May 2012
7 posts
10 tags
Simon's Report 26: The Solution To Increasing...
Monday: Ntugi Secondary
Incremental development is in action at Ntugi Secondary School. They have developed diverse methods of utilizing the little Scratch concepts they’ve already learned. This was an eagerly anticipated reaction that has really encouraged me as it is an step forward from the challenges the students had last term’s challenge of thinking too narrowly and just mimicking the...
14 tags
Judy's Report 6: Our Program Expands To Our...
Monday: Ntugi Secondary
At Ntugi Secondary, I had a section with the Journalism Club. I am still teaching them how to take photos using the XO, so we went into the field where they were able to take photos of different things and we named and saved them in the journal to be used for the next lesson in the Fototoon Activity.
Thursday: Lewa Conservation Education Centre
At Lewa, we hosted students...
14 tags
Simon's Report 25: Paying It Forward With Computer...
Monday: Ntugi Secondary
Paying forward is the main concept that is powering the development of the Computer Club at Ntugi Secondary. The structure of the club makes this possible as it creates a path that information flows from top to the bottom. The Club, with 25 students in total, is divided into 5 groups of 5 students and each group has its own group leader. The group leader has the...
8 tags
Judy's Report 5: Introducing Turtle Art
Monday: Ntugi Secondary
At Ntugi Secondary we reviewed last term’s work on the Fototoon Activity. The students were able to remember all the icons,use them appropriately, take the photos of different sizes and create speek balloons on the already taken photos. And everything was successful.
Tuesday: Lewa Conservation Education Centre
At the CEC, we had kids from Tharagwene Primary. They went for...
Simon's Report 24: The Second Term Begins As...
The eagerly awaited Second Term commenced, giving an opportunity to utilize the new resources at hand. Ntugi Group’s and Lewa’s OLPC will have a new look this term with increases in both OLPC and human resources including a new intern, Judy Kinya, who will facilitate the project and have it develop at a faster rate, 12 1.5 XO laptops at the Lewa Conservation Education Centre (to...
Towards a theory of teaching Scratch
Scratch has been the most challenging but also the most enjoyable activity of all last term’s Sugar Activities. The kids were excited to make animations and get them running, but unable to think of and figure out different animations apart from the ones I used to teach them as samples for demo. They only mastered the samples but no ideas of how to either improve them or creating animations...
6 tags
Judy's Report 4: After the Holiday
Friday: Leparua Primary
I reported on Friday, last week, after the holiday.
Simon and I visited Leparua where we did a review of last term’s work with Scratch: We revisited the Motion and Control blocks. On this day, we continued with Motion and we taught the kids how to glide the sprite. We also had a chance to show the pupils how to import a stage xy-grid and they were able to do it. They were...
April 2012
1 post
Judy's Report 3: Leaping Lemur
Monday: Ntugi Secondary
I went to Ntugi Secondary with Simon. He taught the Computer Club and I taught the Journalism Club. We used the XO’s camera to take the photos to add to FotoToon and to add comments on in the scene and the activity was successful.
Tuesday: Lewa Conservation Education Centre
In the morning, I went for a game drive with students from Ntugi Secondary together with their...
March 2012
6 posts
Simon's Report 23: Another Week With the Visitors...
Monday: Leparua Primary
For the next week we still had the visiting UCC group who were assisting in teaching, so we changed our daily schedule around a bit.
We went to Leparua Primary school and had two sessions. One was a class on Scratch where they learned to control the Sprite with the control keys. The second was a lesson up the hill where we could connect to Safaricom via the Cradlepoint and...
Judy's Report 2: Beginning Work On My Own As An...
Monday: Leparua Primary
We went at Leparua with Simon, the boys from UCC and their teacher Jeff. We had a session in the morning with the pupils and their teacher Doris. We taught them how to import two sprites and use sensing, sound and control blocs to instruct the sprites such that when the first sprite touches the second, they all stop and produce a sound.
In the afternoon we went up the...
Simon's Report 22: Another Good Luck Monday With A...
Monday: Ntugi Secondary
Monday must be a good day for me since last week we had the visit from the BBC, and this Monday I had privilege to host a visiting group of UCC students. The UCC students came, in part, to help in support of Judy and my teaching, and they also helped by carrying over 12 new OLPC XO 1.5’s from our Toronto Ntugi Group office.
