Job offered: Tech support for small online school

Type: Contract
Location: Global program working w/Students in Afghanistan

We are a small, but growing international US-based nonprofit that provides one-on-one online tutoring to students in Afghanistan as a way of advancing peace through caring educational services. Our tutors are all volunteers and based in several countries, including India, the United States, and South Korea, among others.  Our school, Pax Populi Academy (http://academy.paxpopuli.org/) is built around the Moodle learning management system and the BigBlueButton web-conferencing program (http://bigbluebutton.org/). We need someone who can provide tech support to all our community. This would include:

  • Introducing new users to the essential functionality of our Pax Populi Academy and its BigBlueButton videoconferencing program
  • Checking to see if the users’ computers are capable of using our program, in terms of having adequate internet bandwidth and up-to-date software (Flash, Java, browsers, etc.). A 5-minute check for each user could prevent a lot of problems.
  • Assisting those tutors and students who are having problems so as to find a solution. 
  • Keeping a live chat utility open so as to assist users if they run into problems, although we expect that live Chat function to be used very rarely.

 Here is the problem, we are very poor. We survive on donations and very few people donate. We can pay a small amount on a monthly basis, but this would not be a full time job.

 Qualifications:

  • Knowledge of Moodle and BigBlueButton
  • Ability to troubleshoot problems
  • Tech skills to serve as a kind systems administrator support, i.e., ability to work around back end servers
  • Patience to help people who may be experiencing technical problems
  • Excellent communications skills in English are required. Knowledge of Dari/Farsi, a plus but not required

Timing: Although our instructors are around the world, (currently mostly in the US, India, and South Korea, but it changes over time) our students are all in Afghanistan. Given that, the tech support person must be able to operate on Afghanistan time, i.e., UTC + 04:30) 

Our problems are usually with new users and we get an influx of new users around October and February and so those are the busiest periods when we would have the greatest need, but we add new users throughout the year and problems pop up randomly.

References needed. Please send CV and pay requirements (in US$) to info@appliedethics.org

We can pay on an hourly basis, but really we don’t have much money, so this can’t be considered a job that one does for the pay, but more out of support for our work. Thanks for considering this.


Entry added by Robert McNulty - 26 Feb 2016
Last updated - 26 Feb 2016