Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Whoa, cowboy! Larry banged on my door saying I was expected at Kampala University for a meeting at 9 a.m. It was 8:30 a.m. and it would be a 30 minute drive. My email clearly stated the meeting was for April 5th- OMG, it is April 5th. Jet lag, I suppose, or pure stupidity. Did I mention my hair dryer fried yesterday. Can you imagine me running in and out of the downstairs shower with little water - big, big hair and flying on bumpy roads to Kampala University- maybe you can't but my friends can! So now, I am meeting all the people with whom from KU that I had collaborated on a grant proposal in the last few months. What a great experience it was! Ronald looks a lot like Obama, Mary a slight woman who is a computer scientist (rare) and Dan who led the charge for finding colleagues for the proposal. Dr. Atambo, a student, Andreas, - all my online collaborators from KU. We hugged Ugandan style and had a very nice meeting. The Dean of ICT was there and I gave a small impromptu demonstration of the XO. I explained that it is meant for primary school children so that I wanted to work with teacher education students and that the computer science students could learn Python to create activities. The dean was concerned that his curriculum required Java and C++ but admitted that this would be a good project. We made an arrangement to meet the teacher ed person on Thursday at 8 a.m. and work on further details about deploying the 20 XOs. My husband's office donated $5000 to the contributors program to get these computers for the trip. Thank you to Clemente Orthodontics, our first sponsor! Larry would like me to place them in the local "Police School" where the children of police officers attend school. He feels that by helping the government and gaining visibility, there will be progress or support from the government. I am still trying to get an appointment with a Commissioner or Minister of Education. This is NOT easy, but perhaps the police officers will usher me in. This will be the topic of discussion on Thursday with the good folks at Kampala University. There is another meeting scheduled for the 14th as well. Another interesting happening: I met with Andreas Frowen, the film teacher that helped us last year by having his students film Ugandan students for me. This film was incorporated into our EdMedia program as an assignment so that this OLPC project would have a video. He showed me a very new trailer of a film that one of his students would show at a film festival. It was about female circumcision and very moving. The student film maker had been a victim of this tribal custom and cried throughout the making of the film. Watch for it! Very moving, sad, important to expose. Change of subject: Later, we had a nice lunch. Then I observed one of the other professors teach a math lesson at a local Catholic School, St. Catherines. What a joy! The kids were great; the professor was very engaging and had them calculating on their fingers, in their brains and on the floor. Pictures. Finally, we returned to the guest house and I spent a couple of hours showing the students the online class that I created. We were able to connect with another colleague, Sheila in NY and she showed how a synchronous class could be had using Adobe Connect. Her microphone worked but she couldn't hear us. Such is life with technology! We only had two laptops- one was set up as a teacher, the other as a student and we tried to emulate. The student laptop failed us, and internet was flaky but they got the idea. Downloading was really sluggish, so without a stronger internet connection, I am not sure how feasible it is from the guest house. More investigation necessary! Went to the grocery store finally to buy some much needed WATER--- and cookies too.