Those 12 new XO’s will replace the...
14 tags
Simon's Report 21: The BCC Comes to Interview Us!
Monday: Ntugi Secondary
This was a great day for me. I was to host a group from the BBC who were coming to Ntugi to interview us about our program and how we use the OLPC laptops. The program, Horizons, is on BBC International and broadcasts to. Their goal is “ to see how innovation is going to solve the most pressing needs of the world and its people.”
This Yahoo article...
12 tags
Judy's Report 1: The BBC Films Our OLPC Project
Monday: Ntugi Secondary
Godfrey, Simon, four students from Ntugi Secondary and I went to the tarmac to wait for the BBC group who were coming to film us for a documentary show. They arrived there at 11.00 am and we took them down the road to Ntugi Secondary. Simon and Ntugi’s Principal, Phineas Ithinji, were interviewed.
Later, filming was done in the class as the students were working in...
9 tags
Simon's Report 20: Our New Intern, Judy Kinya
Monday: Lewa Conservation Education Centre
I was privileged to have Judy Kinya, Ntugi Group’s new intern, working with me today.
It was our scheduled day to be at Ntugi Secondary school, but they had taken a mid-term break, so it was a good opportunity to have her prepare for the week’s activities, so we worked at the Conservation Education Center in the Lewa Wildlife...
February 2012
4 posts
14 tags
SIMON’S REPORT 19: Dancing Sprites at Leparua
Monday: Ntugi Secondary
Scratch is now part of the learning process at Ntugi. The division of the computer club into small groups that work on different products has enhanced competition, especially with the promise that only the best products will be exported and shared. The computer lab, like any other lab in the school, is busy with students creating and experimenting with their animation...
12 tags
SIMON’S REPORT 18: The Itch to Scratch
Our OLPC project is taking a new look every day. With every new understanding of the ability of the OLPC XO’s, I am trying to make developments in the projects that will make them more appealing and satisfying to the demands of teaching various subjects at our partner institutions.
Monday: Ntugi Secondary
At Ntugi, the students are working on a Scratch project. Scratch is an animation...
13 tags
SIMON’S REPORT 17: 'Scratching' the Surface
Monday: Ntugi Secondary
The past week was so successful with the introduction of the Scratch Activity to some of the institutions for the first time. One of the schools where I introduced it was Ntugi Secondary, where I had made a demo project just to show them how it could work. The project was a kind of a tutorial presentation that can be used in teaching the names of different things in the...
14 tags
SIMON’S REPORT 16: No lack of enthusiasm...but we...
Following the fieldwork I carried out for the last week, here is a report on the performance and progress of the pilot projects around Lewa at the institutions targeted by the Ntugi group.
Monday: Ntugi Secondary
At Ntugi, the spirit of collaboration and creativity in project development has been shown by the performance of the Computer Club. The Club is growing larger every day - 35 students now...
January 2012
3 posts
SIMON’S REPORT 15: The Power of Computer clubs
Monday: Ntugi Secondary
Ntugi is a center that is fully equipped and has the potential to transform the learning at school to one that is fully OLPC aided. Efforts are therefore required to see this working efficiently and it has to be everyone’s desire. I am trying to increase the contact time with the students and the laptops. The good and promising thing is that it has become a fact to everyone...
SIMON’S REPORT 14: Regional Collaboration
Monday: Ntugi Secondary
The projects have already started working and integrating the OLPC/Sugar activities in the curriculum.I introduced the Fototoon Activity which will help in improving creativity and storytelling ability of the students, as well as increasing written and media literacy.
The students were ready to use this capability of the XO’s in creating interesting stories which...
14 tags
SIMON’S REPORT 13: 2012 Begins!
Monday: Ntugi Secondary
We started the term well at Ntugi Secondary. The target of this term will be to integrate the OLPC’s Sugar OS Activities with the syllabus in the school. This will be possible by engaging the Activities (application programs) I had been teaching last term with the syllabus as an aid to help in deep understanding and creating more interest in learning. Last term, I started...
December 2011
1 post
15 tags
Simon's End of Year Report
It has been a very busy term with a struggle to create the foundation of OLPC project in different schools. I am encouraged by what has come out of those institutions in a such a very short period of time.
