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Education

Wikipedia is 24 years old!

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On 15 January 2025, Wikipedia turned 24 years old and I gave a small interview to the Mauritius Broadcasting Corporation (MBC) to explain how Wikipedia works and how it is still very valuable in our era of ChatGPT, especially for young people. The interview was shown during the 19:30 news broadcast on 22 January.

Wikipedia has become the largest collection of user-contributed and user-corrected content on the planet. Today, it has more than 6 million articles in English (and large amounts in other languages too) and is easily one of the most visited websites.

I spoke about how I discovered Wikipedia in 2005 and, since then, have made about 250 corrections. Millions of people contribute in the same way for different kinds of articles and this is why I really believe that Wikipedia is the best online resource for multidisciplinary people like me. I would really love to have more polymaths in Mauritius and I believe that Wikipedia can help us do this.

Wikipedia, as the largest and most interesting encyclopedia on the planet, can be very valuable in class too. For example, General Paper teachers could use its “random article” feature to explore interesting topics with their students. This is true for any kind of class though: it is just a question of devoting, say, one hour every week to have fun by exploring things which, ahem, are not necessarily in the syllabus.

The Future of Lifelong Learning and TVET during Going Global Africa 2024

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I was in Abuja, Nigeria, from 26 to 28 November 2024 for the Going Global Africa 2024 conference, organised by the British Council of Nigeria in collaboration with the Federal Ministry of Education of Nigeria.

I participated in a panel on “The Future of Lifelong Learning” with a focus on Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET). The panel was chaired by Roshan Teeluck, Freelance TVET Consultant, British Council, Mauritius and my other two panelists were Ayanda Makhanya, Programme Lead StartUp Academy, Allan Gray Makers, South-Africa, and
Joshua Valeta, Director of Open Distance and e-Learning, Ministry of Education, Malawi.

Ayanda Makhanya and Joshua Valeta spoke about current initiatives in South Africa and Malawi to promote Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) and education in general.

In particular, a new generation of entrepreneurs and startup founders, having been trained in TVET, are contributing to make South Africa more innovative. As these people are skilled, they can readily provide solutions to problems being faced by citizens there.

In Malawi, technology, and especially e-learning, is being used to transform. Technical and Vocational Education and Training. An interesting initiative is the use of electronic devices such as tablets by students but, contrary to many countries, course content which is relevant and updated on a regular basis is being developed.

My own intervention focussed on the Mauritian experience. In particular, I explained that it is important for policy-makers to have a clear vision of what the country needs to be in the next, say, 10 years. From this vision, growth sectors, enablers (such as innovation and technology, including Artificial Intelligence) and potential jobs identified. This can then drive policies in education to create a workforce which can contribute towards this vision.

I explained what emerging technologies might be useful in Africa in the short term and how Deep Learning can be very valuable for the creation of digital assistants for students, teachers, civil servants, those working in the private sector and citizens in general.

Based on my own experience in Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) in Mauritius, I explained how important it is for a country to have a critical mass of technicians as opposed to only having degree holders.

The session was followed by an extensive Q&A where the panelists spoke about digital public goods (based on open-source solutions) as well as career guidance structures to be put in place in a country to create its workforce of tomorrow.

At the end, I mentioned that it is never about hardware or software, but about people(ware). The No 1 asset of Africa, including Mauritius, is its people.

Thinking differently using different kinds of computers

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I started university in 1993 in Réunion Island. I had obtained a French scholarship and I enrolled for a “Diplôme d’Études Universitaires Générales (DEUG) Sciences et Structures de la Matière” (which was mostly a Diploma in Maths and Physics with a bit of Computer Science).

During my statistics classes, I used an Apple Mac Centris 650 (also known as the Quadra 650). My best souvenir, from 30 years ago, is getting my stats assignments by email, doing them in Excel 5.0 (which was so quick and lean) and sending my work to my teacher by email. This was a time where there was no Internet in Mauritius.

This made me realise that the future would probably have less paper.

I arrived in Lyon in France in 1995 and started my “Diplôme d’Ingénieur en Informatique” (a Master’s Degree in Computer Science) at the “Institut National des Sciences Appliquées” (INSA Lyon).

At INSA, I used a PC running Windows NT 3.51 mostly to access a Sun Solaris server (named ifhamy). My favourite computer, which I could use in my Computer Science labs, was an HP 9000 Model 712 UNIX workstation. It ran HP-UX and I used it a lot for programming but also to marvel at the user interface powered by the Common Desktop Environment. I became very productive creating virtual desktops and switching between them.

This made me realise that computers of the future would adapt to the user instead of the other way around.

In 1998, I started doing an internship in a French startup called Technodigit which was acquired a few years later by Leica Geosystems AG which is itself part part of Hexagon. There, I used a Silicon Graphics Indy running IRIX (a UNIX) workstation to write C++ code to manage millions of vertices and edges in 3D models of objects which had been scanned with a 3D laser scanner. I loved using the Silicon Graphics Integrated Development Environment (IDE) with its debugger as well as discovering Open Inventor, a library to create graphical applications. I fondly remember using the first SGI port of the HP Standard Template Library (STL) for C++.

This made me realise that “professional” computers could be fun to use and beautiful things could be discovered every day. Of course, having owned a Commodore Amiga 500 when I was an adolescent, I knew computers were fun but I hadn’t realised that all computer could be fun.

Today

At the end of 2024, I routinely use a number of computers and computing devices.

My main computer is an Apple Mac mini M1 and I have configured it to be very enjoyable to use too. I use that computer for everything I do, from the most “serious” work to composing my music. I spend a lot of time in the terminal writing programs and scripts too. When I am on the move, I use an Apple MacBook Air M1. It’s mostly a clone of the Mac mini except for the music software. Both run macOS which is a kind of UNIX.

My main phone is a Samsung Galaxy S23 FE and I also have a backup, a OnePlus 7T. Both run Android which has a Linux kernel. I use my phone as a phone (duh) but also for automating some tasks (I like using Tasker) and connecting to my various computers using SSH. Finally, I have a server at home running Fedora Linux as well as a server on the cloud running Debian Linux.

I am thinking of getting a computer in the future running Windows in order to play games but, for the time being, I do not use Windows.

And, seriously, I have a lot of fun using these different kinds of devices, running different operating systems and, well, having different idiosyncrasies (or ways of doing things!).

I love being “forced” to think differently every day. I don’t like living in uniformity.