The DFID-funded “Investigation of appropriate new technologies to support interactive teaching in Zambian schools” (part of the “New and Emerging Technologies Research Competition”), was a joint project between Aptivate, the Centre for Commonwealth Education, and iSchool.zm (Zambia), running between October 2010 – April 2011.

In this research, we look at new and emerging information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in the area of primary education.  Building on our substantial literature review on developments in using ICT to enhance teaching and learning in sub-Saharan Africa, as well as existing projects and NGO work, we investigate how this prior educational technology understanding can be applied to a particular education system in a sub-Saharan country, Zambia, rated one of the lowest developed countries globally (164/182 on the HDI). The overarching goal of this project is to determine how innovative approaches to using educational technologies in conjunction with appropriate pedagogies and learning resources can significantly improve teaching and learning in primary schools in Zambia.

The key question is: Based on our understanding of ICT use in schools and of successful pedagogies such as interactive teaching plus collaborative, project- and enquiry-based learning, and given limited resources, what does an effective ICT-enabled Zambian school look like? Moreover, how can one bring existing initiatives and stakeholders together in synergy to realise this model in a sustainable way?

To address these questions, we participatively compare a number of class-sized sets of different technologies emerging as most promising, including laptops and handheld devices such as tablet PCs, different netbooks (e.g. those aimed at the education sector, those with low-energy screens), WikiReaders, Kindles, calculators plus supportive non-digital tools, such as standard wipe-clean slates and tape measures.

Teachers are developing model lesson plans around the chosen ICTs, paying particular attention to adopting active, collaborative, enquiry-based learning approaches that research indicates are most effective, while addressing issues of gender equity. Each set of technologies is trialled in different school contexts, where we gather qualitative data concerning effectiveness, where criteria for evaluation include usability, software/resource availability, power requirements, robustness, and integration with interactive teaching. Towards the end of the project, we will tentatively generalise the findings to other similar school settings. These generalisations will hopefully be tested in a second phase, that itself will lead to models for ICT-enabling primary schools in Zambia.

Outputs:

An investigation of appropriate new technologies to support interactive teaching in Zambian schools (ANTSIT); A joint report from Aptivate and the Centre for Commonwealth Education (University of Cambridge). Final Report to DfID. (March 2011) Björn Haßler, Sara Hennessy, Tom Lord, Andrew Cross, Alan Jackson, Matthew Simpson
Downloads available of Full Report (2 Mb) with images at 150dpi, or Text only version (600 kb)

ANTSIT presentation at Mobile Technologies for Education: The experience in the developing world. Seminar jointly hosted by the Humanitarian Centre and the Centre for Commonwealth Education (30 March 2011). Click on the link to view screen recording of Prezi presentation by Björn Haßler and Sara Hennessy: http://sms.cam.ac.uk/media/1125779

Usually, it is not possible or desirable to monitor your entire network, as the volume of local traffic can be enormous. Normally it is sufficient to monitor the point where your network connects to your Internet Service Provider (ISP), and record all traffic crossing this point, which is therefore entering or leaving your domain of control (your own network). The interconnection point may be a router, modem, bridge, firewall, switch or access point. Chapter 3 of the Bandwidth Management Book explains network monitoring in more detail.

pmacct, the software which does the actual network logging, provides four options for monitoring the interconnection point between the networks:

Passive Sniffer

You can use your server to monitor passing network traffic in promiscuous mode. Most Unix servers can do this. However, unless you connect the server to a hub or a monitoring port on a switch, your server will not see packets generated by other computers, and this will limit your monitoring ability.

Unix Router

You can use your server as a router between two networks. The server will need two network cards, one connected to each network. The server’s operating system must support routing, but almost all do. You will also need to know how to configure routing and packet forwarding on your server. You may want or need to use NAT between the networks (for example, if you replace an existing router that already does NAT for you). If you already have a Unix server or firewall performing this role, then you might find this setup easiest, as you may not need to change your network structure at all.

Unix Bridge

You can use your server as a bridge between two networks. The server will need two network cards, one connected to each network. The server then acts like a network switch with two ports, copying packets between the networks without modifying them, and recording them at the same time. The server’s operating system must support bridging (e.g. Linux and FreeBSD). You will also need to know how to configure bridging on your server.