At schools like Ngare Ndare Secondary, Leparua Primary, Lewa Primary and Subuiga primary, this term has meant the introduction of OLPC projects, while at Ntugi Secondary this term has been...
November 2011
4 posts
3 tags
Godfrey's Report 1: Accompanying Simon and a...
This week, I traveled from Ntugi Secondary with Simon (Ntugi Group’s Intern) to visit the some of the other programs he supports: Ngare Ndare Secondary, Lewa Primary, and Leaprua Primary. The goal was to work with Simon to get a picture of the regional OLPC development within the Lewa supported schools, and to look for possible points of sharing and collaboration.
Monday: Ntugi (my home base) The...
15 tags
Simon's Report 12: Ntugi Secondary Visits Leparua...
Monday: Ntugi Secondary
At Ntugi Secondary, the students were very busy with the exams and so in that case, I didn’t have time to meet with the computer club members. I knew that next Monday, they would be free, so I would just recover the lesson I had lost this Monday then.
Tuesday: Ngare Ndare Secondary/Lewa Primary
On Tuesday, I was at Ngare Ndare accompanied by Godfrey, and the day was very...
8 tags
Simon's Report 11: Kenya Certificate of Primary...
This was the week that the Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (K.C.S.E), was in progress and the students and teachers who were not participating in the exam did not go to school. As a result, and since since the exam was only for primary schools, I was only able to access Ntugi Secondary School.
At Ntugi, I discussed the roles of the Computer Club members and what is expected of them. They...
16 tags
Simon's Report 10: Problem Solving With The XO
Monday: Ntugi Secondary Ntugi School is a site with OLPC experience, all the potential for running the program, and willing members from the Computer Club and, for this reason, I have decided to use it as a centre for testing any activity before presenting it to our other partner institutions.
The first activity that I have done this is FotoToon where students can create a comic or illustrated...
October 2011
5 posts
18 tags
Simon's Report 9: The Importance of Deep Knowledge
Monday: Ntugi Secondary
From my field experience, I have noticed that for the laptop program to succeed, students and teachers need some knowledge apart from just understanding the OLPC itself, and the Sugar and GNOME operating systems. They are also curious and eager to have general knowledge about the computers.
For example, when I advise them to switch off the computer with the right...
19 tags
Simon's Report 8: Teaching with Analogies
Monday: Ntugi Secondary I met with the Computer Club members and tried to explain the working of the central processor by use of a simple analogy: That of people going to the cinema. In this analogy…
The queue waiting outside represents the mass of data stored external to the central processor.
In the queue line, there are a certain number of patrons that can be accommodated at one time...
11 tags
Simon's Report 7: Spreadsheets help teachers with...
Monday: Ntugi Secondary Ntugi Secondary students and teachers had their midterm break and it was not possible to access the school. Tuesday: Ngare Ndare Secondary/Lewa Primary At Ngare Ndare Secondary, I first had a session with the students and I taught them the constituents of the hardware which are: the C.P.U, Input devices and Storage Devices.
In a later session, just with the teachers, I...
11 tags
Simon's Report 6: Subuiga's Teachers Get Online
Monday: Ntugi Secondary
Went to Ntugi Secondary and met with the Computer Club members .We discussed the three parts of the proccessor namely; • The A.L.U • The Main memory • The Control panel More of the lesson was on how they co-operate to process data. We will next be featuring on each part and explain on its functions.They are now realizing that the computer is not as much a...
13 tags
Simon's Report 5: Ntugi's Computer Club Grows
Monday: Ntugi Secondary
The day was very successful at Ntugi with the computer club members. We left off at a point where we were discussing the hardware of the computer system. We are now continuing with the constituents of the hardware which are:
Input devices
CPU
Output devices
Storage devices
We listed and discussed the input devices which are:
Keying devices
Pointing devices
...
September 2011
3 posts
Simon's Report 4: A 'Godfrey' for Ngare Ndare?
Monday: Ntugi Secondary
Today I had a workshop with the Computer Club members. The number has now increased from 18 students to 25. The had a high affinity of computer knowledge and they wished that I had more time with them. We continued with the computer study and we covered the following;
Computer development, starting with the pre-electronic era. I used the Abacus activity to demonstrate how...
