A Day in the Lyfe: Diary of an OLPCorps Crazy

And Several Weeks Later....

We find our three intrepid explorers deep in the midst of their teaching experience. Apologies for writing so infrequently but there really has been little time to do so as we've just had so much to do.
Each morning we arise around 7 to have breakfast next door at Mr. Orock's house, prepared by Mr. Orock's charming wife Madame Amelia or one of her many helpers in the kitchen such as Big M, Claudette, or Judith. From here we proceed, rain or shine, up the path which resembles more a river bed when dry, a real river when precipitating to the UAC Compound that includes the Cyber Cafe where I am writing, the Nursery School where the UAC Summer Holiday Classes take place and the UAC office where it all began and where we store the laptops each evening, and where the younger students ages 7 to 10 in our laptop classes are taught.
Depending on the day or the weather we may do Harambee with the kids before we start, a program we do at home in Philadelphia with our afterschool children that involves many cheers and chants to get excited about learning. The word come from a Swahili tradition and means "Everyone pulls together", needless to say the kids really love it and we often catch them clapping and singing the chants on their own outside of class.
Then we split the students up and the older ones ages 11 to 13 come with me, transported by the signature UAC vans, to Bwitingi, a nearby village where the new Jamadianle school has been built and where there is a larger hall to accommodate them.
Our classes run from 9 to 11 and we have accomplished several learning projects designed to emphasize the basics and to challenge the creativity of the students while they are also introduced to new programs and the many capabilities of the XO. Over the past few weeks the students in the older class have created superheroes and drawn them in paint, imported their pictures into write and written a back story to their heroes lives. They then went on Wikipedia and copied selections from different scientific articles relating to their heroes superpowers and pasted these under a separate section of their profiles. They have also made numbered lists of things describing themselves and then had the lists taken and mixed up so that they had to play a game to find out who each list described. They have taken notes in Write using bulleted lists on Mesh Networking and used chat to talk to each other. They have explored Memorize and made their own Memorize games matching phrases in their local Pidgin dialect to phrases in standard English, which they then swapped and played each others games. Most recently we talked about story writing, about setting, plot, conclusion and characters, after which I gave them a list of different animals and a list of themes from which they picked to write their own fairy tales. On Monday they will be making scenes from their stories, which they illustrated with photos and painted pictures today, come to like in Scratch, as the list I provided was made up only of animals that are options as Sprites. Also starting on Monday they will have the opportunity to sign-out their personal laptop at the end of the day and take it home with them, something we have been planning so as to happen in the most efficient and organized manner so that the students can share their work with their families and explore at home, while still guaranteeing that we are able to use the laptops in the other innovative capacities we are exploring.
At 11 after the 100 students have their class, we have alternating classes from the Jamadianle School Summer Classes come in accompanied by their teachers to go through a lesson that serves the dual purpose of introducing the XO's to these students as well as giving the teachers experience using them in he classroom.
At noon we have a teacher training two days a week, and the other days just have time to get all the laptops plugged in and charging before we are do back at the Orock's house for lunch at 1pm.
At 4 pm, after a short rest break (read: time to do laundry or write a blog) We take a load of the charged XOs along with sports equipment out to some of the villages surrounding the town of Buea. We play games with these children and then let them play on the XOs as part of the UAC's village outreach called the Summer Holiday Caravan. Many of these children have never seen a computer before and so it is quite a challenge to work with them to where they have enough ability to explore and do things on their own.
We return from the caravan just after 6, and with the evening fading fast we rush to put away all the laptops and chargers so that we can make it back to the house for supper before the darkness makes walking along the slippery uneven road a sure recipe for a mud covered bum and a severely injured pride.

That's a day in the life of Team DBF Cameroon, its supper time now and I am ravenous, more on our trips and some challenges soon, until next time folks!

A Whole New Class of Crazy

Wednesday arrived before we knew it and as we were seated waiting for our breakfast at the Orock's house Barclay arrived to inform us that already there were many students waiting outside the hall for the program, which was scheduled to start at 9. It was just after 8. In a place where we were accustomed to most things beginning hours even after they were supposed to this was a strong sign that we would be in for quite a turnout, and so it was with much anticipation that we quickly ate our breakfast and made our way to the hall, which was about a 5 minute walk towards the main road. We could here the commotion from quite a distance as we approached and as we arrived we observed many many students waiting outside the hall, some lined up in front of the door while others chased each other around the yard of the compound or sat on the steps chatting. We obviously had way more students that could easily fit into the small hall we had set up the previous night, and though we were already planning ot split the group up and use the greater space of the new Jamadianle campus a few miles away, we had to make do with what we had the first few days and so preceded to pack more tables and chairs into the room, as well as set some up outside the door as it was not raining for once that morning. once we had all the students assembled in some seat or another, we preceded to pass out the laptops with instructions that they should leave them alone until we had given one to everyone, which they surprisingly followed, perhaps as a result of their respect for adults and experience with discipline, or maybe just that they had no idea how to open the laptop and turn it on. That was fine by us, we had prepared the lesson for the day to cover the most fundamental basics, so that we were starting from a level where every child could participate and make progress, even if they had never seen a computer before. We began by asking if anyone knew how to open the XO and 1 or 2 hands raised up, allowing us to have these students do their best to demonstrate to the class the process of flipping up the ears (antenna) and separating the screen from the keyboard to where it resembled a computer of a sorts at least, though one that looked more at home on Neptune than planet earth. We preceded to call on volunteers or demonstrate ourselves how to maneuver the mouse, how to click on activities, to open them and to close them properly, all of which took some time, but time well spent in the hope that once these basic skills were mastered the lessons to come would flow much smoother. I also introduced a few key catchphrases that I hoped would help the students remember some important things about using the XO and creating a good classroom environment. The first one was "you have the power" meaning that each student was in charge of monitoring their own battery life and raising their hand to call for a charger when the light turned red and it needed to be plugged in, this way we were not required to grow the 8 eyes and arms of a spider in order to be constantly looking at battery life and hooking up chargers so that the classroom didn't devolve into a massacre of powerless computers. The second phrase was "the best pupil is a helper" which was meant to emphasize that they should rely on and look to each other first for help in understanding things, by showing each other how to do things they would learn better themselves and tale some of the burden off us for explaining everything multiple times. The third and certainly most cliche was "sharing is caring" and this was just to make the point that we wanted them to do good work that they would be proud of and anything that they had done well they should always be ready to share with the class to appreciate what they had done. By the end of the lesson each child was plugging away playing the maze activity and navigating to the homescreen and beyond, and by the time we dismissed them at 12 we had come to several major realizations. First off was that 3 hours each morning was much too long, especially with teacher trainings and Summer Holiday Caravan in the afternoons, so we resolved to have class from 9 to 11 each morning. Second thing was that despite any doubts we had had about our recruitment efforts, we certainly had no issue getting 100 students and as soon as possible we would need to finalize the list of those that were registered and take many of them to the other campus before out small hall exploded. Above all we realized that we were going to have an awesome summer and that working with all the students who were so excited it almost provided enough electricity to power the room would be an incredible experience. All said we were pretty darn tired though, and an after lunch nap before hitting the villages with the caravan was highly in order.

