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

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 story by use of both FotoToon and the Record activity. The Ntugi students practiced with it and were able to easily come up with different picture illustrated stories. Because of the success of this, I will try experimenting with it at Leparua with the younger, primary students.

The other activity I have yet to introduce is one that I will collaborate on with both Walter and the Computer Club members in the future.  I think it would be good to build a Memorize game that asks the students to match the photos of the lab equipment to their technical names as Walter told me that the Form Ones (Grade 9’s) are having problems with identifying the different lab equipment.

Tuesday: Ngare Ndare and Lewa Primary
Ngare Ndare is a site that also has the potential involve the OLPC activities in their academic work and curriculum as it is a new school of only 50 students. So far, it has only the initial Form One (Grade 9) class and the student and teachers are still creating the school cultures.  If computer literacy and the use of student-centred learning  is one of the cultures they develop then it is assured to last forever.

I had a session with teachers at Ngare Ndare where we discussed this. I had them tell me the areas they found difficult in teaching and then suggested I could develop a way of teaching that unit by combining the activities in Sugar that could help them, and make the work more fun for both them and the students. They talked of field work and the English teacher said she had a problem with helping the students work well together collaboratively and also with minimizing their grammatical errors.

I am now  designing a combination of activities that can help with this:

1. Field Work: The students can use the OLPC in taking the photos during the field work and they can use the write activity to discuss them.
2. Collaboration and Grammar:  By use of FotoToon and the Record activity they can create picture-illustrated stories and this will help them work well together. They can reduce their grammatical errors by peer editing through sharing of the write activity and correcting each other in a different coloured font. I will test this with them and make it as suggestion to them.

At Lewa Primary I introduced the TuxMath activity and I suggested that if well monitored so the students compete with one another for the highest score, this game-based activity can be used even the advanced levels can improve their arithmetic  skills. They found it very useful.

Wednesday: Subuiga Primary
I went to Subuiga primary but they had a function on the same day. It has teachers that are readily accepting the ideal of using the laptops. I think with their support it is going to be at the front line our use the OLPC technology in the area.

The game drives of the year have been completed and we are now designing new features for 2012. I am thinking of new activities that can suit the Conservation Education Centre as well as creating more games for the CEC to distribute to the OLPC schools in the area.

Friday: Leparua Primary
I went at Leparua primary and the teachers had already left and only Mr. Kitonga, the Principal,  was at school. I had a session with Class Six students where I divided them into groups and taught them about FotoToon and the work I had experimented with at Ntugi early in the week (see above).  Before I left, I assigned them work to create their own picture-illustrated stories (or comics) during the next week and, when I returned next Friday, we would see which group could produce the best. Doris phoned me when I was back home and we arranged how that could be done in my absence.

Post by Simon Mwangangi

Simon’s Report 7: Spreadsheets help teachers with marks and result analysis

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 had them them use the two XO’s  to analyze the student’s midterm results using the Gnumeric spreadsheets.

Then I was off to Lewa primary school where I also taught those teachers how to use the spreadsheets for their results analysis. They commented on how efficient it was especially in doing the calculations. They had some difficulties in spreading the columns to recommendable sizes. For that day, I focused on teaching them how to spread and fill in the columns. I showed them to insert formulas and they were amazed on how it did the calculations automatically.

Wednesday: Subuiga Primary
At Subuiga Primary, Lucy and Beth were happy to know that they didn’t have to construct individual columns and rows and all the donkey work of multiple calculations  for results analysis. Gnumeric spreadsheets solved all their difficulties and transformed their donkey work to an enjoyable activity. They learned very first on how to use it.

Thursday: Conservation Education Centre
We had students from Kirigia Primary who had visited Lewa for a game drive. They were little kids -  actually class One and Two pupils. We thought of the activity on the XO’s which would be favourable for them and this was the Abiword program. They typed the different types of animal they had seen. At first, they struggled to get the letters in the keyboard but later they were successful. Ephantus Mugo had CEC Newsletters to reward the first five to complete the activity.

Friday: Leparua Primary
Because of difficulty with transport, I arrived at Leparua some minute to lunch and had to wait for the afternoon session to begin. I taught the teachers how to work on the Gnome operating system,  changing the XO’s desktop appearance, network settings and mouse settings. Unfortunately, I only had a thirty minutes session before the Education Truck arrived and I had to leave.

Post by Simon Mwangangi

Simon’s Report 1: Intern Orientation and Conservation Outreach

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 part of conservation education, and he would like to see it function as soon as possible.

Today, I arrived at Leparua in nine in the morning, where I was awaited by a group of community members ready to be taught. NB: The following photos were taken with the OLPC XO’s on-board webcam.

I had to settle very fast and organize for the two hour lesson. Among them was a old man with his wife around fifty years of age.

He said that he hoped one day that his children would bring a laptop at home and he would be very lucky to have learned about it. The six members in the group were Diyon, Margaret, Danson, Silvia, Janet, and Wilson.

The activities we did were:

• Introduction
• Opening/closing the computer
• Maze
• Record

Here is a photo of the system that allows Leparua to connect to the Internet.

The Safaricom USB modem on the right in white has a SIM card inside it. It connects to the Internet via cell-phone signal, and it is pluged into the Cradlepoint PHS300 which makes a wireless signal to the 8 OLPC laptops the community members are using. The Tekkeon battery on the left gives power when the smaller battery in the Cradlepoint is used up. An antenna from the USB modem is placed in a branch high up in the tree.

Post by Simon Mwangangi