Simon’s Report 25: Paying It Forward With Computer Clubs
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 responsibility of attending lessons on Mondays in which I take them through new work and they pass the information to the rest of the club members during the week.
We work this way because I only have a short time with them, but they have got a lot of time with themselves. This will enable the Club to develop faster as it is easier to work with 5 group leaders than with 25 students at a time.
This process will also gradually convert them into teachers themselves, and help develop their ability to pass on information as well as promoting collaboration. All the assignments are done by every member of the club and it helps me evaluate their progress as well as monitoring them. Group leaders who do not work efficiently are replaced. The long term goal for the group leaders is to become interns themselves, once they graduate, and to do the work that Judy and I are currently doing.
Am testing this pay-it-forward teaching structure with the introduction of the Scratch Activity and, having taught them on initializing an animation by the control keys, motion blocks, the XY grid concept , and reading XY coordinates at random by pointing the cursor on the stage, I left them an assignment to help them develop an idea from the things introduced this week.
Tuesday: Ngare Ndare Secondary/Lewa Primary
The enthusiasm of students at Ngare Ndare is encouraging. There is already a Computer Club like that of Ntugi Secondary and they are very motivated and competitive - they claim to work hard to defeat the ones at Ntugi Secondary! With the addition of Judy as Intern, and the addition of 4 more laptops in her ‘backpack’ kit (for a total of 8 laptops in both of ours), we are now able to reach the students in a better way than before - although there is a great need for more XO’s. At least, now, 3 students can now share one laptop and, before the April break, the UCC group helped me as I introduced a couple of new Activities to them. On this visit, the NN Computer Club students divided themselves into groups and elected their leader and with the remaining time I taught them switching between Sugar and Gnome and sugar.
The Lewa Engineer whom I spoke to promised that they will have mains power installed within a month’s time, and that will make a permanent pilot ehre possible.
Lewa Primary School had gone for games and I had no chance to meet them. The plan there is to now, having already trained the teachers, to engage students who will form a club for the school.
Wednesday: Subuiga Primary
The Grade 6 students from Subuiga Primary had what they called a ‘lucky day’ after being appointed as the class to form the Computer Club for the school. They are very good in following instructions easily, are great explorers and the most important skill I saw in them is the willingness to teach other members of the club any concept they had learnt - even before they were instructed to. I think they are self driven and motivated. I was able to cover a lot with them especially considering that it was really the first day they were introduced to the XO laptops.
Thursday: Lewa Conservation Education Centre
At the CEC we had students from Nanyuki Primary school. We had an outdoor activity with them and had a chance to take the photos of the environment and comment on them using the XO laptop.
If the centre had a Blog that linked it with the schools supported by Lewa that have laptops, and are participating in the Ntugi Group OLPC program, it could be a great chance to share discuss and solve many environmental factors through the blog. I think this will be possible when other schools get laptops this June.
Friday: Leparua Primary
The Leparua Primary students are very happy now that they have 16 laptops (from the original set of 8) and it makes it possible to work on two activities at a time. I continued to teach Scratch and Judy, our new intern, led another class on Turtle Art. I had left the class with some assignments and they made their presentations and I was able to see where they had weaknesses. They easily forgot to include the “-” in a negative value and so the Sprite could go in a different position. By talking about and understanding their mistakes, they learnt how to test each block at a time before adding the next. It was fun.
Post by Simon Mwangangi
