KalahariLog

Tanya starts her posts with a local proverb. Since I haven't been told any local proverbs, here's one I was told by a non-local: Don't try to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and it bothers the pig.

Yesterday I participated in a 4-hour long meeting, approving project proposals for 4-th year Computer Science and Computer Information Science undergraduate students. This seems to be similar to what is often called a "capstone" project in the US in that it is a 2-semester affair, supposed to be fairly substantial. Naturally, it is difficult coming up with nearly 100 such projects every year and the process is a little confused as some Professors list a few suggestions for proposals, while others do not. I've had many students come to my door saying things like, "I want to do a business-type project", or "I am interested in a project involving car-rentals". In the end, I wrote 6 visualization-type project descriptions (fractal-generators, proportional maps, etc.) and they went like hotcakes.

Back to the meeting, where about one hundred 1-10page project proposals were being considered. Like anywhere else, some students did a good job, while others tried to fake it. About half of the proposals were approved. Among the rejected ones some were over-ambitious, others were underwhelming, still others just weird. Here are samples from some of the proposals:

1. "There are many vehicles in Botswana both local and Japanese vehicles. Every Motswana now can afford to drive and as such have been an increasing in the number of driving school in Botswana. Some of these driving schools are registered official while other is not. Our road are does not met the escalating number of vehicles and as such the number of accident occur every day. This accident affects our economy. There is a need to change the behavior, attitude or habit of our drivers."

2. "The system will strive to achieve data accuracy by verifying data accuracy."

3. "An index is essentially a means of comparing changes in the total cost of the basket of goods and services from point in time to the other."

4. "FedEx is a catering company that has been outsourced to provide feeding services to the students dwelling on the campus in UB. So many students prefer staying on campus, mean while, students have been complaining that the company exploits them, so they demanded to be given their meal allowances on hand so that they can expend on the food they prefer, some where else."

5. "It is hard for shoppers to decide on prices and availability of goods, where to do their shopping. Shopping in bulk and for long hours can be exhausting and sometimes even taking away the pleasure of acquiring new products e.g. clothes, though this many only be temporary with female shoppers."

6. "For analysis, I am going to collect facts needed for the development of Spell Checker System e.g. research. I will design a research algorithm that will look up the word in the array (computerized dictionary) and give feedback to the user. The database will be designed as storage fro computerized dictionary. The approach that will be used is Object Oriented approach, this means that the command buttons, labels, instructions etc will be easy to follow and understandable."

7. "The aim of this project is to design and implement a system that will sensitize the users about the type of materials when constructing a dam, maintaining if cracks develops in order to avoid dam failure."

8. "During the transformation of the natural application understandable form, some of the word(s) in the input text message are passed to the English lexicon parser for clarity and simplicity. After transformation the repository is queried and the results also undergo transformation process that will transmute the results into natural language for understandability purposes."

9. "Cattle tracking system will be a solution to farmers who tends to be losers after spending a lot of money in raising their livestock (cattle), and go missing.... If the cattle were taken by Matimela people (Those responsible for trapping all cattle found sailing along the roads and other restricted areas), what farmers are expected to do is to use the system to locate their missing cattle."

10. "It is not startling that we find that the history of elections is cluttered with election manipulation in order to influence the outcome of the elections. Generic Electronic Voting System, (GEVS) is a computer-based system designed to eradicate election imperfections... In a nutshell, GEVS is trying to obviate all the blemishes that have been a consociated with the election process, at the same time quickening the whole process. GEVS makes the election process financially cheap, effective, efficient, fair, and free."

11. "Considering today's advanced technology and the short human life span, animating (giving life) of data structures has become a much needed concept in the world. Today most of the people don't or have less time of studying how other things works, so giving life to other (data structure in computer science) will bring much needed understanding of them (The cannot communicate for themselves)."

12. "Now having observed and analyzed the past elections I was compelled to develop a system in order to solve some if not all the problems faced by the current system. "

13. "The use of Information Technology made life easier in education institution in the 19th century; however Junior Secondary Schools around Botswana does not use Information Technology to its maximum use."