Teacher Technology Training at the EFACAP December 15, 2011

As noted two posts prior, the teachers at the EFACAP school were so excited to get training on how to use the Internet, we set up a separate training session with them for two days later, Thursday, Dec. 15 2011.

None of us had led such a training session before. Two of the students, annie and Adriana, really stepped up and thought through what we would need to do, and prepared our training session.

At the appointed time, we brought the laptops over to where the teachers were sitting and our training session would take place. (Unfortunately, about 1/3 of the laptops didn’t work for one reason or another, so we had to keep going back to the charging room and getting more.)

We started out by trying to assess their interests and experience levels. Only two of them said they had email addresses, and just two of them said they had used the Internet before. Our first impression was surprise that the teachers didn’t know where to click on the “Web” icon for Internet access. But we reminded ourselves that they had had no occasion to use it before now, with no Internet access at the school. Even so, we asked if they had ever had training on these laptops before, and were surprised to hear “no!” because we knew that they had had a four-week training session when the laptops were first distributed in late 2009. So we asked about that, and indeed, they recalled that they had had such a training session. My big “aha” moment there, and I’ve seen this before, was that if you’re an adult and you’ve never used computers before, and you get training, if you don’t use what you’ve learned for nearly three years after that, you’re going to forget what you learned!

Annie and Adriana had wisely decided to start the session with training on the server, saving the most exciting part—the Internet and email accounts–for last. Our team had brought and set up an internal server for the school, with as basic a wiki as possible installed on it, and we had uploaded a few lesson plans on solar energy and public health that we had created during the semester prior. We explained what the server is, how it will work even if the Internet connection is not working, and that they can upload their own lesson plans to this server to have them any time they want. We then showed them how to access the server, and the lesson plans, and how to create their own page on the server. (But again, my main worry is that if they don’t use it for a long while, they won’t remember how to use it, and I wonder whether they will see value in storing lesson plans on it, or whether this is our idea for them…)

Next, we showed them how to access the Internet, and a web page. We told them they can search for information on google (and for them, google.ht, the local Haitian page was where we surfed). Many of them wanted to watch youtube videos—they knew about youtube. Unfortunately, the OLPC laptops don’t allow for flash, so they couldn’t watch any videos. I don’t know if they’ve found a way around that by now…

Next, there were two people who wanted to go to Facebook—then everyone wanted to do that. They had all heard of Facebook! They were so excited! But in order to do that, you need to create an account, and in order to create an account, you need an email address. So, that was the next thing we tried to do. And I say “tried to do” for a reason. This was the most difficult thing we did during the entire training session, because to sign up for an email account, (we used yahoo.fr), one needs first to choose the email “name” and yahoo suggests one for you. Then you need to give a street address, and to enter a password multiple times (no one had brought anything on which to write down their new email address or password, so how would they remember it? We distributed paper and pens at that point, although no one wanted to stop to do so–they were so close, so excited to keep going at that point.) But the most puzzling thing to them was the two challenge or security questions yahoo requires, if the password is forgotten—first, explaining the concept behind this, and then explaining why they needed two. Some of these questions made no contextual sense to the teachers (Make and model of your first car? Where did you vacation last year? What was your favorite sport in high school?) , but ultimately they all made it through, and were able to choose a question/answer that worked for them. And finally, they had to type in the strange, nonsensical CAPTCHA phrases at the bottom of the page that attempt to prevent against spamming and robot signing up for accounts—and we had to explain what those were all about, too!

Finally, the first person to hit “send” got his address. Then, as the others all hit send, none of the rest of the addresses went through. This was extremely frustrating and puzzling for us. We had no idea what to tell them, why it hadn’t worked. We could only figure that yahoo rejected them, as they all came so suddenly from the same IP address, they thought it was spamming or robo-account creation of some type. (So much for the CAPTCHA phrase!)

So the training ended on a somewhat frustrating note, as only one person managed to get an email address/account that day. The better news is that there were two of the teachers present at the session who were clearly more experienced, brave, and quick to catch on than the rest when it came to using the computers and the Internet. (In a good-news follow up, we’ve been told that these two are taking the lead on training the rest of the teachers in how to use the Internet, get email addresses, and are also going around from class to class and teaching the teachers how to use the laptops for teaching in their classes.)