Netflow or sFlow

You can use a Cisco or Juniper router to send Netflow or sFlow network accounting records to your Unix server. This removes the need to connect the Unix server directly to the point where the networks meet, as long as the router is already there.

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This page contains a comparison of alternative network monitoring tools to pmGraph. We hope that this is a fair and objective comparison, but please let us know if you disagree, or to suggest other tools for comparison.

• ntop measures total traffic (volume and packets) generated or received by each host on the network, broken down by network protocol and IP protocol (FTP, HTTP, NFS, etc.); current, average and peak bandwidth usage; currently active TCP sessions; and total amount of UDP traffic sorted by port. It does not maintain history across restarts, or allow more detailed measurement such as analysis of remote hosts or traffic flow by time. It captures traffic using Netflow or Pcap.

• BandwidthD graphs traffic by host over time, and produces summary statistics by protocol. It does not maintain history across restarts, or allow more detailed measurements such as analysis of remote hosts or by port number. It cannot display all the individual hosts on a single graph to show comparative and total bandwidth usage. It only captures traffic using Pcap.

• NfSen records traffic by host over time, and produces graphs and reports. It stores data in RRD databases and a custom database format that allows more detailed querying (drilling down). The custom database is not indexed, which makes such queries slow. The RRD databases discard old data automatically to maintain a constant fixed size, which may suit your needs. The NfSen user interface cannot display all the individual hosts on a single graph to show comparative and total bandwidth usage. It does support creating alerts based on conditions, and custom analysis plugins. It only captures traffic using Netflow, so a Netflow sensor is also required.

• Argus and NeTraMet both record traffic flows (source and destination host and port) over time, in custom databases. NeTraMet provides more configuration of detail levels. The database is not optimised for performance and can become quite slow, however it is very space efficient. They do not have graphical user interfaces, and only capture traffic using Pcap. It’s also now possible to store Argus traffic records in a SQL database with rasqlinsert (new feature).

In our view, pmacct fills a unique niche where detailed traffic records are acquired from a variety of sources (pcap, Netflow or sFlow), and stored in a portable, versatile and searchable format (in this case a SQL database), for as long as the administrator desires. However, pmacct did not have a simple graphical user interface, and this is what pmGraph provides.

Summarising the features of each product in a table:

Bandwidth Monitoring and Optimisation (BMO) Tools is an ongoing project to develop user-friendly and intelligent free software that will help network managers to monitor and optimise their Internet connections.

In 2006, Aptivate began a programme of working with the Kenya Education Network (KENET), an ISP for educational institutions, to improve the speed and reliability of Internet access in Kenyan universities. We visited a number of these universities and worked with KENET to develop solutions to the problems that we found, using the tools and techniques in the BMO Book as our starting point.

The results of our research are discussed in our BMO Position Paper. One of the most important outcomes was the need for better understanding of how Internet bandwidth was being used, and by whom. Although the existing tools described in the BMO Book could be used for this, they were difficult to use, required heavy training, and were often forgotten or unused. We felt that the development and free availability of user-friendly tools would help network administrators to manage their networks better. Thus began the BMO Tools project.

We are building a freely distributable package of network administration tools, to assist good network practice. It will include software, documentation, training materials and simulation and learning tools. provide documentation along with network and client tools

The first software deliverable from this project is pmGraph, a tool for simple graphical network monitoring, which is currently available as a separate download.

Aptivate and Loband have received endorsements from a wide variety of organisations and individuals. In 2004 we were awarded the Cambridge University Entrepreneurial award for a non-profit organisation. We are proud of our record of receiving as many endorsements from technical and commercial organisations as from our colleagues in the humanitarian sector.

Users

INTRAC uses Loband to make their website more accessible over low bandwidth connections.

• International NGO Training and Research Centre (INTRAC)

The ICTP in Trieste uses Loband in their Digital Divide Simulator.

• International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP)
• Digital Divide Simulator

GeekCorps use Loband with their “Desert PC” to provide affordable Internet access over a satellite broadband connection in Mali.

• GeekCorps Desert PC

Funding

Loband has been funded by and received grants from:

• The Department for International Development (DFID)
• The Active Community Fund
• Cambridge University Entrepreneurs
• The Allan & Nesta Ferguson Charitable Trust
• The Dischma Charitable Trust
• The Gatsby Charitable Foundation
• Open Gate
• The Sir Halley Stewart Trust
• The UK Department of Trade and Industry
• INTRAC

Quotes

“If their technology proves successful the resulting savings should far out-weigh any initial investment…I would like to give my full endorsement to [Aptivate's] objectives”

- Richard Blewitt, Head of IPADD, British Red Cross, endorsing Aptivate, March 2003

“The success of [Loband] would constitute revolutionary changes in humanitarian relief work in terms of cost, efficiency and the ability to share knowledge between different organisations and individuals.”

