Training on Thin Client in Tanzania
Posted on Jul 4, 2017 12:00 AM by Close The Gap
Close the gap would not exist without the strong, supportive and dedicated commitment of its partners in industrialized, emerging and developing countries. Close the Gap’s longtime partner Nederlandse Spoorwegen (NS), the Dutch Railway company, donated more than 1.000 thin clients that will be re-deployed throughout various projects.
This marked the perfect opportunity to engage with Realdolmen, another of Close the Gap’s longtime partners. Realdolmen has donated IT equipment for many years now and went the extra mile by offering to travel to Tanzania to provide a 1 week training to a local African partner on the use of thin clients.
Jeroen Staal and Kevin Bauwens from Realdolmen provided training to Theodory J Agutu and Elly Maduhu Nkonya from Exponential Technology (Tanzania), Franck Bigirimana from GLICE (Burundi), Dan Muganzi from CFSU (Uganda), Miriam Ndavi and Joseph Oliech from CFSK (Kenya) and Ally Abubakar Kodi and Thomas Massawe from ACTT. Our colleague Peter Manderick, Close the Gap’s Head of Projects was also part of the training!
The programme included:
- Intro to Linux
- Intro to thin clients
- Installation and configuration of a thin client
- Installation and configuration of servers
- Installation of the remote area community hotspot for education and learning package (RACHEL), an open, online educational platform with educational content. Racheloffline.org
In the coming months a batch of thin clients will be sent to all participants, so they can start pilot projects in their respective regions. We will keep you posted!
What is a thin client?
A thin client is a lightweight computer that is purpose-built for remoting into a server (typically cloud or desktop virtualization environments). It depends heavily on another computer (its server) to fulfill its computational roles.
"Discussing with the participants during or after the training sessions made clear that the basic human right for education as we know it in Europe is not that obvious. Yes, everybody in Tanzania can have education but the lack of school material and infrastructure makes it harder. Tanzanian people realize that decent education is vital for their future and are very willing to invest time & money to make sure their kids can go to proper schools. They are also very aware that future prosperity for them depends on education. In that respect the importance of organisations such as Close the Gap cannot be stressed enough. This project was an eye-opener to me: in Western Europe we take decent and objective education for granted. It is not." - Jeroen Staal, Realdolmen