After the training session was over, we took the teachers into the charging room and showed them what and where all the Internet equipment was, including the server. (It’s all on the upper left of the equipment.)

Meeting with the EFACAP school parents 12/14/11

The day after meeting with the teachers, we met with parents of the EFACAP students. As we had done the day before, we started this meeting by explaining who we were, why we were there, that we were not working with the laptop program, and that the Ministry of Education had asked us to come and help them find a solar solution to charge the laptops that had been donated to them.

The parents were full of speeches to express their gratitude. One parent after another took their turn expressing sentiment after sentiment: how words alone couldn’t express their gratitude that their child is able to participate in this program, to have a computer that they’d otherwise never be able to have, that their children can do things that they’d never be able to do in life… This was very touching, but it also felt that perhaps they still didn’t understand that we had nothing to do with the laptop program.

So we asked the parents what the children use the laptops for. The two main responses were pictures and movies.

Then one parent finally stood up and said that she was NOT happy, because her child was older than 6^th grade and thus did not have a laptop (7^th through 9^th graders at this school did not receive laptops).

We asked about what the laptops are used for when the children bring them home. The parents themselves told us they don’t use them—with one exception. There was one parent who had used the laptop extensively, and had even brought it to an Internet cafe and used it to access the Internet. She was certainly the exception.

They next told us that their children weren’t really showing them (the parents) new things, or the things that they were learning in school, on the laptops. However, they were showing these things to other children. This had caused some of the children that were very shy to come out of their shells and interact much better with other children. The children learn and work together when they’re working on the laptops. This, I’ve heard before—children teaching other children, spontaneous play/teaching/learning groups forming, and children using the laptops to express themselves in ways never before available to them, or seen by their parents.

Then, there was an angry mother who stood up and made a speech about how some things must not be allowed on the laptops. She had found pornography on her child’s laptop (I’ve never heard of THAT before!), and this sparked heated response speeches by numerous other parents: the first was a father who stood up to say that he is aware of everything that is on his children’s computer, and he is also very involved in his children’s lives, so that something like this would never happen in his household, and that it is more of a reflection on the parent that there was pornography on the laptop than on the child. Then another student stood up to say that they shouldn’t be talking about this in front of their visitors/guests, because we’d get the wrong impression about their town/school/community. They should instead go back to telling us about all the wonderful and fantastic things about the laptops, so that we don’t cancel the program and might bring them more laptops. So, that was a very interesting and eye-opening experience, because it felt like we got to see some actual truthfulness before the “make the right impression” urge got the upper hand again.

At that point, since it explicitly stated that we were guests, that they should tell us only positive things about the laptops, we took that opportunity to explain yet again that we had nothing whatsoever to do with the actual laptop program. We were from a University in the US, and had brought the solar powering equipment and had installed it, but were returning to bring Internet connectivity, and were taking this opportunity to talk with them, get to know what they thought about the technology-in-the-school, explain about the solar system we had installed, etc.

So we got back to talking about the laptops (since there wasn’t much else to ask about the solar system itself—none of them had seen it before). They said that the children were more interested in going to school than they had been before. In fact, some parents said that their children didn’t even want to go to sleep, they just want to keep using the laptops. This raised the issue of power—how would their children be able to keep using the laptop past bedtime, if charging them is so difficult? So we turned our questions to energy and power, and asked about charging the computers.

The parents told us that charging the computers has been the biggest challenge. Sometimes they pay for charging them at charging stations. (They told us that the going rate was 25 or 30 gourds per charge, which translates to about 75 cents US. For perspective, UNESCO estimates that 55% of Haiti’s population lives on less than $1.25/day.)

Other times they go to neighbors’ homes that have electricity (neighbors with generators?) When the grid comes on, they try to find everything they can, including the laptops, and charge everything they can as long as the power is on. In the five days we were there on this trip, the power came on twice, both times in the evening/middle of the night.

They parents also told us no one in town has solar panels for solar charging of the laptops.

