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

It's been a full week since our arrival in Kigali, Rwanda and a LOT has happened!

The week has been pretty busy (workshops, seminars, presentations, field trips, traveling, etc.) and since our day starts early and ends late, there is not much time for leisure. Our internet here is slow when everyone is on simultaneously, but nonetheless, we are grateful to at least have 24/7 access. 

So what has happened in all this time? Let me recount the days:

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It is currently the dry season in Kigali and a balmy 27 degrees Celsius during the daytime. The surrounding terrain (mountains, valleys, and rivers) combined with the equitorial location produces a fairly moderate climate throughout the year. Believe it or not, we are actually farther from the Sun than you might have guessed; in the Summer, the closest point to the Sun is the Tropic of Cancer, not the equator. 

Looking at the City of Kigali. 

Kigali is surprisingly clean, at least visually. (It doesn't seem like there are any laws governing emissions). Apparently, locals voluntarily pick up trash for a few hours each Saturday, which must explain why the streets are near spotless. 

Downtown Kigali has a sizable supermarket, with all the essential items we were missing: water, shampoo and toothpaste. There was even a pizza diner where we ordered two cheese pizzas. They had almost no tomato sauce and tasted like goat cheese on very chewy bread: 

"American" food in Rwanda. 

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Each weekday of this past week has been spent on learning workshops, seminars, and presentations. As you may know, OLPC has officially moved its Boston office to Rwanda for many reasons. It is a rather logical decision, considering the large deployment of laptops ordered by the government of Rwanda and the recent strong collaboration and assistance offered through KIST to provide resources and training for some 2000 teachers. This week we used the classrooms and auditoriums in KIST to do our learning workshops. 

K.I.S.T. (Kigali Institute of Science and Technology)

On Tuesday, we were honored with the presence of the President of Rwanda: Paul Kagame. (For those of you at MIT, you may remember attending Kagame's lecture this past semester).  President Kagame is extremely popular among the people of Rwanda. Ever since his inauguration in 2000, he has established rapid economic growth and social stability in Rwanda. His ambitious policy, the "2020 vision", is a multi-faceted plan proudly shared by everyone here. The plan aims to bring Rwanda into the 21st century as a country built on information. ICT, or information communication technology, is the buzz word here as the government is taking huge measures to incorporate ICT into education and the economy. 

This is where OLPC fits in. Kagame has ordered 100,000 laptops for the primary school system, with the intent of giving each child an XO laptop by the end of 2020. These initial laptops will be deployed by the end of this year, allowing many primary schools the opportunity for interactive  learning. 

President Paul Kagame & MIT Professor Nicholas Negroponte.

This summer is looking to be a very exciting one indeed. Through our interactions with the OLPC staff, other OLPCorps teams, and influential figures this week, we are beginning to understand the gravity and magnitude of our cause. 

That's all for this post--stay tuned for more soon. (If you have any questions or a request for content, feel free to ask us here).