December is usually the time in year to look back and be amazed how fast time flies. Another year is gone. We have now been in Cambodia two full years. Of course we would love to see progress happening much faster, but we have to get used to the fact that we are not in the engineering predictable world to which we are used. The project is pretty complex and above all it implies people of a very different culture changing their normal mode of operation. With this context in mind, I think we can be proud of our achievements and 2010 is definitely looking more exciting than ever with the perspective of a broader deployment and more disadvantaged students using our system.

December 2009 Update

Project Management:

• Netadded European Project is closed. We’ve held our final project review in Oct09 in Toulouse and delivered all final documentation. Netadded project leaders complimented our achievements and were rather happy to have had Connected Schools as a partner for these last 2 years.
• Pascal participated to an international conference on e-learning in Vancouver. Some interesting contacts have been established in particular with Sir John Daniel (President of the Common Wealth of Learning) and Chairman of the conference. We couldn't agree more on the crucial importance of Vocational Training in emerging countries and Sir Daniel was really interested by our initiative and asked to keep in touch. After one week of presentations, no one seems to have already implemented what we are trying to do in Cambodia.
• Sebastien, Jeanne, Robin and Pierre are now all back home in France, facing a readjustment to their own culture after the time spent in Cambodia. 

Training content creation:

Long term we want to partner with major NGO’s operating in the children education sector and propose them to record their best teachers’ trainings and store them on a common database. This way all contributors would be in a position to access others trainings, i.e. retrieve more than they give and the multimedia database will grow regularly. But we need to have a palatable initial offer in order to get people excited and ready to contribute and we are not quite there yet. This is why we need help to develop the following additional content in 2010:

• Agriculture: we have initiated discussion with the CEDAC (Centre Etudes pour le Développement Agricole du Cambodge) to record a subset of the following modules in khmer http://www.cedac.org.kh/ . CEDAC has a good reputation of professionalism in Cambodia. They operate and are known also in rural areas. They actually already have a set of short DVD on various topics targeted at local farmers.
• Business Life behaviors: Young Khmer students are virtually illiterate when it comes to basic business skills and behaviors. Work has started with CIST to record their Business Life Training in e-learning format, using Courseware.
• Don Bosco: Finally we are continuing recordings of Don Bosco teachers in the following modules: Electrical Motor repair, Small Engine repair and Welding.

Network Deployment:

• We have established and tested a direct high speed radio link between Phnom Penh and Angtasom (64km) with only one relay in Tramkhnar (half way). Thanks to this, we now have a perfect quality communication between all connected sites, enabling videoconferencing among many other features. We will celebrate this major achievement in our next project review in January.
• The latest Skype version (V4) has desktop sharing as built in feature. Although it comes with some limitations, it is a major step forward for all the users who will not have to learn yet another tool. The limitations are that it is point to point, it does not allow taking control of the remote desktop and uses the same bandwidth as a video stream, i.e. around 300kbs continuous.

Wireless Communications Training:

• Mobitel has been asking us to customize a “1 day training for non technical people” and a “3 days training for new hires”. Both trainings are under final review with Mobitel management. Hopefully these will lead to some actual employees training early 2010.

• Valentine is now proceeding at a regular pace with evening classes for CIST students. Classes are running smoothly and all parties are enjoying themselves a lot. Students are eager to learn and Valentine is eager to teach.

New design:

The team is finalizing the design of a standalone distant learning suitcase. The suitcase contains a notebook computer, an LED projector with built in loudspeaker, three wired microphones, an Interactive Whiteboard (Wii), a 12V battery and associated DC-DC converters. This will enable a 2 hours meeting with PPT presentation and videoconference with multiple speakers without ANY wires, neither electricity nor telephone.

Future Project:

G.O.AL : CIST and Connected Schools are partnering to launch the G.O.AL project (Giving On Line Access to Education). The main project purpose is to take our pilot project to the next level, i.e. a Nationwide Education Network to facilitate children and students vocational trainings in Cambodia. To that end of course we need help from other partners:

• A Telecom operator to connect Vocational Training Centers in other regions to the Internet at a very low monthly fee. This would also give VTC's access to our Multimedia Training Database server. We’ve met again with Smart Mobile Telecom. They confirmed their enthusiasm and full support of the G.O.AL project as they are now starting to deploy Wimax.
• Don Bosco, CEDAC and others to create good quality e-learning content in many more domains...
• Grant providers to fund the project. We’ve met the Asia Development Bank (ADB), the Gesellshaft fuer Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ), the Asia Foundation, the Agence Française pour le Développement (AFD), the Information society International Fund (ISIF)...
• Ministry of Labor and Vocational Training to endorse and drive the project implementation with us.

Smart Mobile has agreed to connect all six Cambodia Regional Vocational Training Centers free of charge as part of their Corporate Social Responsibility. These are located in the towns of: Battambang, Takeo, Svay Rieng, Steung Treng, Kampot and Sihanoukville. This will enable the connection of these centers to:

• Internet
• Our multimedia training content server
• Phom Penh major training institutions
  

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