Looking for oportunities - and they appear

Access to the Internet has been described as a bottleneck and it is often felt to be the No One obstacle when needed and missed. Never the less it is quite often the case that this problem can be significantly reduced when the approach is to look for oportunities.

This was the case when Ohide and Fauzia sat together analyzing the oportunities for the instructors at the Multi Services Training Center in Juba to access the Internet at the MTC. A pattern of oportunities appeared and it became obvious that planning and coordination will have the experiences of possible access to improve.

Fatin, Ohide, Fauzia and Ben during a short break during the Saturday workshop at Mango Camp by the River Nile in Juba.

Imporvement of Practice and Internet Access

Having access to the Internet is an important part when technical vocational teachers in Southern Sudan are sharing information and learning together through their blogging. It also enables communication with the Sudanese and other Master's Degree Students in Vocational Pedagogy whether they are in Kampala or in Norway. It enables the Master's Degree Students to support the advancement of technical vocational practice in Southern Sudan through their blogs as well as through questioning and commenting in the blogs of the technical vocational teachers. Such a collaboration can become a very powerful force in strengthening the technical vocational learning and practices.

The comments of Barnaba Mayor and Fatin Osman to Towongo Steven's blog serves as a good example of such a collaboration across the geographical border between Uganda and Sudan. Barnaba Mayor is one out of seven Southern Sudanese Master's Degree Students in Vocational Pedagogy under the NOMA program in Uganda. Fatin Osman is a lecturer at Upper Nile University in Malakal participating in the Norwegian FK Staff Exchange program.

In a later post Towongo reflects upon the thoughts of Barnaba and Fatin and by that demonstrating the power of Internet supported collaborative learning.

However, lack of access to the Internet must not be allowed to become an obstacle to the daily and systematic work of ours to improve our professional practice. Pen and paper are still important tools as well as the ability to observe and to co-create rich professional dialogs. Asking critical questions during our search for information to increase our understanding and to improve our practice is still vital. When this is done and perhaps even documented by pen and paper, then the access to Internet-publishing might be a limitation.

Joining The NUCOOP Technical Vocational BlogSphere

Most of the instructors at the Multi-Services Training Center in Juba, which is supported by JICA and SAVOT have now joined The NUCOOP Technical Vocational BlogSphere.

The NUCOOP Technical Vocational BlogSphere is a network of bloggers whom are one way or an other connected to the Upper Nile University's and Akershus University's efforts to support the development of the techical vocational education in Southern Sudan. This is a pert of the NUCOOP program which is a USD 10 mill initiative to support collaboration and development within higher education in Southern Sudan and Norway.

The participants in the workshop from the MTC in Juba in front of the tuckles at Mango Camp.

Why have I joined this workshop?

On Monday March 23rd the questions were many at the opening of the workshop in Technical Vocational Teacher Development for the instructors at the Multiple Training Center in Juba.

The over all umbrella of the Technical Vocational Teacher Development program is the question How can I improve my practice?

Based upon each individual instructor's experience from his teaching questions like what is the most important area for me to improve? Is it my techniques, subject matter knowledge or do I have to work to improve the teaching and learning environment?

How can I improve my practice?

This is the guiding question which the 19 participants in the first workshop in the Technical Vocational Teacher Development program ask them selves. Monday February 16th they started on a journey of collaborative efforts of systematic improvement of their professional practice.

Each of the participants have created their own blog on which they intend to share accounts of their professional practice and their experiences regarding their efforts of improvements. The improvements planned by the participants cover different areas of teaching practice, as communications, drawing of technical models, community mobilization, demining, business skills, data collection, basic English grammar, surgical nursing, methodology of self improvement, introduction to carpentry tools to mention a few.


During the spring of 2009 the intention is that the Technical Vocational Teacher Development program will contribute to the establishment of a Southern Sudanese Technical Vocational blogsphere. This part of the program is partly inspired by the work of Jack Whitehead with Living Educational Theory at the University of Bath in England.

The Technical Vocational Teacher Development program offered by Akershus University College and Upper Nile University is a part of the NOK 65 million NUCOOP program for capacity building in Sudan partly financed by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs via The Norwegian Center for International Cooperation in Higher Education (SIU). SIU is a public Norwegian agency that promotes international cooperation in education and research.

Connected to the Internet via Norway

It is pretty strange, but highly effective to be located in Afrca and connecting to the Internet via sattelite and a Norwegian ISP. Thursday February 19th the Teacher Development program workshop in Yei had the pleassure of visiting NPA Mine Action in Sudan at their compound in Yei and enjoying their hospitallity and their excellent Internet connection.

Working with capacity building and creating a sphere of documentation of vocational practices and knowledge troughout Southern Sudan, other countries in East Africa and Norway is dependant upon a reasonable access to the Internet.

The Vocational Teacher Development learning groups in Yei

Five learning groups were established during the workshop of the The Vocational Teacher Development program in Yei.

The teachers are supporting each other while collaborating. In their learning group dialogs they are sharing experiences and brain storming. This enables them to improve their creation of knowledege as a team and as individuals.

Fraser, Lagu, Agreement and Steven are in learning group one.





Otim, Clara and George are in learning group two.





Moses, Agnes, Anthony and Amule are in learning group no three.





Nsubuga, Batli, Kenyi and Nasra are in learning group four.





Abraham, Atimaku Justo and Atom are in learning group five.