Big Data is one of the emerging areas that is experiencing staggering growth owing to the importance of data in becoming a key driver in decision making. Partnering with KENET, IBM under its IBM Skills Academy training project concluded a 5-day training on Big Data for University Faculty on Friday March 15, 2019 hosted at the KENET training room.
Our 2018 Annual Community Newsletter is out. Read what we and our members were up to in 2018 from new Management Board Members appointed, new members who joined KENET, and the various event that took place in the year.
For educators, online courses are instrumental in reaching a vast and varied number of students. While aiding to reduce cost significantly, and improve collaboration, online courses meet the ever-rising demand for education. By going the digital way, educators can offer students flexible and simple ways in accessing variety of educational resources in a comfortable learning environment. Therefore, developing an online course requires some expertise to optimize online courses. Here are easy tips to consider when developing an online course.
For educators, online courses are instrumental in reaching a vast and varied number of students. While aiding to reduce cost significantly, and improve collaboration, online courses meet the ever-rising demand for education. By going the digital way, educators can offer students flexible and simple ways in accessing variety of educational resources in a comfortable learning environment. Therefore, developing an online course requires some expertise to optimize online courses. Here are easy tips to consider when developing an online course.
In 2018, over 15 KENET-member Institutions have benefited from Direct Engineering Support (DES) initiatives. KENET DES’s are usually aimed at improving network performance and security, as well as enhance the institution’s staff implementation of transformational changes to ICT resources and Infrastructure. Some of the activities usually carried out during the DES include; backbone network infrastructure survey, Bandwidth Monitoring and Optimization, installation of Wi-Fi Access points to increase wireless coverage and offering recommendations on best practices regarding the network.
KENET is keen on is collaborating with upcoming and established regional and international National Research and Education Networks (NRENs). KENET partnered with the Somali Research and Education Network (SomaliREN) in support of its annual Somali Network Operators’ Group (SomNOG) Conference and workshops held on October 15-21, 2018. KENET made its networking lab accessible to the workshop participants who used it for hands-on lab practice on Routing and Switching.
Under its skills academy program, IBM conducted a one-week Blockchain Developer training for faculty members across Kenya. The training was held between 15-19 October 2018 at the KENET training room. The main objective of the training was to enable faculty to provide students with foundation skills required to develop blockchain applications and get them ready for the job market. The course covered basic concepts required to understand blockchain technology and included hands-on exercises which were conducted on the IBM Cloud Lab hosted at the KENET data center.
KENET has been offering data centre and community cloud services since 2011 when its two data centres at the University of Nairobi (UoN) and United States International University- Africa (USIU- Africa) were commissioned. The data centre services include Server(s)/Rack colocation in the data centres for hosting of institutional systems, web applications, and disaster recovery sites among others.
The KENET Virtual Lab is a research cloud computing platform where researchers can spin up pre-configured virtual appliances on demand, as well as store and share data. Prof. Elijah Ateka, an Associate Professor of Plant Virology in the Department of Horticulture at Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (JKUAT) collaborates with Dr. Laura Boykin from the University of Western Australia (UWA) in a gene sequencing project.
