Using Open Practices to Increase Computer Literacy
By John Griffiths | A spotlight on a Sprint for Internet Health project
Alumanda Shakankale (@alushaks) is a Microsoft Certified Educator and Information Communications and Technology (ICT) Specialist. Alumanda was selected to join the current round of Mozilla Open Leaders with her project the Lwiiyo Community Literacy Initiative. A motivated individual and entrepreneur who’s working to empower others with the tools they need to achieve their dreams.
I interviewed Alumanda Shakankale to learn more about Lwiiyo Community Literacy Initiative and how you can contribute to the project.
What is Lwiiyo Community Literacy Initiative?
The Community Literacy Initiative is focused on increasing Computer Literacy within our communities, helping empower individuals to control their destiny.
Why did you start Lwiiyo Community Literacy Initiative?
We realised the following challenges:
- Lack of project based training
- Lack of proper awareness on collaborative tools
- Low number of Zambian participation in open source projects
What does Lwiiyo mean? How did you choose this name?
Lwiiyo is the “ Education” translated in one of our local languages (Tonga).
We came up with this name because we were looking to come up with a local name that described what the project is all about.
What would consider unique about this project?
The project identifies key issues with the Information Communications and Technology (ICT) syllabus in schools and provide training materials and support to overcome those hurdles. In addition it produces ICT training material tailored to our local communities.
What challenges have you faced working on this project?
I think the main challenge was giving the project a structure and planning how best to link whats happening online (people contributing training material) and offline (actual training).
What kind of skills do I need to contribute to your project?
We’re looking for individuals to help with:
- Project Management
- Programming
- ICT Security
- Basic Computer literacy
How can others contribute to your project?
Either via GitHub or Facebook, they can also volunteer their time through conducting in-person trainings.
How has the Open Leaders program helped you with your project?
Firstly having a mentor to talk to about the project has helped open my mind and give it new direction. Also the different interactions from the weekly calls have also helped as I got to get ideas on how best the project can be implemented, I also learnt a lot from other OL7 participants.
What meme or gif best represents your project?
Join us wherever you are during the month of May at Mozilla’s Sprint for Internet Health to work on many amazing open projects! Join a diverse network of scientists, educators, artists, engineers and others in person and online to hack and build projects for a health Internet.
This post by John Griffiths is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
