Every June and July, we provide internship placements for computer students in Uganda. These students usually undergo intensive training for two months on various skills in computing.
At Innovation Streams,we carry out industrial training for computing students as a way of sharing knowledge and giving back to society. Our industrial training is solely aimed at promoting and encouraging computing in Uganda. We train the students on how they can begin and run their startups in Uganda.
Each of the 8 weeks during training is dedicated to a different topic of study. In the 1st week, students usually learn the basics of hardware including hardware identification and repair. In the 2nd week, students are taken through basics of networking including creating Local area networks, wireless networks and network administration. In the 3rd week, students go through web application development.They are usually given various systems to work on.In the 4th week, students are given various business tasks to handle. This is the entrepreneurship week. In the 5th week, students go to the details of hardware repair with emphasis on laptop repair.In the 6th week, students again go through advanced techniques in networking including routing, switching and mobile phone networks. During this week,they visit a telecommunication company to learn about mobile phone networks. In the 7th week, students go through mobile apps development.They are guided on how to develop a mobile app. In the 8th week, students cover project planning and management.
We began carrying out industrial training in 2012 with 12 students. These students went through training in various skills including hardware identification and repair, software development and computer networking. In 2013, we had 48 students. We spiced up our industrial training with entrepreneurship skills and mobile apps development. During the business week, students were given various tasks including: online advertising, social media marketing, branding through graphics development and email marketing. These were aimed at teaching the students how to sell and market their products. We also worked with the students to organize a “Free Computer care day”. Some of the photos of the free computer care day can be found here.On this day, we invited the general public to bring their faulty computers and have them repaired for free. On that day, we repaired over 100 computers together with the students. This was done to help the students interact with the market and improve their problem solving skills. In addition, we worked with Uganda Telecom to have the students learn the basics of mobile phone communications. Students got a chance to visit the Uganda Telecom switching center in Mbarara, where they were able t learn various things about telecommunications and mobile phone networks. In 2014, we had 25 students who went through a similar experience. In 2015, we hope to spice up the training. Students will undergo a month of computer hardware, software, networking and entrepreneurship. Thereafter, a student will spend the next month concentrating on their preferred area of study.