- Craig Duncan, ReliefWeb Manager, UN/ OCHA, February 2004

“It would be beneficial for the humanitarian sector as a whole if [Aptivate's] software, supplying cheap and reliable access to information on the web, could become a standard piece of fieldwork equipment over the next few years.”

- James Shepherd-Barron, Director, CARE International, March 2003

“The benefits [Loband] would offer … the Transitional Islamic Government of Afghanistan, and countless other organisations involved in humanitarian reconstruction or development activities would be substantial.”

- David Saunders, Programme Manager, AIMS Project, UNDP (Afghanistan), January 2004

“This is a vital project that will … save vast amounts of time and money…The [Aptivate] team comprises well-known and highly respected names from the field of emergency aid work”

- Gareth Owen, Emergencies Advisor, Asia Regions, Save the Children, March 2003

“… to find an overall business package of this quality that is also not-for-profit and dedicated to the humanitarian sector is, in my experience, quite unique.”

- Walter Herriot OBE, Managing Director, The St. John’s Innovation Centre, Cambridge, February 2004

The source code to Loband is available for download as Free/Libre/Open Source Software. You may use it for any purpose, modify or distribute it, provided that you comply with the terms of the GNU General Public License.

This software is intended to be as accessible as possible. If acceptance of this license conflicts with your interests, please email us at info@aptivate.org to discuss how we might be able to accommodate your requirements.

The source code is written in the Java programming language. The Loband application requires a Java Servlet Engine, such as Apache Tomcat. The only servlet engine which we use for our own deployments and test regularly is Tomcat.

We are also very interested to receive feedback, patches, suggestions and comments from our user community. Please send them by email to info@aptivate.org.

Download

Version	Download Link
2.0-stable-050802	loband-src-050802.zip
1.2-stable-050315	loband-src-050315.zip
1.1-stable-040818	aidbase-src-040818.zip

The latest version is 2.0, released in August 2005. If you would like a more recent version of the source code then please email us at info@aptivate.org.

Read Me First

Please note that this text refers to the 2.0 stable release.

What follows is a summary of the README file contained in the source distribution. For full details please download the source code using the link above.

Loband simplifies HTML pages to reduce bandwidth usage. We hope that this will be useful to people with poor Internet connectivity.

Copyright (C) 2002-2007 Aptivate Humanitarian ICT, Cambridge, UK.

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

Please note that the project download includes some files which are not strictly licensed under the GPL. These include some of the libraries in the lib directory, and test pages in src/org/aidworld/aidbase/testpages and TestPages.

We hereby grant explicit permission to redistribute this source code with any of these files. However, the copyright holders of those files have not themselves granted any such permission. As such, this source code is distributed WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY, not even a warranty that it complies with any licensing or copyright laws in respect to such materials.

If you use or distribute this software together with those components, you do so ENTIRELY AT YOUR OWN RISK. You may of course delete them, and distribute the source code by itself.

Installation

Please download the source code and read the INSTALL file for installation instructions.

In a typical African university the average website would take over 2 minutes to be visible. This is because of large page designs combined with slow connections.

It’s possible to halve the size of a web-page quickly using a few simple techniques.

Aptivate runs half day workshops to show website developers and managers how to optimise the size of websites.

For more information see www.aptivate.org/training

We have produced on-line Web Design Guidelines that describe in detail how to author websites for access over low bandwidth connections. The guidelines include an Outsourcing Guide giving advice on how to outsource website design when a website must be viewable over low bandwidth with a detailed check-list that can be included in a tender document.

We have also collected together a set of tools useful for creating low bandwidth websites and verify low bandwidth designs.

The guidelines were written with the support of the International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publications (INASP)

Aptivate worked with Camfed to evaluate the use of personal digital assistants (PDAs) in field surveys on a project in rural Tanzania. This included:

• applicability in situations with irregular power supply, or no power supply;
• the implications of training local interviewers;
• multi-lingual usage;
• questionnaire software evaluation.

Camfed International