18 tags
Simon's Report 3: Ngare Ndare OLPC 'Backpack'...
Monday: Ntugi Secondary
I went to Ntugi Secondary and met the 18 Computer Club members. Having used the computers for so long, they know quite a lot and had to go to more advanced levels of computer basics. We started by defining computer terminology like the understanding and definitions of the following:
Data
Information
Program
Computer
Classification of computers according to:
...
20 tags
Simon's Report 2: Ntugi Group's Internship Program...
My work commenced officially last Thursday and I started with the Conservation Education Centre, where we prepared the games that would be played on Tuesday. The schools had not fully opened and we had to it until last Tuesday.
On Tuesday, we had a group of class 8 students from Kengeshia Primary in Isiolo. They learned how to play the game very quickly, but we had a hard time making them...
August 2011
3 posts
16 tags
Simon's Report 1: Intern Orientation and...
Yesterday, I spent the whole day with Kitonga at the Lewa Education Office, creating games on the laptops. We were relating the common animals found at Lewa with their pictures. It was through the Education Office that I got the message that Kitonga is ready with the preparations, and that I would leave the next day to Leparua. Mike Watson, Lewa’s CEO said that the games are an essential...
July 2011
8 posts
Arts at Ntugi
The arts were not a part of Ntugi School when we first arrived 3 years ago. In the spirit of providing Ntugi students with the same creative outlets that we had, we tentatively began teaching music and visual art last year in addition to our work with computers.
We fixed the school’s keyboard and donated a dozen recorders. My brother Charlie taught piano, while my other brother Matthew...
Basketball at Ntugi
The recently donated NBA-size basketball court at Ntugi Secondary School is now complete and operating at full capacity. Since its inauguration, class breaks and time after school have seen an astounding number of the students congregating on and around the court.
We are reminded that a school isn’t just a place to learn, but also a place to grow up. Many thanks to Jim Walker for this...
Lost and Found
During our stay at the Marwell Research Station at the Lewa Wildlife Conservancy, we had the pleasure of meeting Hannah Markowska and Sam Homer — two young volunteers from England who are spending their summer teaching at a primary school supported by the Lewa Education Program.
They were surprised when they saw our camp loaded with little green laptops because they had just seen one in the hands...
Introducing the XO to Class 6 at Leparua
Based on the positive feedback we received from Leparua Primary (pronounced leparwa) during our initial visit, we decided to initiate a pilot project at the school. For today, our team consisted of myself, Mark, Alice, Simon, Jesse (our driver), Derek, and Connor.
At first, it felt strange to be starting from scratch. In a way, it was like being back where back two and a half years ago, when we...
Leparua Primary Pilot Project: First Day
Yesterday, a group of us (including Godfrey and Simon from Ntugi) made our first journey to Leparua Primary School. Our goal was to determine if it would be suitable for an OLPC pilot program, so we met with the head teacher, Kitonga. He was very excited for us to begin working with the students and teachers at Leparua (Kitonga himself is not computer-literate), and said that he had been longing...
First Day at Ntugi
Today was our first day back at Ntugi Secondary School since our visit in July 2010, and it was wonderful to catch up with our friends again. After saying hello to everyone and seeing the changes to the school, we met with Phineas (the Principal) and Godfrey (Head of the Computer Program) to discuss what they wanted us to focus on, and our specific goals for this trip. Phineas also shared some...
Sugar's 'Memorize' Activity in the Curriculum
My goal for the day was to familiarize myself with the Memorize activity by building a 6x6 demo grid that was loaded with pairs of items.
Memorize is a visual matching game where a grid of squares is presented to the player. Behind each square is a picture, sound, or piece of text that has corresponding media. The player reveals squares by clicking on corresponding pairs, two at a time. If the...
Planning and Preparation
Today was our first day back at the Marwell Research Centre — our home at the Lewa Wildlife Conservancy. The new members of our team this year are Adam’s wife Victoria and his mother Nathalie, who are in Kenya for their first time.
Our day was spent planning our activities at Ntugi, as well as preparing our Twitter, Flickr, and website to document our progress. Kevin and Adam would be upgrading...