When asked what they would like to change about the program, the answer was: nothing, they would just like MORE laptops!

Mr. Compere, the principal, added that the next important thing to do will be to store digital books on the laptops.

We next asked a few technology-related questions. Nearly every parent in the room (about 20) had heard of the Internet, but only three of them had used it before. About half of them owned mobile phones. However, every one of them raised their hand that they would have access to a mobile phone in case of an emergency.

We asked them if they’d like to become more involved in the work we’re doing, and they gave a resounding YES from everyone. So we showed them the charging station, how it was constructed, and let them know that they could help the project by helping us construct more of these charging stations. Nearly all of the above pictures are of the students explaining to the parents about the charging stations (since that was when I got to go around the room and take photos!)

We then gave them a tour of the solar installation then, and asked who was willing to help with construction of the charging stations. No one was available that same day. They suggested they’d come back tomorrow. We asked when. Then they said they’d all be busy tomorrow, but some might come back at noon.

In the end, we did have one parent return to help with building the charging stations.

First meeting with the EFACAP teachers on solar-powered Internet deployment trip (Dec 13 2011)

During our second implementation trip in December 2011, our team had three key large-group meetings: two with the EFACAP teachers and administration, and one with the parents of the schoolchildren. The next few posts will cover these meetings, including notes from the meetings, as well as what I found to be the important take-aways.

Meeting with the teachers, Dec 13: We took the opportunity to introduce ourselves and to explain our entire project, as well as our overall intentions in being there. We hadn’t fully realized this before, but we never had the chance to explain to the teachers about the solar system we deployed in August, because regular school was not in session when we were there, and since we finished the installation on the final evening of that trip, we just ran out of time for such an explanation, in any case. Even so, we had believed that somehow it would have been conveyed to these teachers that this solar project, which was the main reason for our involvement in the laptop project in general, was at the initiative of the Ministry of Education. It had not been.

So we started from the beginning, explaining that OLPC-Haiti, under the Ministry of Education, had asked us to design and deploy a solar powering system to charge the laptops that had been donated to Haiti, because they were unable to power them at the school.  We tried to make clear that we were not affiliated with OLPC; that our involvement with the project was the solar powering part of it, which we were approached and specifically asked to do, and that we had raised all of our own funds to do this.

We asked whether the teachers had received XO laptops of their own, trying to gauge their technology familiarity and whether they were using them in the classrooms now that they could charge them. The teachers claimed that they each received a laptop as part of the program. They said they only use them at school, and sometimes they use them to prepare lessons. They pointed to my laptop that I had brought with me to this meeting, and expressed unanimously that they really wanted to have “grown up” computers for themselves.

We asked which subjects they use the XOs for in class, and were told: math, writing, social sciences, and experimental sciences.

They also see the students using the laptops outside of class for: photos, music, sounds, drawing, maze. With the younger students, they use them to play games in class.

These teachers claim to have no problem with the fact that the students learn technology faster than the teachers do. (This was a surprise for me! Usually teachers express the opposite!)

The teachers claim that both the students and the teachers use the laptops to do work outside of class.

 

The EFACAP school teaches grades 1-9, and grades 7-9 do not have laptops, and they very much want them. There’s a sense that they don’t understand why the younger students would get the laptops when the older students get nothing. (I’ve certainly witnessed this sentiment before.)

The teachers further reported that they use the laptops in the classroom about 2 hours per week. If the computers were in the classroom permanently, they feel they’d be able to use them all day.

We next inquired what would they like to be able to do with the computers. They’d like to be able to use the Internet. They were thrilled when we told them we were bringing the Internet, and they set up a separate meeting with us two days later, for us to teach them how to get online. That was a very interesting experience, to try to teach adults who had NEVER used the Internet before, to do so on the XO laptops….so I will save that for a future post.) They also find the XOs too slow, and reiterated their wish that they could have real computers.

Finally, we gave them a tour of the solar system, and asked if they’d be willing to teach the students about solar power, and they said yes.

