Teaching Students

Shortly after completing the electricity wiring at Kampala Primary School, we took a trip down to Fort Portal to visit Ian Wrangham's deployment site. There are 3 teams in Uganda and Ian's site is one of them.

Their primary school was in a beautiful country-side location and with the influx of volunteers and funds from their NGO, the school is rapidly growing in size and infrastructure. Below are two pictures of KasisIi:

Kasisii Primary School (near Kibale National Park and Fort Portal).

Ian's organized setup for charging their XO's.

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So after visiting Ian's deployment in Fort Portal, we had a better idea of how to proceed with ours. When we got back, we were ready to deploy the laptops to grades P5 and P6.

P5 students with their XO's

Kristen teaching P5 how to use "Write", the word-processor.

Working with individual students.

Sarah, a volunteer from our NGO, helps to clarify the lesson.

The first stanza of Uganda's National Anthem.

By the end of next week, we hope to have taught the students how to use Paint, Record, Calculator, Wikipedia and TurtleArt.

In the meantime, we are expanding teacher training to the other grades and exploring advanced programs with the P5 and P6 teachers. We are also working with Simba Telecom to see if it is possible to obtain internet access for the school.

-Jeff

Project Update: Nandblasting + Teacher Training

With the help of SAFY, our Ugandan NGO, we managed to get in touch with the local government. Our meeting with the Mayor of Kampala City Central division (K.C.C.) and the Inspector of Schools went pretty well. We managed to obtain their support and cooperation in helping us continue our deployment for the summer. It was tough, because KCC wanted to distribute our laptops to several schools and “spread the wealth.”

Rose, Inspector of Schools in KCC; Kristen Watkins; Jeff Xing; Godfrey Nyakana, Mayor Kampala Central Municipal Council; Victoria Cheng; Mariam, Chair Education KCC; Secretary KCC

We successfully received our shipment of 100 XO laptops and needed to update all the firmware & Operating System on each. Rita Nangono, the director of SAFY, graciously let us unpack them and reflash the laptops at her house. We spent a good 3 hours or so using two usb flash drives to reflash everything. One usb was plugged into one of our XO’s and was used to broadcast the image file wirelessly to all the other XOs. The other usb was used to update the firmware on each, before it can receive the image file wirelessly. Below are the picture of this process.

Victoria & Kristen unpacking the 100 XO laptops

Jeff reflashing the firmware on each XO

Kristen stacking the packaging materials.

Victoria playing with Matthew, the son of our NGO's director, Rita Nangono

Jeff teaching Matthew how to use the XO

XO's waitinng to be reflashed & nandblasted

34 passes before we finished! (bottleneck, because we only had 2 usb)

The following week, we began teacher training at Kampala Primary School. Paul Commons and Lynn Wang (OLPC staff) stopped by to see our deployment. Our school, as it turns out, had limited electricity so we had to first survey the site with an electrician to get a quote on new wiring costs to support the influx of so many XOs.

Unfortunately, the electrician gave us inflated prices (probably because we are “mizungu”—the local term for “white people”), and now we have to wait for another one to figure out the right prices. Since we can’t deploy the laptops to the kids until the electricity infrastructure is installed, we simply proceeded to train the teachers of the two grades we are deploying to: P5 and P6. There are 3-4 teachers total and we spent each day teaching them basic computer skills.

Kampala Primary School

KPS - about 200 students (P1 - P7)

Paul Commons teaching headmaster Zaiyed

Miguel Martin talking about OLPC to Math teacher, Saul

Jeff fixing the wall socket - hooray, leatherman!!

(somebody had wired the live red wire to where the ground wire should be)

Makeshift Blueprint of Wiring Plans for the 2 class rooms

Makeshift Blueprint for the socket layout in one room

Victoria guiding two teachers, Zaiyed and Robinah

Math teacher, Saul, teaching the another teacher, Aminah.

Official Handover of XO's to Teachers.

-Jeff

An update on our social lives....

And now, for an update on our social lives!

Uganda has proved to be quite the place for all types of adventures, from clubbing to beaching to whitewater rafting!

So the slums where we are staying is ok. By now, the locals have grown accustomed to seeing us "muzungus" walk by, although they still shout "muzungu" or "china" or "japanese" now and then.

The road leading up to our hostel in the slums.

Funny sign in front of the American Hostel.

(apparently, police in uganda carry either shotguns, rifles, or ak47's)

Last weekend, two members of OLPC staff, Paul and Lynn, came to visit us in Kampala, as did the director of OLPC Paraguay, Miguel. Along with the three of them, we’ve been having some pretty great adventures!

We discovered the Americanized part of town, a place called Garden City, which is essentially the equivalent to an American shopping mall, and we saw more mizungus (white people) than I think we’ve seen on the entire trip just in the few hours we were there! After some delicious Indian food, we hit up a bar called Sax’s Club, which is not the jazz club you think it would be, but actually where all the prostitutes hang out. Nevertheless, we enjoyed our Nile Specials (a Ugandan beer) very much, and had a great night out.

African Clothing!

Jeff with a cloud of gnats over his head

(he swore he showered that day...)

Group photo at Garden City Mall (the mizungu hangout place).

Other highlights from the week have been going to the Mosque, the National Theatre and seeing a Michael Jackson tribute, clubbing at Hi Table, a rockin’ club even on a Monday night for dancing and drinking, and going to more Viva Stars concerts and dancing on-stage with them!

Clubbing at Hi-Table

Dressed for a visit to the National Mosque.

Victoria waving a Viva Stars flyer as we head to the concert.

Rocking out live with Viva Stars!!

(it's like hanging out with the spice girls)

We’ve also taken several trips to one of the biggest markets in Kampala to purchase clothes, cheap food, headscarves for Victoria and I, and countless other small items. The market is a maze of stalls and people and anything you could ever want to purchase, bargaining, yelling, and occasionally getting run over by someone carrying a huge sack of flour or beans on their back.

Victoria adopted a kitten off the street and fed it milk.

Kristen enjoying ice cream at Nandos Diner.

Thursday, we all took a trip out to Jinja, a city about two hours east of Kampala, to go whitewater rafting at the source of the Nile! As you can see from the pictures, it was really an incredible trip – we went on five Class 5 rapids, and 10 rapids overall for the day. We managed to only flip over once, and that one was questionable – our guide was upset we paddled so well that we hadn’t flipped yet, so it was a bit more of an induced flip. Especially after lunch, there were nice long periods of calm water that we spent sunbathing, swimming, and animal watching. We didn’t get to see any monkeys, but we saw many kinds of birds, and even some snakes swimming their way to the other side. Luckily we weren’t in the water then!

First Rapid: Miguel, Lynn, Kristen, Victoria, Jeff (class 3 rapid)

Rapid 8 of 9: broadsided by the wave (class 4 rapid)

Rapid 8 of 9: holding on for dear life.

Rapid 8 of 9: too late... lol.

Class 5 rapid not shown... due to its graphical nature.

Yesterday, in honor of our American Independence Day, we took a trip down to Entebbe, a city about an hour south of Kampala, to go to the beach, which proved to be a great day full of sun, swimming, eating fresh fish (except for me!), and relaxation. And a rendition of the Star Spangled Banner by Victoria for the rest of the beach to hear.

A Beautiful Day for 4th of July.

The water was so warm!

Sunset on the beach at Entebbe (Victoria, Jeff, Hady, Kristen)

It’s been a great couple of weeks here in Uganda!

-Kristen