Teacher training pictures

It was teacher training on Tuesday and we didn't get started as far from on time as one might expect (i mean, TIA...) just as we did expect though, it was raining heavily, but to be honest I think it gave the small dirty classroom that served as the Jamadianle school's main hall before they moved to the knew and bigger location some miles away some atmosphere and made all of us who were working inside feel a little closer. At least that's the way I try to look at the rain situation, for looking at it any other way would perhaps be rather dire as it is raining almost every day now. But on to the actual training :) we had about 15 teachers show up, including the Head Teacher of the primary school, and the Head Teacher of the nursery. Most of the teachers were well dressed in traditional looking attire and appeared to be in their thirties, quite a contrast with many of the Rwandan teachers who were quite a bit younger. We started out the training by mainly focusing on the fundamentals of the XO, how to open and close programs, how to turn on and shut down the computer, how to navigate the different views etc. We then went through a short sample lesson involving Record and Write, where they took a picture of themselves and copy and pasted it into write so they could label it. We also showed them several more of the XO's features including how to make a spreadsheet in Write, something that was very practical for their own use in the classroom and with which the head nursery instructor immediately began to compile a table of her students and their contact info with. 2 hours into the training and we decided to wrap it up, feeling like any more would be too much to introduce all at once and besides we were getting pretty hungry for lunch. Many of the teacher seemed very pleased and several approached me with questions about using the computers in their classrooms and were also eager to further explore the laptops at the next training, which we will be having weekly for the duration of the program. All in all this training went perhaps better than I had expected and I think the teachers may really be as open to them, given real evidence and a thorough understanding of their potential, as the Mr. Orock, the director of the UAC, has said on many occasion, though at one point one teacher did ask to speak privately with us at some point and I can only postulate that there may be skeptics among them who we would do well to sit down with and discuss rather than just read the feel of the room. All that remains to be done now is the grand launching ceremony on Monday, after which we will have another, more in depth training on Tuesday, in preparation for the start of classes and the Summer Holiday Caravan come this Wednesday. I can hardly wait!

The First Full Day with the UAC

The last post should really have been called "first evening in Cameroon, as we had yet to experience a typical day with the UAC. The next morning, after waking and having our breakfast at Mr. Orock's house, we learned that this would not be a typical day either, as it was the day of graduation for the students at the Jamadianle School, and in fact the graduation of the first class to go through each grade in the school, 6th graders who started at the school 6 years ago. After a bit of waiting around (a condition we would quickly find was just going to be the norm as nothing was ever really meant to start of time, we took a van to the school, were were were swarmed by hundred of kids dressed in the cutest graduation outfits you have ever seen in your life, full robes, and graduation hats complete with tassels, all in the stunning purple and gold that is the colors of the Jamadianle School and also is present in their day to day uniforms, which include purple bow ties and suspenders for the sharp dressed little boys and gold skirts and purple blouses for the exceedingly put together little girls.

After some time of just exploring the school while everyone just hung out and listened to music, the ceremony began, and in the largest classroom we all gathered to watch the school choir and various groups sing an dance to praise their school and country. As the afternoon approached the ceremony continued on, as it seemed each and every student in every grade received an award or a prize of some sort, including such categories as "most bilingual" and "most cultural family". After these awards drew on for several hours the ceremony ended and the graduation was finally complete, at which point we headed back to Mr. Orock's house for lunch and afternoon celebration.

A little later the three of us had out meeting with Mr. Orock in the UAC office, where we began by discussing our expectations, goals, and all around opinions and philosophy of education, the role of NGO's and their relationship to the government, the importance of reaching all levels of society, the best ways to be effective, and our role in bringing our project in cooperation with the UAC to fruition during the time that we are here, as well as ensuring that what we created would be sustainable and would be supported after our stay had ended. We were very happy to find that our views and the views of Mr. Orock, informed as they were by his extensive experience in this work as well as his deep roots in the area, meshed very well and we found ourselves very much on the same page. From here it was a more simple step to plan out how we would outreach to the surrounding villages, announcing our program to students there and here in Buea that there would be a Summer Holiday Caravan that would pick them up and bring them to the Jamadianle School were we would be setting up the laptops and the wireless network to connect them. We would be meeting very soon with some of the teachers at the school to introduce them to the XO and to work with them on developing lessons to implement with the students, as well as the IT staff at the UAC to ensure the continued support of the laptops during the school year.