They also told us that they all wanted to come to the US. They said they’d organize everything in terms of passports and organization of when to come, but they really wanted to all make a group trip to the US, to see how we live there. They also were very strongly pushing that I bring them grown up computers the next time I come. I explained to them about how all of the work we had done so far was mainly funded through two large grants we had applied for and were successfully awarded. They let me know that, since I had had so much success before, they were confident I’d be able to get a grant to get them computers.

We have another idea for a computer lab for the EFACAP school–so stay tuned!

 

IIT Empowering Haiti Successfully Deploys XO Charging Station

A team of students from the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago has been working on a charging station for XO deployments in developing countries. Like the laptops themselves, the design needed to be rugged and inexpensive, but also simple enough to be reproduced in their area of deployment. Using a three-legged PVC structure, hardboard shelves, and dulled nails for support, the final cost of each charging station ended up being under $1.00 per XO when constructed in the US; and when using a simple jig, the construction time is under an hour for a station with 20 shelves.

In August 2011, the team installed a solar power system at a primary school in Lascahobas, Haiti. Upon returning in December, the site was updated with, among other things, the new charging station design. Previously, all 400 XOs had been stacked in piles of ten, which proved to be a mess (as seen in the first picture below). With the new stations installed, the children were able to easily find available charging cables and plug the XOs into the system.

An assembly guide for building these XO laptop charging stations is available in two different versions: 11 x 17 one-pager / multiple 8.5×11 pages.

IIT Empowering Haiti is a team of undergraduate students at the Illinois Institute of Technology who, with the support of faculty and industry advisers, are working to improve the conditions of education in Haiti. For more information you please visit the team’s Web site or contact them at contact@iitempoweringhaiti.org.

(this post was written by IIT Empowering Haiti team member Simon Brauer and is reposted from OLPCnews.com)

Solar-Powered Internet Connectivity a Reality in Lascahobas, Haiti!

On December 13-14, 2011, a partnered team from Illinois Institute of Technology, Green Wifi, and Inveneo worked together to bring solar-powered Internet connectivity to the EFACAP school in Lascahobas, Haiti. Thanks to funding from an Internet Society Community grant, this team first established a long distance Internet connection to the school, and then set up point-to-multipoint wifi hotspots across the school’s campus.

In August, 2011, the IIT and Green Wifi team installed a 2.4 Kilowatt solar p.v. powering system at the EFACAP school. Now that the laptops could be charged, the team’s next goal was to establish an Internet connection, so that the teachers, students, and administration could have access to unlimited information from the world wide web, but also, so that those at the school in Lascahobas would be able to communicate with the team in the US. From the beginning of this project, one of the team’s goals was to enable communication to foster collaboration between the two groups. Being able to communicate over the Internet should facilitate this.

The backbone tower in Lascahobas, to which the EFACAP school is connected, is one of many set up across the country as part of the Inveneo-led Rural Broadband Initiative to form a high-speed wireless backbone across Haiti. This initiative’s objective is to bring affordable, reliable and sustainable broadband access to 6 regions and 20 un-served population centers across Haiti. The Internet Society grant, which enabled our team to leverage the commitment of a two-year anchor tenant contract with the EFACAP school, was a contributing factor toward the Rural Broadband Initiative’s decision to place Internet towers in this region, thereby including it in the national backbone, which means that this grant’s potential reach and contribution to Internet connectivity and use in Haiti go far beyond the single connection at the EFACAP school!

As part of their BATI program, Inveneo is training and certifying local Haitian technicians from regions across the country in Internet connectivity setup and related small-business skills. The EFACAP school Internet installation was used as a hands-on training session for five BATI technicians.

Once the long-distance link from downtown Lascahobas to the (semi-rural) school was established, the team worked together to establish multiple solar-powered wifi hotspots across the school’s campus. After connectivity was established, the IIT team met with the school’s teachers, only two of whom had ever used the Internet before, to instruct them in how to get online, use search tools and a server, and finally, to set up email addresses!

 

The EFACAP school in Lascahobas was the recipient of about 400 laptops from a much larger laptop donation that the Haitian Ministry of Education received in 2009, with the stated goal of improving the quality of primary education. However, as is the case with the vast majority of primary schools across Haiti, the EFACAP school had no way to provide the power to charge the laptops—in this school’s case, it was the result of the grid no longer providing them power after the devastating earthquake that hit Port au Prince in 2010.

