Judy’s Report 6: Our Program Expands To Our Seventh Site: Ntugi Primary School

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 from Sweetwaters Secondary School . They went for a game drive and, in the afternoon, came to the CEC where they sat for a  test which was to be done through typing. We introduced the student to theXO’s, connected 12 laptops to each other via the Mesh Network, and we  showed them how to use the to the Chat Activity to see the questions and send their answers to Ephantus. The students were able to type the answers and the lesson was successful.

Wednesday: Ntugi Secondary

I was at Ntugi Secondary where I started a new program with student which I hope will help them cover the syllabus and to revise for their exams. I had Form Two (Grade 10) students, and I connected the OLPC laptops to the Mesh and used the Chat Activity to send them geography questions. They were able to type the answers back to me and I feel the lesson was successful.

Thursday: Ntugi Primary

We started a new program today - and a new site for the OLPC’s. Ntugi Primary only is a few hundred meters from Ntugi Secondary but, up till now, those primary students have not had access to the XO laptops. Today, the Class 7 students, and their teacher Mrs. Kimonye, started coming for their weekly visit to the Ntugi Secondary Computer Lab. I introduced them to laptops and to some of the Sugar Activities and we began with some of the basic  Activities like Record and Maze among others.

Friday: Leparua Primary

At Leparua, I continued l teaching the Turtle Art Activity.  We revised last week’s work and I marked the homework I had given them. Then, I taught them how to change the screen colour and how to draw a leaf and a star still using Turtle Art, Pen and Colour commands.

Post by Judy Kinya

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 environment.

It had a script of an imported, pre-drawn ‘costume’ or sprite of a teacher teaching in front of a background of a blackboard.

As the Scratch animation runs, different items appear on the screen and the teacher says their names as they appear.

After this section is complete, the teacher then evaluates the user/player.

She asks the player the names of the pictures as they appear once more.

and the

The person using the laptop has to type in the correct name for the objects and hit ‘enter’.  

The program only allows for the correct answer for one to score points.

I haven’t yet figured what to do if someone answers incorrectly! 

They were so eager to know the way to create such a project like the one I had demonstrated… but the main problem for them was to have them put the programming instructions into the script in the order in which the which they should be executed. They were a bit impatient and din’t really understand the sequencing and cause that they need to in order to make the Sprite behave as they want!

To solve this, I plan on having a class on flow charts where I can have the students make a flow chart of  the instructions first before entering them into the  laptop  from the Scratch menu of instructions.

Tuesday: Ngare Ndare Secondary/Lewa Primary 

At Ngare Ndare, the teachers were occupied, but I involved students in a shared Speak activity where they discussed through a voice chat some questions in chemistry. The challenge here again was the typing speed but with few lessons on Typing Turtle,  I think this will be solved.

At Lewa Primary the teachers were learning on how to word process word on the XO, and Gnome operating system. They hope that once the school gets power they will be typing exams for the students. They didn’t complete the document and they saved to the Gnome desktop to continue with it on next Wednesday.

Wednesday: Subuiga Primary

I also introduced Scratch to the Subuiga teachers and we are working for the same project I have talked of earlier the basis for tutorials to help in teaching. We were able, together with the teachers involved, to come up with the required pictures and next step is to teach them to control the movement of these in Scratch.

Thursday: Lewa Conservation Education Centre

At the CEC, we had a visit from Chege, the Chief Conservation Officer at Lewa and he was happy to see the hand given by the XO’s in the teaching of conservation education. We had had students from Githongo Boys School. With the wireless ability of the XO’s, I connected the machines to the same mesh network and Ephantus, the Head of Conservation Education at Lewa asked questions through a shared chat, and students discussed the questions among themselves though the laptop’s Chat Activity and at last he gave the correct answers. The students had fun as they learned.

 Friday: Leparua Primary

At Leparua, I met with teachers where we discussed the welfare of the project in the school and they promised to give full support and get involved in applying the applications in teaching.

I am looking forward towards next week!

Post by Simon Mwangangi