We are waiting on Mr. Orock to take the van into Douala to buy supplies and get phones and more local currency, as well as our laptops which evidently have arrived! We are excited about finally having the equipment to show to everyone and to lend some out to the teachers to learn on their own while we are in Rwanda for the OLPC training all next week.

Until Later,

Team DBF

Arrival in Cameroon

Hello again,

This entry finds us Sam, Siler and Brittney, having arrived safely in Douala the night before yesterday, walking out of the airplane into an immediate sauna of heat and humidity. After a long wait for our luggage we finally made it through customs and out to where the staff of the United Action for Children was waiting for us. It took us 2.5 hour drive from Douala to Buea where the UAC is based and where will will be implementing our project.

On this van ride we had the opportunity to speak with some of the UAC staff and they answered many of our questions about the part of the country we were passing through and how we would find our stay in Cameroon. of the 5 or 6 staff who came to us, one named Barkley turned out to be in charge of coordinating the volunteers, of which there were already 5 others staying at the volunteer house before the 3 of us arrived. Both Barkley and another staff member named Taco both immediately struck me as incredibly friendly and did their best to make us feel immediately welcome and at home.

When we finally arrived at the house we would be staying in Buea, after what seemed to be, though it was night, a beautiful drive through tropical countryside, we were shown to our rooms, where we each had a very pretty bed to ourselves, and then were invited over the house of the director and founder of the UAC Mr. Orock Thomas, where we were given delicious omelets made by his wife Amelia that were a perfect closure to this part of our journey. Sipping tea with Mr. Orock we learned that he was not only the man behind the UAC, and local NGO that had grown from one small room and a few staff to encompass many building at several locations, several schools, and a staff of over 50, but he was also deputy mayor of his home town of Mamfe and was the chief of service for vocational education in the southwest province. After discussing our trip and a few other things about the UAC and the area, we made a plan to meet the following day and discuss in detail our expectations for this summer and how we would accomplish all the goals we had been preparing for now that we had arrived in Buea.

At this point we said goodnight and retired to our rooms, happy to have arrived, and confident that we were working with a great man and had every chance to accomplish what we set out to do this summer.

Greetings on Our Way to Cameroon

Since this is our first post it would seem fitting that we introduce ourselves. We are Siler, Sam, and Brittney, three rising juniors at the University of Pennsylvania who are doing a project in Cameroon this summer with One Laptop Per Child. We got this opportunity through applying for a competitive grant through One Laptop Per Child's new AfricaCorps Intiative: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPCorps_Africa based on a proposal that Sam and I put together this spring: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/University_of_Pennsylvania_OLPC

One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) is a non-profit organization started by students at MIT with the goal of providing a low cost, rugged laptop to the children in the developing world, in order to use these incredible machines as a tool for teaching young children how to think for themselves and create knowledge and build skills that will open up a new world of possibilities for them. (See Constructionist Learning/constructionism for more on the educational philosophy that OLPC subscribes to)

The goal of our project is to work with OLPC to bring 100 of their XO Laptops to a village in the southwest province of Cameroon and implement an educational program based on these learning principles. To do this we are partnering with a local NGO called the United Action for Children http://www.unitedactionforchildren.org/, an NGO founded in 1996 with the mission of providing access to quality education to the underprivileged youth of this area. The UAC runs an alternative school called the Jamadianle School outside of the town of Buea and this school will serve as our major base of operations.

Among the numerous challenges that we will face will be how to provide power to our 100 XO laptops at the school which has limited power input and sometimes unstable electricity, how to transfer an internet connection found at the UAC's IT center 10km distant to the school and then broadcast it to the laptops so they can access the vast resources of the web and network,how to come up with interesting yet purposeful learning projects that use the XO to further the development of the students at the school, and how to ensure the sustainability of our project after we have gone (We will be there until August 15th).

Over the next few weeks we plan to face and overcome there and many more challenges in the pursuit of one amazing, productive, and exciting summer where a large serving of learning will be doled out all around.
As I write this we are in London at Sam's aunt's house, preparing for the second leg of our journey which should bring us into Douala, Cameroon tomorrow evening.

Until then, Cheers from the UK
Team Developing Brighter Futures (DBF)