The OLPC Launchapalooza!

When i previously said "all that has to be done is have the launching" i perhaps misrepresented, or was rather, ignorant of, the massive undertaking that this would be, so let me begin by describing some of the preparations. On Sunday we went to the market, which was experience enough in itself, several of the other volunteers had been before to buy fabric for dresses (of which there is a really amazing variety of some truly awesome patterns) but I had not been before, and not with the same mission to accomplish. Our journey was lead by Madam Amelia, Mr Orock's wife and a lady of considerable force. We began by haggling over some chickens, which involved pulling them up by their wings and shaking them to test their weight while they squawked and struggled. We ended up buying 8, at which point they were stuffed into a burlap sack we had brought and tossed in the van, while we went in search of the other necessities for the reception that would be a part of our launching ceremony and included fish, nuts, onions, yams, oil, eggs, and wine, though Mr. Orock had already picked some of this up on his way back from Yaounde. Loaded with all of this several hours later we returned home and most of the others fell to napping, while Brittney and I were invited to help, or rather, watch, the preceding taking place behind the house. Though we missed the beheading we did arrive in time for the boiling and plucking of the dear fowl, and the gutting of the fish in great quantities for the fish pie we would be enjoying the previous day. This was some rather gory work and so after a while we begged off to go and prepare our presentation for the next day. We wanted something that introduced the XO in an exciting way that would also demonstrate some of its potential but also not lose the momentum of the speaches and other exciting aspects of the ceremony. What we came up with was to make a short narration asking the audience to imagine a world where every shild had access to their own laptop and where they and their teachers worked together to advance their education, providing the tools to the children to explore on their own and chart a successful path through life and one that would enefit not only them but their communities on the whole as well. We would then announce that that world was not far off and that our program was seeking to do just that. Then we would introduce the star of the show, the XO laptop, and have an XO hooked up to a pair of speakers greet the audience and announce the launch of our program using the Speak activity, really giving a face to associate these mysterious computers with. With this and a prayer we decided to retire for the night and finish with the preparations the next morning, with the ceremony scheduled to start at 10 am, Africa Time of course. The next day we had breakfast with the other volunteers and Madame Amelia took care to inform us that she and the other kitchen help had been up to 2 am the cooking for the occassion, a tremendous effort for which we were extremely greatful. We arrived at the Hall at the Jamadianle School arounf 10, having spent some time packing the 20 boxes containing all 100 of the laptops into a van to take over and set up. Once we arrived at the hall we found that the other volunteers had already arrived and there were also a good many kids chatting in the white and purple chairs we had set up the previous day. There were several tables set up nice with table clothes, presumably for the more distinguished clientel that would be arriving to join in the occassion. We quickly unloaded the laptops and set them up around the long table in the center, and then fell to our number one pasttime, waiting. As we sat the rain started to come down even harder and we began to doubt that anyone would brave downpour to attend our launching ceremony, but before too long people began to arrive, along with a massive speaker system and the rest of the UAC staff and we were ready to rock and roll. Among the officials that arrived were the Director of the school project in Mamfe, Mr. Orock's hometown and a place we would be bringing the XO's later in the summer, the directors of several sister NGO's there to support the UAC, the Regional Delegate for Basic Education, the Regional Delegate for Youth Affairs, the Mayor of Buea, and several other important personages. To this distinguished audience we made our introductions and began our presentation. After the centerpiece XO announced the official launch and thanked everyone for attending all of the audience erupted in applause for its computerized performance and the Regional Delegate for Basic Education and then the Mayor delivered long and strident speeches that the audience cheered on at several occassions, and Mr. Orock made his own address to the crowd. During these precedings several of us were called outside to give interviews to the TV station crew that was present and we tried to but on our most professional demeanors for the cameras. The ceremony cumlminated in the government officials each presenting one of the XO's to one of the teachers from the Jamadianle school and we then gave the teachers a mini lesson to demonstrate some of the more impressive features. By this point the time was long and we were hungry for the meal that was to arrive a little later, delayed we were later to learn because the van had become stuck in the mud between Mr. Orock's house and the school. After the officials had drunk their wine and finally moved on, we stacked up the chairs and returned to the volunteer house triumphant, full of confidence that the launching was a success and we were prepared to start class that wednesday...