Umoja

It has been a while since I really thought about my idea to create a mobile computing classroom and I spent a bit of time online today and actually found a mobile computer lab for sale in the US.

Months have passed since I talked here about my mobile internet unit (MIU) idea, so I thought I’d update you a bit. As yet, the plans remain… plans. I contacted a number of people who were involved in a similar project in Malaysia and they have been keen to encourage me to look at the idea further. I still haven’t been able to fully cost how much a unit would cost and so today I set about searching the web for more information to help me get a bit closer to a final figure. The other day in town, I saw a huge truck that was being used as a mobile phone shop. I’m trying to get hold of the owner of the business to have a chat about it, but to no avail. I can’t seem to track him down. I’ll try and get a pic of the truck soon though as its exactly what I imagined the MIU would look like and I’m keen for others to see it.

As for trying to research pricing of the project for myself, I kind of struck out with the two people who offered to help previously. Neither of them are returning emails so today I turned webwards once more. First off, I went to google, but to be honest, I’ve already tried most of the search engines and haven’t found anything, despite pretty advanced searching skills on my part. Today, I decided to look around at blogs instead to see if anyone had posted anything about creating mobile classrooms.

I started off with a Technorati search, then, thanks to this post on Paul Stamatiu’s blog I came across some more social media tools. After clicking around a while, sure enough (using google’s blogsearch engine in the end, not one of the new tools Paul mentions) I found some new information. Information about a mobile classroom on sale. Alliance Library Services (based in the US) launched an mobile classroom a few years back, called ALEC and are now selling it (funding cuts, perhaps). I tried to find out a bit more about Alliance, but for some reason, they blacklisted my IP address earlier and I can no longer visit their site (though I just tried my usually trusty google translation/proxy hack and it still doesn’t work, so maybe they have some server issues).

Luckily, they have a gallery on Flickr full of pictures of ALEC . Since their images are copyrighted, I can’t just show them here in the page (not sure why they haven’t used creative commons licences instead, I mean, they are trying to sell the thing) so here’s some links to the images [photo set] [1] [2] [3].

According to the google cache, Alliance offered it for sale in May with this accompanying text:

ALEC is for sale. This one of a kind 2001 Ford E450 has only 7900 miles and comes with an on-board electric generator, wheel chair lift, self-deploying satellite dish, seating for eight, computer server, heating/AC and more. $72,000. Call 309-694-9200 x2116.

That’s a good chunk of cash (KSh5.33 million) and the vehicle isn’t really big enough for the needs of the rural school kids (class sizes are enormous, this vehicle seats 8 at a time) and would no doubt have a huge import duty levied on it if brought over, but…

…hopefully this helps some people visualise a Mobile Internet Unit ( or Mobile Computer Lab) now. Just imagine that it’s a bit bigger and a little more African…. A cross between this one:

And this one:

In other news, Hannah finally took the camera to her new house and she promises that she’ll post about it soon. Also, I just found out that Heshima run a summer school, so I have suddenly got a lot of time on my hands (which is nice!). I’ve registered a new website (www.madarasa.org) and will be putting something up there about this mobile internet plan in the not too distant future. Madarasa means classroom in Swahili, so I thought it was pretty appropriate.