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Summer 2003 Project

In the summer of 2003, MIT-AITI ran its internet technology education program in Kenya and Ghana where it has been implemented since 2000. In addition, we expanded the program for the first time to Ethiopia. The MIT-AITI program implemented in 2003 proved to be an exciting summer and a great chance for MIT students to immerse in rich African culture.

In total, 16 students were sent to Ghana and Ethiopia. The Kenya part of the program for 2003 was implemented as a Self Learning Initiative through an online course taught from MIT. This initiative was the first of its type for MIT-AITI.

Testimonials

"The summer I taught in Ethiopia is one of my most memorable and rewarding experiences. The enthusiasm of the students and their thirst for knowledge was truly unbelievable. At the end of the course, over 100 students had gained important programming skills and knowledge. Although we had successes, we were limited by the facilities of the Institute. Most computers were old and not equipped with the necessary software. Also, our student-teacher ratio was high, which made it difficult for us to interact with the students. Overall, we learned to solve these problems and the summer was a great success."

- Mohammed Haji, Ethiopia 2003

"My AITI experience in Ghana was an all-around enriching experience. I greatly enjoyed both teaching and learning about Ghanaian history and culture. Despite some difficulties with the language barrier and outdated computer technology, we were proud to complete an extensive curriculum and lay a foundation upon which the students could build. To this day, I still get emails from past AITI students about the new projects their pursuing using the knowledge and tools we gave them. It was well worth the time and effort."

- Greg Dennis, Ghana 2003

Ghana

A team of 9 MIT student interns were in Accra, Ghana to implement the AITI program. The interns who were based in this capital city of Ghana taught a total of 96 students from two public high schools, Presbyterian Boys’ Secondary School and Achimota School, and the University of Ghana. The technology course developed by MIT-AITI had two objectives: At the high school level, the aim was to expose students to programming concepts and to inspire them to consider careers in IT. The objective at the university level was to teach good programming methodology and to encourage an applied problem-solving approach to programming. These objectives were executed using opensource and freely available technologies and software including J2SE, JSP, Apache WebServer, Tomcat and Sun One Studio IDE. Students who completed the course gained valuable technical knowledge in software development as well as practical programming skills.

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Ethiopia

MIT-AITI sent a team of seven MIT students to Addis Ababa, the capital city of Ethiopia, to teach a technology course to a group of engineering students at the national university. The courses of study included the JAVA programming language, JAVA Server Pages (JSP) and the Linux operating system. The intention was to give the students exposure to modern open-source software used in the technology industry. Included with the technical curriculum, a seminar on entrepreneurship was offered in which the students were taught about business planning and development. This seminar included a series of lectures on business opportunities given by prominent local industrialists and government officials. Overall, the program was a great success, not only teaching the students valuable skills which can be applied in the IT sector, but also giving them ideas and encouragement to go out and build businesses of their own.

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Kenya

Two groups of five students from the Strathmore University, Kenya participated in a selfsustained learning pilot program organized by MIT-AITI. This pilot program created and successfully implemented a new model of teaching that is based on self learning with assistance through the internet. With the support of the MIT-AITI interns in Boston and Kenya, as well as the support of the staff at Strathmore University, these two groups of students were able to self learn the MIT course “1.00 Introduction to Engineering Problem Solving Using Java”. These students used the course material available through MIT OpenCourseWare, and with the help provided by MIT-AITI via the Internet, were able to successfully complete the course. As a result of the program, out of the ten students whom completed to course, four students are working on a medical database, four are setting up a JAVA diploma course and two have become lab assistants at Strathmore University.

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