 

Our team looks forward to returning to the school in the first half of 2012. While we are confident that the Inveneo BATI team is capable of installing, supporting and maintaining the Internet and related connectivity technology, our team plans to host a training session (for the BATI and beyond) focusing on solar powering technology and on wifi technology, so that these complementary technologies can similarly be locally supported and maintained. With each visit, we are working to increase local capacities, as well as local support for the project in order that it can be fully locally owned, maintained, and supported.

LIVE BLOGGING FROM LASCAHOBAS, HAITI!!!! The EFACAP school in Lascahobas now has solar-powered Internet connectivity!

The IPRO 335 team from IIT, partnering with Green Wifi and Inveneo, have worked together to make this connection a reality. After months of planning, preparation, fundraising, and prototype design, the team is on-site from December 11-18, carrying out our work!

 

Working with local Haitians who are trained in Internet connectivity by Inveneo (in a program called BATI), an Internet connection has been set up at the school, and this blog is being posted LIVE, IN REAL TIME!!!! We are extremely excited to be able to communicate over the Internet, and I’m taking this opportunity to share the news about it with this post.

The IPRO team arrived on Sunday, December 11, and made the 2.5 hour car trip to Lascahobas, with all of our luggage and hardware stacked to the ceiling, in a very, very crowded van!

Since settling in on Sunday, we have worked on various tasks on-site, including:

 

Building the team’s new and improved charging station as an example that the community can replicate and build on their own in the future, using all local materials. The station’s cost comes in at less than $1 per laptop.

Troubleshooting the fact that the solar powering system went down and hasn’t worked for a week prior to our arrival. (The main fuse had blown and so we re-wired around this fuse—and the system was up and running again right away.)

 

We lined up the services of a translator/interpreter for our on-site meetings (his name is Jefferson).

We have started carrying out the survey amongst the community members (about technology and electricity use) employing mostly the same team that carried out the survey on our last visit, in August.

We met with the teachers on Tuesday, to explain the project to them (we didn’t have the chance to do that in August, since normal classes were not in session), and to ask them about their use of technology in the classroom. They were unanimous and vocal in their desire to each have (grown-up) laptops of their own, as well as a computer lab for the school. They also wanted the upper classes (7^th-9^th grade) to have access to technology, which isn’t currently the case.

We met with parents of students at the EFACAP school on Wednesday (today), and we learned how excited they are about their children having laptops; how the laptops have made even shy children come out of their shells and show others how they know how to use this technology and to teach others; how much the educational experience has improved for the students—how excited they are to go to school now; and how expensive and difficult it is for them to find a way to charge the laptops when the students are not in school. We gave a tour of the solar installation to the parents before they left.

Things we still have left to do on this trip:

 

We will have a follow-up meeting with the teachers on Thursday, and will teach them how to connect to the Internet—only about 5 of them (out of 14) had ever used the Internet before, so there was a great deal of excitement among the teachers, to be able to know how to use the Internet!!!

 

The teachers are eager to learn more about solar system itself, not only so that they understand it, but so that they can teach their students about it too. We will also be giving them a tour and description of the solar system on Thursday.

 

We still have to figure out why the laptops make a squealing noise while over a certain amount charge at the same time.

In a repurposing of technology, we have created mobile telephone chargers out of the XO laptop hand cranks we received at the OLPC SF Summit in October. We need to figure out what to do with these newly created tools/who to give them to.

We need to create solar-powered wifi hotspots across the campus, to take advantage of the Internet connection that is coming to the school from Downtown Lascahobas.

 

We will also be making two site survey visits to other schools, with the goal installing a solar powering installation at one of these schools after our next IPRO semester.

It’s been great seeing old friends!

And not so great seeing others….

We will try to update with another post before we leave Haiti this weekend.

New Video with Description of Deployment trip to Lascahobas, Haiti, August 2011

This 12-min. video gives a more in-depth overview of the deployment our team carried out in Lascahobas, Haiti, this past August, including more technical specifications about the solar-related side of things, and a description of the library we helped to set up.