After-the-Fact Update

[Edit: written Friday, August 20th, at Entebbe Airport - in pencil]

The last few days were a storm of happenings. Getting a mixed 5th/6th grade class on Monday morning, I decided - perhaps unwisely - to show PhotoPacks, note some unfamiliarity with Browse, then move on to Pippy/Python programming. Somehow, we had a few groups with speaking computers by the end. But it would take a lot more preparation before I did a lesson like that again.

Tuesday was a return to Mountains of the Moon, both to present "Technology From Africa: Invented or Shaped by Africans" and to find grounding for a State Department-funded hackathon at the university. The beginning had a few bumps - I do not start presentations well - but the remainder was informative, organized. My top five are Ushahidi, FrontlineSMS, OLPC, Google Trader / QuestionBox, and Google Mapmaker. Most were unknown to the students; a few were recognized by the head of the department. I also introduced the Google Static Maps API to their web classes. This lets less technical people request a custom map (see this blog, which has a map on the right). The State Department offered to hold an event in the future, so I connected them to the university. Still waiting to hear from this [edit: almost a week later, still waiting =( ]

Wednesday - had students make maps if Kasiisi, adding markers to show where they study and where they do activities such as Girl Guides, soccer, and Roots & Shoots. Hope to pass these along to a laptop-using community center in Kampala, which I found about the day before.

Thursday - last full day in Uganda. Last class. We went seamlessly from the start of class "oreire ota" [good morning] to students photographing the school on a beautiful day, to mapping their discoveries, to student-made RFID art, to the end and farewells. Spock's "live long and prosper" seemed appropriate. I got the best photos of my trip: kids holding up laptops to photograph wall murals, kneeling by gardens to capture individual flowers, a student's photo of the cook peeling matoke bananas. Everyone I'd talked to had held back on the RFID activity. Too complicated, impractical, unworkable. Fortunately, ever since the UTL technician Brian did his soldering, the technical parts have been working. I went ahead with my original small group lesson - draw an animal and connect it to a digital description or audio complement. After the first physical-digital bond, I had a queue of students asking for theirs next, now this one, then that one, and so on. All I had were a few student sentences and the artists' names. But when all was said and done, we had 16 students, myself, and the teacher all scanning drawings and marveling as the computer kept pace. I'll send a few photos of this whole thing to the technician [edit: done =) ]

Moral of the story: the kids can learn some pretty complicated technology. Take care, but don't underestimate them. It was hard to end the class, to tear myself away from laptop issues and wires, to pick up and fasten my helmet for the last time. I made my final goodbyes to Patrick, the science teacher, asking him to try using the sensors in his classes.

And then my work was done. I pedaled back to Kanyawara, helped make dinner, and that was that.

Project Update

Monday, we charged all of the laptops.

Tuesday and Wednesday, I participated in laptop classes on WikiBrowse. One part of my project is to see how the classes use the laptops. The laptops need to have their settings changed so that Frame does not pop up and frustrate the students. WikiBrowse can be made to work better, and articles interesting to the students, such as 'Barack Obama' are outdated. I will be getting text for this article and some others from simple.wikipedia.org so the students will be able to understand the articles better.

Moses's literacy circle was reading Sadako so I talked to them about the book, Japanese culture, and Hiroshima. I showed them pictures and photos on the laptops. For some reason, 7A was much more talkative than the second class, 7B - it might have something to do with how I told 7A more about my own difficulty speaking Japanese. A teacher who has been to Kasiisi several times, and started the library last year, was happy to see the students in an American-style reading group AND using laptops for supporting content. It's the library of the future, here in Uganda!

Wednesday I re-pitched my plan to have a smaller class of at most 32 students - and that it would be more of a "science class" then a laptop class. We will be working "outside of the box" - both in terms of thinking, and in terms of connecting the laptops with things outside of this computer 'box'. The teachers hadn't heard this metaphor before and they LOVE it. I used the Wright Brothers as an example.

Thursday, Primate Handshake showed up with around 20 people and their cameras in a giant yellow safari truck. We were concerned about trying the sensors for the first time in front of them... but we trusted P5 and it worked great! The students were able to connect the sensors to the 5 Senses which they've already memorized and the 3/5 that the laptop already does (I also mentioned that some computers CAN taste and smell, that was a O_O ). We had some time at the end for the Primate Handshake people and the kids to play with the activities, mostly Record and Scratch.

Side note: when it rains just a little, the metal roof sounds like a torrential downpour. I couldn't believe it when I went outside and it was only dripping. The sound drowns out thunder, even. Need to contact Architecture for Humanity about how their sound-dampening projects.