(about Monday) Today was certainly a successful day. Since we were cutting short our Williamson visit in order to get to a meeting with Dale and Michel of MIT/OLPC in Petionville, today was our last day of class and it was a little heartbreaking because, not only did I not want to leave the most adorable kids in the world, but I also just didn't feel like we had enough time to teach anything of substance. But Bill had a great idea, and that was to divide the class between students that had taken the XO training last year and...
Day 37) day in darbonne Sat, 1-May-2010 (beth)
(about Tuesday) Coming soon ... lost in the mail :)...
Day 38) Matènwa again Sat, 1-May-2010 (beth)
(about Wednesday) Had a very successful meeting with our Matènwa mentors today, even though Bill and I were about ready to keel over in tiredness after a lot of travel. Normally, we're not so tired, but I think the five past weeks are really starting to affect us! Things that we talked about at Matènwa: -The PORN ISSUE. Kids are using the internet to look for dirty pictures. We talked about putting a password on the internet because all those XOs hooked up is slowing down Chris' connection at Matènwa anyway, but I wanted to put a rule down regardless...
Day 39) making rules Sat, 1-May-2010 (beth)
(about Thursday) The students put their computers down and gather around in a circle. They are interspersed among teachers. One of the mentors speaks up. “We're going to talk today about responsibility. What kinds of responsibilities do you students have with this laptop?” The students put their hands up. To take care of them, to not give them to babies, to not break them. The usual. “And what kinds of things can we do with the computers?” Play games, play with Etoys, go on the internet. “And what kinds of things do we do on the internet?” Do research, watch...
Day 40) mentors, mice, and realness Sat, 1-May-2010 (beth)
(about Friday) Today was mainly ups; a few downs. It's hard to say much in the last few days. You just try to watch it all pass, and erase any mistakes that you know you can change permanently. Everything else you just cross your fingers that it works out right. Today the mentors stopped class early because they didn't understand a part of Lesson 7. We were confused because it seems like they just stopped class without even really asking Bill or myself for help. They asked Benaja, and Benaja explained, but they decided to stop class anyway, apparently because...
olpc realness summit (realness.org) Sat, 1-May-2010 (teefal)
Waveplace is pleased to announce the OLPC REALNESS SUMMIT. No hype, no bashing, no wireless, no room service. Just straight talk about what works, what doesn't, and why we do what we do. WHERE: Maho Bay Camps on the island of St John, US Virgin Islands (steps from the beach) WHEN: May 28, 29, 30, 31 HOW MUCH: $300 for four nights, including lodging Twelve invited talks and discussions, three a day, from five continents and the Caribbean: * WAVEPLACE: Tim Falconer * OLPC: Adam Holt * SUGAR LABS: Bernie Innocenti * ASIA: Mike Dawson from the OLPC Afghanistan...
Day 41) last afternoon Wed, 5-May-2010 (beth)
(about Saturday) My last afternoon sitting in the library at the Matènwa Community Learning Center. It's funny how things change; how things are the same. I'm still sitting in the same library. The weather is the same. The people around me are all the same people. Nothing has changed. And yet, everything has changed. For one thing, my hair is braided. I'm a little bit more tan, a little bit more “Haitian”. Now when people talk about me I have a pretty good grasp on what they're saying (even if they don't know it yet). At this point, I'm quite...
Day 42) Leaving Haiti Wed, 5-May-2010 (beth)
(about Sunday) The blue wooden sailboat rocks up and down, side to side. I desperately try to keep my stomach from flying out of my mouth. I look over at Bill and Chris and they are motionless (but I later learn that they are pretty much thinking the exact same thing as me). We woke up at three in the morning to leave Matènwa and make it to the 6am boat ride to Port-au-Prince. Bill and I rode in the back of a big pick-up truck filled with luggage. We laid all the luggage down in a cozy arrangement and...
Kids know when you're not real. Thu, 20-May-2010 (teefal)
Five days until the Maho Workshop begins and I'm already exhausted. Not that I've had much break since the Haiti trip. Pretty much this entire year so far has been one thing after the next, an endless string of details demanding time. Everything I do is instead of something else. This morning I'm wondering just how real I ought to get in these posts. With a name like "realness" staring back at me, my first thought is "very." But people are many and they've each have their own likely reactions. The deeper you dig, the more you risk alienating or...
realness and regis Fri, 21-May-2010 (teefal)
In Haiti, everyone greeted everyone. Throughout the day, people walked from house to house, chatting about everything and nothing, keeping connected. Two weeks later, I'm taking the T home from Boston airport, sitting in a metal subway car filled with more people than lived in that whole Haitian village. No one talks to each other. No one looks up. No connection. When I'm with Isabel, my four year old daughter, I'm often talking to people on the subway. She's a great icebreaker with her antics. I'm usually saying funny things to her, which make the people around smile and pretty...
