Friday, September 13, 2013

More meetings today. First meeting was with the Primary Teachers College in Jinja where we met the Director. He was so impressed with what we are doing and happily agreed to have his teachers trained and we will probably put computers in his quasi demo school where his preservice teachers do student teaching. Francis Etyang, Eric and I demonstrated the XO and the XO tablet. We are fast becoming a dog and pony show. The Director will appoint a head tutor to be our first point of contact. Francis will be meeting with her to explain the program as well. Next, in our political correctness, we went to the municipal building to meet with the Senior Education Officer, who is an arm of the ministry in Jinja. On the way, we had a nice meeting with the Inspector of Schools who visits many schools to ensure quality control and report back to the ministry. She was so impressed that she made a strong case that she should have the XO tablet to do her reports. This was certainly a visible person with whom to place a tablet as it will be seen by many and her reports would be digital from the start. We thought we were done for the day, just going to say hello to the Senior Education office outside. But no, he led us back to his office and for the third consecutive time today, we put on our impressive show. They really loved the Brookstone projector as well. Then we came back to the hotel and did work on the XOs trying to put some new activities on them in preparation for the trainings next week. They are going to be limited to the hours of 2 to 5 as recommended by the SEO so as not to incur the expense of lunch and drinks. The teachers are striking so it took a while for Francis to get written permissions for the teachers to attend training. If they don’t show up for work on Monday they need permission to be away.