[OLPC-SF] OLPCorps Africa team in Dakar (was Re: learning implode...)

[Sameer Verma]

Hi Tom and Co.

You guys might want to track the team that's in Dakar and moving
around in Senegal. http://cornellolpc.blogspot.com/

Sameer

On Wed, Jun 17, 2009 at 10:54 AM, Tom
Wadbrook<tomwadbrook at drewschool.org> wrote:
> No internet happening, at least while we're here on this current visit, unfortunately. We have pursued several avenues which had all led to dead-ends until the last couple that we have going right now, both of which are sounding promising for a later date. There is a non-profit hotel and conference center on the edge of the city of Thies, about five miles away over pretty flat land that have agreed to host a DSL line for us - from there we can go point to point using Bruce Baike's green-wifi.org setup. That and the other option both depend on telecom provider and local government support to happen so we aren't out of the woods yet. Nothing happens without a few hoops being jumped through here.
>
> Today I was teaching the teachers in the village again, this time we reviewed their homework assignment, shared it with a partner, added a photo via Record, then explored some other activities including Memorize, Draw, Moon (which is unfortunately not localized into French). Definitely a harder lesson to teach today without a translator, but we all agree that it's worth the effort to spend the time together with the laptops even if we struggle to communicate a little.
>
> These systems do freeze frequently and it seems some do more than others - anybody have any tips? Do I just re-install Sugar? I have to say that if I were a teacher, I'd get frustrated by the frequency of it. Also, any tips on the trackpad wiggy-ness? Dust and sweat, which are both here in large doses, are a kiss of death to the functionality of the trackpad!
>
> I have two more days here, and the group I'm with are here for a further week, so I'll be handing teaching over on Friday to one of the high school teachers, Jenny Nauss who is awesome and much better qualified to be doing this than I am. If you are wondering who we are... almost 30 teachers and students from Drew School and Lick-Wilmerding School in San Francisco, (both high schools), doing a variety of service learning / development work in the village of Keur Sadaro, Senegal over the course of three years worth of repeat visits. One project is the deployment of 25 OLPCs (and hopefully more if things go according to plan).
>
> Thanks all,
> Tom