START: Day One in Maho Tue, 25-May-2010 (beth)
Arrived in St. John late last night due to a few flight delays. Bill picked me up at the ferry. “Man, Bill,” I said to him. “It's like I just saw you two weeks ago!” “Funny,” he responds. “You did!” St. John is a little bit different from Haiti, but certainly an interesting comparison. They're both in the Caribbean and there are cultural things that seem to spill over between the two- Tap Taps (or Safari Wagons, as they call them here), the intense humidity, the mosquitoes. Headed out to Beach Bar with Bill where we filled what was my...
The Difference English Makes Tue, 25-May-2010 (beth)
Class today goes great. George Hunt and Jessica Curtis have joined on board and came with us to class today. It was great having them join up. We're expecting some new people tomorrow evening too- can't believe the summit is already here. Today we worked on Etoys Lesson 2 and tried to build interest among the kids in storytelling, using the book item in the Etoys supply box (which is something students learn in Lesson 2). I was with the Guy Benjamin School today, the same school that Waveplace did a pilot with a couple of years back. We were,...
The Life of Abraham Browne Wed, 26-May-2010 (beth)
It's 3:05pm and we're walking down the hallway of the Julius E. Sprauve School (JESS), heading to class. Our students at the end of the hall can hear our voices and our feet- they come running out of the room, bounding into our arms. There's a lot of yellow in this school- the walls are yellow, the students' shirts are yellow. The air conditioner is strong but it still feels like you're in the tropics because the school is just so colorful. Today, Wednesday, we're teaching the kids how to create sketches using the paintbrush tool in Etoys. At JESS...
Pre-Realness...Here We Go Fri, 28-May-2010 (beth)
At the Gifft Hill School, there are flowers all over the projector screen. They keep duplicating, one after another. “Make sixty!” One kid shouts. “Make a thousand!” Exclaims another. Today is the most calm, disciplined day I have maybe ever seen in my whole experience with the XO laptop. It is also because the Guy Benjamin school was closed today due to flood warnings so we have double our mentors, plus a whole bunch of Realness participants that wanted to come and join in. We have 20 students, and about 16 adults. Today, class is not One Laptop per Child...
Questions...and Answers Fri, 28-May-2010 (beth)
It's amazing the movement that Realness is already beginning to make, and we're only one day into the summit. Here are the countries represented in Realness 2010: Haiti Paraguay Peru Uruguay Honduras Afghanistan São Tomé e Príncipe USA, including the Virgin Islands; Columbus, Ohio; and Cambridge, MA Madagascar Austria The global reach is outstanding- a collection of experience all in one place and time. We have representatives from OLPC, Sugar Labs, OLPC News, non-profits, government reps, computer software and programming groups, schools, even individual volunteers and interested observers. We come all representing various angles of the OLPC experience- the masterminding,...
Philosophy and Failure Sat, 29-May-2010 (beth)
Day two of Realness and it starts off with a bang- Bernie Innocenti of Sugar Labs/OLPC Paraguay and Christoph Derndorfer of OLPC Austria/OLPC News really set the stage for some amazing presentations over the next two days. Both of them regaled us with tales of success and tales of challenge. There are a number of things that Bernie and Sugar Labs hope to do in order to improve sugar- getting the computers to start up faster, making the XO printer friendly, building full keyboard navigability, improving the friend view and creating an error message when you copy too many items...
Models (not Runway-Ready) Sun, 30-May-2010 (beth)
An interesting focus on the day today has gotten me thinking. It started with my presentation on São Tomé and my assistance in the presentation on Haiti, as well as Mike Dawson and Salim Hayran's presentation about Afghanistan. All three of these deployments have visible elements of success and all three have good advice to share. And then, after a nice swim in the ocean and a day that was quite full of sunshine, we sat down with it: models. What model works in a deployment and why? Is it better to have a group of mentors teaching students in...
