Simon's Report 27: Back from Tanzania and back to work!
Monday: Ntugi Secondary At Ntugi Secondary school, I was eagerly awaited by students of the Computer Club who were eager to know about my experience in Tanzania where Judy, Godfrey and I had traveled to help start another pilot OLPC project. I shared my photos with them and it was a great motivation to them that we were expanding the OLPC project in East Africa - that will give them more even chances of working with the larger international OLPC movement. Everybody from the group was determined to work hard in the hopes of, one day, having the same opportunity that Judy, Godfrey and I did. Tuesday: Ngarendare Secondary/Lewa Primary I had Judy with me at Ngarendare Secondary where we resumed our activities after our trip to Tanzania. The students had missed our lessons and I was happy with the way they reported punctually to our class. I had a session of a theory class with the half of the club where we discussed computer software and its classification. I used the XO's Sugar and Gnome software as an example as a teaching aid.
Once the school gets power, we have allocated enough laptops that we will be able to engage all the Computer Club members to our practical activities and creating projects. In the afternoon, we proceeded to Lewa Primary school where we met the Lewa Primary kids ready for our lesson and introduced them to the TuxMath Activity. They sharpened their minds by playing rounds where they competed to be the best scorer and we helped them advance to ever more abstract levels of the game. Wednesday: Subuiga Primary
An unlucky day since we had a blackout at Lewa and I was not able to charge the laptops to be used at Subuiga. So, instead I spent the whole day at the Education Center cleaning the XO's and and changing the old labels on the laptops. I also re-imaged the 12 1.5 XO machines at the CEC and they all worked flawlessly.
Thursday: Lewa Conservation Education Centre We had students from Ntumburi Secondary School and they had a chance to utilize the XO laptops in a collaborated Speak Activity where they discussed on the various issues related to conservation. Ephantus Mugo, the Conservation Education Coordinator at the Lewa Wildlife Conservancy helped me to supervise the students and see to it that they were doing the correct thing. They had fun in this as well as they learned a lot about conservation.
Friday: Soccer Competition
On this day, all Lewa-sponsored schools had a girls soccer competition which brought all the kids from the different schools together and we spent the whole day with them at Lewa Social Center. It was but was a pleasure to meet all the schools I work with and see them in a different circumstance... I was confused as to which school I should cheer for!
Post by Simon Mwangangi