PCV Terry Berna
US Peace Corps
P.O. Box 582
Banjul, The Gambia, West Africa